Britten – Gielgud – Powell

I would like to talk to you about The Tempest. Michael Powell suggesting a film of it in the spring. I answered I could not do it before next autumn and perhaps he would like to approach you about a score? Would that horrify you? I think, if one had a strong say in the treatment, it might have great possibilities – but maybe the idea of recording nauseates you and you are too busy anyhow. I’m awfully flattered anyway that you should want to work with me – of course I should love it – but I am very ignorant about music.

Carta de John Gielgud a Benjamin Britten
23 de Agosto, 1950

No meio dos anos 50 Gielgud desencanou e foi para o teatro com Peter Brook fazer a peça, Gielgud ficou décadas atrás da versão da Tempestade para o cinema e só conseguiu chegar às vias de fato com o Greenaway. Nos anos 70 a coisa quase saiu com Powell e Mason depois do Age of Consent, mas novamente melou-se. Aliás, é impressionante a quantidade de parcerias perdidas entre Powell/Mason, primeiro foi o cara da guerra da meia noite no Colonel Blimp, depois foi o Torquill de Sei Onde Fica o Paraíso, depois I’ll Met in Moonlight (no papel que ficou com Bogarde), nunca dava certo por uma razão ou outra e voltou a não dar certo em A Tempestade. Ao menos Powell teve mais sorte que o Lean que passou a carreira inteira com vontade de trabalhar com Mason e nunca conseguiu.

Take the film director Michael Powell. After he made The Red Shoes in 1948 with Emeric Pressburger, which producers hated and most critics panned, he began to have problems getting other films made. Both The Golden Years in 1952, a proposed autobiography of the composer Richard Strauss, and later, The Tempest in the 1970s, are just two films from Powell’s rather long list of “never-mades” that have been included in the festival’s fantasy programme. Powell became obsessed by The Tempest; there were several scripts written and it had a stellar cast lined up, including Mia Farrow, James Mason, Topol, the comedian Frankie Howerd and the cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, who was going to work on the sets. So what went wrong?
According to Greek-born, London-based Frixos Constantine, the managing director of Poseidon Films who was the producer on The Tempest, it was a clash with the powers-that-be that put the kybosh on the film. “We almost got it made but the Rank Organisation, who were a force in film-making, had some sort of problem with Powell,” recalls Constantine. “They made sure it was never made. We had very good actors, a great script and it was a tragedy for the film industry that it didn’t take place. I had no money to pay the actors or for post-production, it’s as simple as that. I still think it was one of my biggest failures. A lot of rubbish films have been made and there are a lot of good films that were never made.”

The historian, who has decided to focus a significant section of his lecture on Michael Powell and his collaborative “never-mades” with Stravinsky, Dylan Thomas and the painter Graham Sutherland, will also be showing a section of The Tempest which was specially created for a tribute edition of The Late Show on Powell in 1992. Powell wrote the scene in a Shakespearean style as a new opening to the film. “Most film-makers spend time working on projects that don’t get made and never get talked about. What I’m trying to do is bring those films alive,” says Christie. So while we will never see Powell’s full vision of “the one that got away”, we can at least glimpse what he was trying to achieve.

The best films never made