Talk:Powell and Pressburger

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[edit] Move from The Archers

I 'moved' this page from The Archers (film production) by copying the content and adding a redirect to the old page. In fact, I should have renamed it. See the original page for the initial history of this article. Jihg 12:26, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] My Edit

"There are contemporary echoes in the Dogme 95 manifesto."

Listen, your love of Dogme 95 is commendable. However, not everything relates to it. The films of Powell and Pressburger are different than that of Lars von Trier. It would be like quoting something from Ingmar Berman and stating that is how Steven Spielberg feels as well. He may feel that way but that is beside the point. Let's just talk about these great films by Powell and Pressburger and leave it at that.

It only said that there were contemporary echoes. Of course the films are different, nobody suggested otherwise. When I saw that comment, entered by somebody else, I thought it was an interesting comparison because they are about the only two groups of film-makers that have set out a manifesto like that. SteveCrook 09:37, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

What about the Chaplin, Griffith, Fairbanks, and Pickford when they founded United Artists? They made a similar statement. There are many filmmakers who have stated similar things but don't call them manifestos. The Archers's films are highly expressionistic. Dogme 95 denounces expressionism. Now, I have my problems with Dogme 95, however, this is a free country and you can choose what films to like. However, NOT EVERY WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE NEEDS A CONTEMPORARY REFERENCE!!! Don't try to make comparisans between two completly different things!!!

[edit] Greatest legacy?

Artihcus022 added a paragraph: Without a doubt, their greatest legacy is their pioneering use of the technicolor process as attested by the visual slendour in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffmann. Is that "without a doubt" their greatest legacy? What about all their other legacies? Their B&W films like Forty-Ninth Parallel, A Canterbury Tale, I Know Where I'm Going!, The Small Back Room etc. Their "crusade against materialism" and the documentary movement that was so prevalent and beloved of the critics at the time. What about their fearless introduction of raw emotion, art and so many other subjects into their films? What about their strange and unique way of working? Not only the joint credit but the whole company of The Archers and their regular stable of actors. What about their total independence from the studio system (for as long as they could)? I think that all of those things are great legacies which have inspired admiration and wonder in their audiences, many of whom are film-makers. -- SteveCrook 21:02, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Torn apart?

Please explain 68.167.191.137 (talk) 23:41, 4 March 2008 (UTC).

Your'e adding stuff without regard to what it physically does to the article layout, and taking out stuff that's interesting and important. Give me a moment, and I'll show you what I mean. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 23:44, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Okay thanks. 68.167.191.137 (talk) 23:49, 4 March 2008 (UTC).
Regarding your comment on my talk page, I don't intend to throw out he baby with the bathwater, but I also don't want to lose good content from the article. Also, excessive tagging defaces an article unnecessarily. I have real-life concerns to take care of at the moment, but I've restored your info box in a way that doesn't disrupt the article, and I'll restore some more of your changes in the few minutes I have availabe right now. If you're going to make changes, please be a mit more conservative and take a look at what they're doing to the article overall. Thanks. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 23:57, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Now that I've had the chance to examine them more closely, I don't think the remainder of the edits you made inmprove the article. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 00:07, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Round 2 (WP:3RR avoidance)

You've partially specified some issues you had, and you made the effort to at least review other work I did before dismissing it without much explanation. To keep this moving, let me enumerate the issues I was attempting to address, which still need to be dealt with:

  1. One footnote (and it's a link to the P&P fansite of a wikipedian who has repeatedly contributed to this article). If you're willing to make a pass through the article to address this, I can wait to see what you come up with. Otherwise, one or more of the commonly-accepted mechanisms for identifying this shortcoming need to be introduced. Your user page makes your general opinion clear on this topic (too damn many cleanup tags!) but that doesn't solve the problem. As the 2nd commandment from WP:ENC says: WIKIPEDIA IS NOT FOR UNSOURCED MATERIAL (uppercase and bold as in the original).
  2. Use of peacock terms. I removed sentences like "They made a series of influential films in the 1940s and 1950s. They are now regarded as two of the most significant figures in British cinema." and "they were a group of some of the most talented film makers around at the time" in an attempt to address this. Of course, if reputable critics can be quoted along those lines, that would be fine.
  3. Use of weasel words, e.g. "Some people do still dismiss Emeric as 'Michael Powell's scriptwriter'"

