Editing Michael Powell (section)

===The Archers===
Working together as co-producers, writers and directors in a partnership they dubbed "[[Powell and Pressburger|The Archers]]", they made 19 feature films, many of which received critical and commercial success. Their best films are still regarded as classics of 20th-century British cinema. The [[BFI Top 100 British films|BFI 100]] list of "the favourite British films of the 20th century" contains five of Powell's films, four with Pressburger.<ref>[http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/bfi100/ "Features: The BFI 100."] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080701090244/http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/bfi100/ |date=1 July 2008}}, BFI, 19 February 2008. Retrieved: 28 September 2009.</ref> Thomson writes that Powell and Pressburger "struggle with great, clashing virtues—with marvelous visual imagination and uneasy, intellectual substance. [[I Know Where I'm Going!|''I Know Where I'm Going'']] is a genuinely superstitious picture; [[49th Parallel (film)|''49th Parallel'']] is a strange war odyssey, with escaping Germans wandering across Canada—naïve, very violent, at times unwittingly comic, but possessed by a primitive feeling for endangered civilization; an interesting sequel is ''[[One of Our Aircraft is Missing]]''—English fliers getting out of Holland; [[A Matter of Life and Death (film)|''A Matter of Life and Death'']] is pretentious in its way, yet very funny and absolutely secure in its dainty stepping from one world to another ... [[The Thief of Bagdad (1940 film)|''The Thief of Bagdad'']] is delightful, ''[[The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp]]'' a beautiful salute to Englishness ... ''[[Black Narcissus]]'' is that rare thing, an erotic English film about the fantasies of nuns."<ref name="Thomson"/>

Although admirers would argue that Powell ought to rank alongside fellow British directors [[Alfred Hitchcock]] and [[David Lean]], his career suffered a severe reversal after the release of the controversial psychological [[thriller film]] ''[[Peeping Tom (1960 film)|Peeping Tom]]'', made in 1960 as a solo effort.<ref name=FT.com/> The film was excoriated by mainstream British critics, who were offended by its sexual and violent images; Powell was ostracized by the film industry and found it almost impossible to work thereafter.<ref name="Golden"/>

The film did, however, meet with the rapturous approval of the young critics of ''[[Positif (magazine)|Positif]]'' and ''[[Midi Minuit Fantastique]]'' in France, and those of ''Motion'' in England, and in 1965 he was subject of a major positive revaluation by [[Raymond Durgnat]] in the auteurist magazine ''Movie'', later included in Durgnat's influential book ''A Mirror for England''.