Powell and Pressburger

[Nigel E. Richardson]

Dunno if I'm going out on a limb here or if i'm rehashing a topic you
guys have long since finished with, but it's my first posting here, so....

Am I the only one who sees any influence of the films of Powell and
Pressburger on GRAVITY'S RAINBOW? Especially "The Small Back Room" (1949),
about an obsessive munitions expert who races around London and elsewhere
trying to defuse and examine the latest German bombs before anyone else gets
a chance to blow them up. It's a claustrophobic film that concentrates on
the lives of the scientists during the Blitz, the deadening bureaucracy of
their masters, their fascination with German technology, despite the fact
it's killing the people they love. It's unlike any other film about the
Second World War (except other P&P films) in that the fighting and heroics
are going on elsewhere.... until the bomb falls....   

Other P&P films such as "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp", "A Matter of
Life and Death" (Aka Stairway to Heaven) and "Canterbury Tales" all have
elements that I'm sure Pynchon has borrowed from, mainly because they're
the only films I've seen that capture the minutia of life in offices and
pubs and shops during the war, the stubs of heliotrope pencil, broken asprin
and ration books left scattered on desk.... and TP had to pick 'em up
from somewhere, right?

Nigel E. Richardson


---------------------------------------------------- nigel at impolex.demon.co.uk
Swing low in your weep ship, with your tear scans and your sob probes...
http://turnpike.net/metro/N/ner/index.html - is that photo meant to be ironic?
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