Emeric Pressburger was a Hungarian-born screenwriter who wrote and produced innovative and visually striking motion pictures in collaboration with British director Michael Powell, most notably The Red Shoes (1948).
Pressburger was born on Dec. 5, 1902, in the Hungarian village of Miskolc, and attended college in Prague and Stuttgart, before moving to Berlin in 1925. There, he wrote newspaper articles and film scripts, which he submitted to UFA, the German film company.
Pressburger was hired by UFA’s script department in 1928, and his first writing credit was for a 1930 sound film by Robert Siodmak called Abschied (Farewell). He contributed to about eight films between 1930 and 1932, including Emil and the Detectives (1932) and many musicals. After Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Pressburger went to Paris, where he wrote several scripts, including La Vie Parisienne, a 1935 film directed by Siodmak.
Pressburger moved to London in 1935, and began working for Alexander Korda, the Hungarian-born British film producer and launched his partnership with Powell with The Spy in Black (1939; U.S. title U-Boat). In 1941 he won an Academy Award for best original story for their third film, The 49th Parallel (U.S., The Invaders).
From 1942 Pressburger and Powell shared equal credit for writing, producing, and directing the 14 films that were released by their joint production company, The Archers. The team’s most successful films, which were notable for their use of lavish sets and vivid colours, included The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Canterbury Tale (1944), Black Narcissus (1947), A Matter of Life and Death (1946; U.S. Stairway to Heaven), and The Tales of Hoffman (1951). After The Archers was amicably disbanded in 1956, Pressburger wrote two novels, Killing a Mouse on Sunday (1961; filmed as Behold a Pale Horse, 1964) and The Glass Pearls (1966). He was named fellow of the British Film Institute in 1983.
In the following extract, Emeric Pressburger describes how he started out working as a scriptwriter for the mighty German film studio UFA in the 1920s.
I called again at UFA for my appointment with Herr Podehl. He was a splendid man, genuinely anxious to do a good job and a true friend of writers. He fought for them and for their work, supporting them when they were ground up in the huge mills of the organization. He liked me, I believe, and I certainly took to him at once. He explained, with a total lack of condescension, how production worked at UFA. There were six production units, each with a leader, and they chose and developed about twelve subjects a year, from each of which about half were actually made. It was the dramaturgy department which found subjects, wrote treatments, doctored scripts and made contact with writers, before handing the material on to the production units. Herr Podehl said that he had liked my story and had circulated it among some of the production heads, but he couldn't generate a lasting interest in it. I immediately opened my battered attache case and handed him another treatment.
A fortnight later he contacted me again to say that he liked this one too, but that, again, the production chiefs had been lukewarm. When a third story met the same fate I was again summoned to Podehl’s office, and he admitted that he was a little worried by the situation. ‘You have brought me three decent stories. I encouraged you, and yet you haven’t earned a thing from us yet. So, if you want to do it, take a look at this book. If you like it, write me a short film treatment. That would be a commission, of course. I can pay 200 marks.’ I took the book from him and left the office, trying not to appear too eager, although I knew, and he probably did as well, that it wasn't a case of liking it, or even reading it - I would do it.
When I had completed my assignment I took the treatment to Podehl and he seemed pleased with it. But I don't think he ever imagined it would get made into a film. It was one of those dud properties which every film company has which are given out to young writers just to let them practise and cam a little money. My mother couldn't believe her eyes when I showed her that handful of crisp, new ten-mark notes, and she shook her head in awe and disbelief when I said, ‘Mother, I'm going to leave my job as a house agent's clerk. I’m going to be an author.’ ‘Don't rush it, darling,'’she pleaded. ‘Don’t throwaway a good job, a lasting job.’ But I had already made up my mind.
The next time I went to see Herr Podehl he told me that he had still had no luck with my stories. However, a new young director working in Bruno Duday’s production group had been very interested in one of them called Mondnacht (‘A Moonlit Night’), a clever romantic trifle about the power of the moon over the lives of ordinary Berlin folk:
That was the introduction. Anyway, Podehl wanted me to go and see this new director who had been under contract for months hut who had not found a subject which he found sympathetic. I found the director in his office, quite depressed. His first film had been an avant-garde success called Menschen am Sonntag (‘People on Sunday’), a short, silent documentary-style film about the ordinary adventures of four ordinary working-class Berliners. UFA had hired him on the strength of it and now he couldn't find anything to follow it up with. Did I have any ideas? I told him that I did, and rushed straight home. Of course, I hadn’t had any ideas when I was in his office, but by the time I arrived home I had the whole story mapped out in my head. I stayed up all night typing and retyping, and first thing in the morning I went to see the director. I waited in his office as he read the treatment, and when he had finished he looked at me and said, ‘This is my next film.’ I was overjoyed, stunned speechless. In his autobiography Robert Siodmak, for that was the director, says that I started to cry. I don’t remember that, but it is quite possible.
To write the script I was given a collaborator by Herr Podehl, a wonderful lady called Irma von Cuhe, an experienced writer who would teach me how to write in the proper style. The film was called Abschied (‘Farewell’) and was set in a boarding house of the type I knew well. It was about ordinary Berliners and the tragic misunderstanding which splits up two young lovers. The great invention in it, and what Siodmak particularly loved, was that it was a film that took place in real time. It was a two-hour film and concerned itself with two hours in the life of the boarding house.
The critics loved it, the ordinary people shunned it, but on the strength of it I was employed by the mighty edifice of UFA, as Lektor und Dramaturg. I was given my own little office, and on my first day there I bought a camera – being an UFA employee you got terrific discounts at the camera shops and photographed myself at work. And that was how I got started in films.
– The Early Life of a Screenwriter by Emeric Pressburger, edited by Kevin Macdonald in Projections ed. John Boorman.
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