Powell and Pressburger

I remember meeting Nicholas Ray in Paris toward the end of his life. He was a very sad figure who was only looking at his old films, talking about the past and very much a prisoner of his own image, in addition to being a prisoner of drugs and other things. I remember thinking that I didn’t want to be like that when I got older. I wanted to be like Michael Powell or Andre De Toth, who were still vital and curious and seeing new films and talking about them. That’s how you stay young. (laughs)

Did Powell ever talk to you about his time in exile, so to speak, after the controversy of Peeping Tom?

This is interesting. I went to meet him in London and I had no idea initially of what had happened to him after 1960, when he was effectively blacklisted in the business for making this film. We spent a lot of time together, and I had no idea how broke he was. He invited me to his club, he was full of life and always very positive. It turned out that he was so poor during this time that he sometimes wasn’t even eating two meals a day. But he was hiding this very well. He was very proud, very laconic, very funny. I loved Michael. I love his films, and when I have a moment of depression, I always watch one of his films because they show such tremendous confidence in the intelligence of the audience. They are not films done by committee. I published his books in France, his autobiography, which is one of the great books ever written about filmmaking, and about life.

Bertrand Tavernier: The Hollywood Interview