Wartime cinema, Englishness and propaganda: Michael Powell and the 'Pressburger Touch'

This book provides a fresh analysis of the wartime work of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and their team ‘the Archers’. It argues that in their earlier work, Powell and Pressburger should be seen as middlebrow storytellers whose stories explore national identity in times of war. Their wartime work is discussed in four phases: the first phase covers their contributions to the ‘phoney war’, the second traces their engagement with the ‘people’s war’. The third phase sees the Archers mov...