Emeric Pressburger

Emeric Pressburger (born Imre József Pressburger; 5 December 19025 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'' (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). He has been played on screen by Alec Westwood in the award-winning short film ''Òran na h-Eala'' (2022) which explores Moira Shearer's life-changing decision to appear in ''The Red Shoes''.

Early years

Imre József Pressburger was born in Miskolc, in the Kingdom of Hungary, of Jewish heritage."350 years: Variety Club colour supplement." ''Jewish Chronicle'', 15 December 2006, pp. 28–29. 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, 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, " heworst 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.

Emigrated to the UK

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

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