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Emeric Pressburger

{{short description|Hungarian-British screenwriter, director and producer (1902–1988)}}

{{Hungarian name|Pressburger Imre József}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2022}}

{{use British English|date=January 2022}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Emeric Pressburger

| image = EmericPressburger.jpg

| caption = Pressburger in Paris

| occupation = Screenwriter, producer, director and production house co-founder with Michael Powell

| birth_name = Imre József Pressburger

| birth_date = {{birth date|1902|12|5|df=y}}

| birth_place = Miskolc, Austria-Hungary
(now Hungary)

| death_date = {{death date and age|1988|2|5|1902|12|5|df=y}}

| death_place = Saxtead, England

| spouse = {{plainlist|

  • {{marriage|Ági Donáth|1938|1941}}
  • {{marriage|Wendy Orme|1947|1971}}

}}

| children = 1

| relatives = Andrew MacDonald (grandson)
Kevin Macdonald (grandson)

}}

File:P+P BluePlaque.jpg, Gloucester Place, NW1 5AG]]

Emeric Pressburger (born Imre József Pressburger; 5 December 1902{{spaced ndash}}5 February 1988) was a Hungarian-British screenwriter, film director, and producer. He is best known for his series of film collaborations with Michael Powell, in a collaboration partnership known as the Archers, and produced a series of films, including 49th Parallel (US: The Invaders, 1941), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Matter of Life and Death (US: Stairway to Heaven, 1946), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951).

Early years

Imre József Pressburger was born in Miskolc, in the Kingdom of Hungary, of Jewish heritage.{{cite news|title =Variety Club-Jewish Chronicle colour supplement "350 years"|pages=28–29|work=The Jewish Chronicle|date=15 December 2006}} He was the only son (he had one elder half-sister from his father's previous marriage) of Kálmán Pressburger, estate manager, and his second wife, Kätherina (née Wichs). He attended a boarding-school in Temesvár (today better known as Timișoara), where he was a good pupil, excelling at mathematics, literature and music. He then studied mathematics and engineering at the Universities of Prague and Stuttgart before his father's death forced him to abandon his studies.Macdonald 1994

Film career

= Berlin and Paris =

Pressburger began a career as a journalist. After working in Hungary and Weimar Republic-era Germany he turned to screenwriting in the late 1920s, working for UFA in Berlin (having moved there in 1926). The rise of the Nazis forced him to flee to Paris, where he again worked as screenwriter, and then to London. He later said, "[the] worst things that happened to me were the political consequences of events beyond my control ... the best things were exactly the same."

Pressburger's early films were mainly made in Germany and France where he worked at the UFA Studios in the Dramaturgie department (script selection, approval and editing) and as a scriptwriter in his own right. In the 1930s, many European films were produced in multiple-language versions. Some of the films made in Germany survive with French intertitles and vice versa.

In 1933, after the Nazis came to power, UFA's head sacked the company's remaining Jewish employees with Pressburger being told his contract would not be renewed. He left his Berlin apartment, "leaving the key in the door so that the Stormtroopers wouldn't have to break the door down" and left for Paris. Late in 1935, Pressburger decided that he would do better in England.

= Emigration to the United Kingdom =

Pressburger arrived in Britain in 1935 as a stateless person; once he decided to settle, he changed his name to Emeric in 1938. In England, he found a small community of Hungarian film-makers who had fled the Nazis, including Alexander Korda, owner of London Films, who employed him as a screenwriter. Asked by Korda to improve the script for The Spy in Black (1939), he met the film's director, Michael Powell. Their partnership would produce some of the most acclaimed British films of the next decade.Christie 1985 However, Pressburger still did some projects on his own.

Pressburger was much more than "Michael Powell's screenwriter" as some have categorised him. The films they made together in this period were mainly original stories by Pressburger, who also did most of the work of a producer for the team. Pressburger was also more involved in the editing process than Powell, and as a musician, Pressburger was also involved in the choice of music for their films.

= Later work =

Powell and Pressburger began to go their separate ways after the mid-1950s. They remained close friends but wanted to explore different things, having done about as much as they could together. Two of his later films were made under the pseudonym "Richard Imrie".

Two novels by Pressburger were published. The first Killing a Mouse on a Sunday (1961), is set in the period immediately following the Spanish Civil War. It received favourable reviews and was soon translated into a dozen languages. The Glass Pearls (1966), reissued in 2015 and again in 2022 by Faber, gained an especially negative assessment from The Times Literary Supplement, its only contemporary review.The Times Literary Supplement, Issue 3348, 28 April, 1966, p.18.

Subsequently it has been highly praised. Lucy Scholes in The Paris Review in 2019 called it "a truly remarkable work. It deserves to be recognized both for its own virtuosity, and as an important addition to the genre of Holocaust literature."{{cite news|last=Scholes|first=Lucy|url=https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/10/18/emeric-pressburgers-lost-nazi-novel/|title=Emeric Pressburger's Lost Nazi Novel|work=The Paris Review|date=18 October 2019|access-date=19 October 2019}}

Personal life

On 24 June 1938, Pressburger married Ági Donáth, the daughter of Andor Donáth, a general merchant, but they divorced in 1941. The union was childless. He remarried, on 29 March 1947, to Wendy Orme, and they had a daughter, Angela, and another child who died as a baby in 1948; but this marriage also ended in divorce in Reno, Nevada in 1953 and in Britain in 1971. His daughter Angela's two sons both became successful film-makers: Andrew Macdonald as a producer on films such as Trainspotting (1996), and Kevin Macdonald as an Oscar-winning director. Kevin has written a biography of his grandfather, and a documentary about his life, The Making of an Englishman (1995).

