Death(1947), and The Red Shoes (1948), are landmarks in British cinema, standing apart from the realist and comic mainstream with a highly stylized aesthetic and themes of romantic longing and spiritual crisis. Film lovers and filmmakers alike revere Powell and Pressburger; Martin Scorsese has called them "the most successful experimental filmmakers in the world." In this first-ever collection of essays on Michael Powell, an international group of critics and scholars map out his filmmaking skills, provide new readings of individual films, and analyze recurrent techniques and themes, relating the latter to contemporary debates about gender, sexuality, nationality, and cinematic spectacle.

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