Pressburger became a British citizen in 1946. He was made a Fellow of BAFTA in 1981, and a Fellow of the BFI in 1983.

Pressburger was a diffident and private person who, at times, particularly later on in his life, could be hypersensitive and prone to bouts of melancholia. He loved French cuisine, enjoyed music, and possessed a great sense of humour. In appearance he was short, wore glasses, and had a sagacious, bird-like facial expression. He was a keen supporter of Arsenal F.C., a passion he developed soon after arriving in Britain. From 1970 he lived in Aspall, Suffolk and he died in a nursing home in nearby Saxtead on 5 February 1988, due to the complications of old age and pneumonia.[https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/8323 "Emeric Pressburger."] Find a Grave. Retrieved: 19 August 2010. He is interred in the cemetery of St. Mary of Grace Church, Aspall.[http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Obits/Pressburger/Addresses.html "Pressburger Addresses."] powell-pressburger.org. Retrieved: 19 August 2010. His is the only grave in that Church of England graveyard with a Star of David.

Filmography

{{for multi|his films with Michael Powell|Powell and Pressburger|and|:Category:Films by Powell and Pressburger}}

;UFA period

;Paris

;British period

= Actor =

  • The Red Shoes (1948) – Man Waiting on Station Platform (uncredited)

Awards, nominations and honours

Novels

References

= Citations =

{{reflist}}

= Bibliography =

{{refbegin}}

  • Christie, Ian. Arrows of Desire: The Films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. London: Waterstone, 1994, First edition 1985. {{ISBN|0-571-16271-1}}.
  • Christie, Ian. Powell, Pressburger and Others. London: British Film Institute, 1978. {{ISBN|0-85170-086-1}}.
  • Christie, Ian and Andrew Moor, eds. The Cinema of Michael Powell: International Perspectives on an English Filmmaker. London: BFI, 2005. {{ISBN|1-84457-093-2}}.
  • Darakhvelidze, Georgy. {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20170603174640/http://www.biblio-globus.us/(qpswqt55zerry5izs5aqlu55)/description.aspx?product_no=9329599 Landscapes of Dreams: The Cinema of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (Part 1-7) (in Russian).]}} Vinnitsa, Ukraine: Globe Press, 2008–2019. {{ISBN|966-8300-34-3}}.
  • Esteve, Llorenç. Michael Powell y Emeric Pressburger (in Spanish). Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Catedra, 2002. {{ISBN|978-84-376-1950-7}}.
  • Howard, James. Michael Powell. London: BT Batsford Ltd, 1996. {{ISBN|0-7134-7482-3}}.
  • Lazar, David, ed. Michael Powell: Interviews. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2003. {{ISBN|1-57806-498-8}}.
  • Macdonald, Kevin. Emeric Pressburger: The Life and Death of a Screenwriter. London: Faber & Faber, 1994. {{ISBN|0-571-16853-1}}
  • Moor, Andrew. Powell and Pressburger: A Cinema of Magic Spaces. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005. {{ISBN|1-85043-947-8}}.
  • Powell, Michael. A Life in Movies (Autobiography). London: Heinemann, 1986. {{ISBN|0-434-59945-X}}, later edition, 1993. {{ISBN|0-571-20431-7}} (pbk).
  • Powell, Michael. Million Dollar Movie (The second volume of his autobiography). London: Heinemann, 1992. {{ISBN|0-434-59947-6}}, later edition, 2000. {{ISBN|0-7493-0463-4}} (pbk).
  • Thiéry, Natacha. Photogénie du désir: Michael Powell et Emeric Pressburger 1945–1950 (in French). Rennes, France: Presse Universitaires de Rennes, 2009. {{ISBN|2-7535-0964-6}}.

{{refend}}

External links

  • [http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Reviews/Emeric/ Emeric Pressburger] at the [http://www.powell-pressburger.org/ Powell & Pressburger Pages]
  • {{IMDb name|696247|Emeric Pressburger}}
  • {{Screenonline name|id=447372|name=Emeric Pressburger}}
  • [https://web.archive.org/web/20100909024755/http://www.britmovie.co.uk/directors/Emeric-Pressburger Emeric Pressburger biography] on BritMovie.co.uk

{{Powell and Pressburger}}

{{Navboxes

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| list =

{{AcademyAwardBestStory 1940–1956}}

{{BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Pressburger, Emeric}}

Category:1902 births

Category:1988 deaths

Category:BAFTA fellows

Category:Best Story Academy Award winners

Category:British people of Hungarian-Jewish descent

Category:British film directors

Category:British film producers

Category:British film production company founders

Category:British Jews

Category:British male screenwriters

Category:Deaths from pneumonia in England

Category:Hungarian film directors

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Category:20th-century Hungarian Jews

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Category:Hungarian male screenwriters

Category:Hungarian emigrants to England

Category:Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom

Category:People from Miskolc

Category:Hungarian emigrants to Germany

Category:Jews who immigrated to the United Kingdom to escape Nazism

Category:20th-century British screenwriters