Some of the other changes I made were attempts to write a better article. My shortcomings if any at that can be dealt with separately. I'll re-apply some minor (and I hope, uncontroversial) changes but will await your timely response before I take it further. 68.167.191.137 (contribs) 01:00, 5 March 2008 (UTC).

You're right that I don't, in general, like clean-up tags, and have observed that they're over-used, but I'm also a pragmatic guy, so if you think that the article in general is under-referenced and add a single clean-up tag to the bottom of the article to indicate that, I'm not going to remove it.

As for over-enthusiasm, you have something of a point, but rather than delete whole statements, I'd prefer to see them somewhat toned down.

Just so you know, after I posted the comment above (about not adding in the rest of the changes you made), I went through them again and changed my mind -- I ended re-adding cats, putting back the 2-column format, restoring some wikilinks and some other minor changes. I'm not attempting to stop you from improving the article, far from it, but I did freak out just a little when the addition of the info box screwed up the article's layout and with the addition of all the fact tags and clean-up tags. I'll try to evaluate your changes with an open mind, and I'll also apply my eye to the article and see where improvements can be made. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 01:25, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I very much like the pull-quotes, that's a change I wouldn't have thought of, and you're certainly correct that surnames are more appropriate throughout. I don't think the splitting of the ext. links in that way is particularly useful, and have reverted it. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont)
Thanks, and your reversion is fine since leaving the parenthetical annotation let's the reader know what website they're heading to. Neither of the fansite's seems ad-laden at first glance. Wikipedia gets abused by some people who add their websites as external links with the obvious goal of attracting traffic to an AdSense-encrusted website. 68.167.191.137 (talk) 01:53, 5 March 2008 (UTC).
Incidentally, while I'm thinking of it, on a couple of other articles you replaced separate links for Powell & Pressburger with a link for this article, which is fine, but I altered the link to say "Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger" as opposed to the naked "Powell and Pressburger". I suggest that you might what to use "Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger|Powell and Pressburger" in the future as well - it looks better. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 01:35, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Valid point. 68.167.191.137 (talk) 01:53, 5 March 2008 (UTC).
One other thought: there's umpteen billion facts on Wikipedia, and the vast majority of them are unsourced. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 01:36, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
When I first started editing wikipedia articles almost five years ago, virtually nothing was footnoted. It was the addition of the cite.php-based refs <ref></ref><references />, etc. that got me hooked on using references, and I haven't looked back. Dedicated Wikipedians have to have a little Sisyphus in them I guess. :-) 68.167.191.137 (talk) 01:53, 5 March 2008 (UTC).
Let me be clear: I think citations, refs, footnotes, whatever are a good thing - verifiability is something to be desired. I simply recognize that if we were to slap "fact" tags on every uncited bit of information on Wikipedia, it would probably double the size of the database, so I think it's wise to go slow with the tags, and use them only for "facts" which are highly doubtful, but for which there's not enough negatice evidence to remove them.

On the other hand, I'm all for adding refs whenever possible. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 02:34, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I've done a bit of rewriting, especially of the section about how the collaboration worked, and tried to address what I believe are your concerns about the article. Please take a look and see if there are other adjustments to be made. I'll make another pass through and see what I see. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 02:01, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Overall, IMO the article looks _much_ better then the version from last month; it deals with the bulk of the issues I had when I read it a few hours ago and first tackled a rewrite. There are still a few items that need tagging inline but for now I've just put in a bunch of comments. 68.167.191.137 (talk) 03:02, 5 March 2008 (UTC).
I agree with some of your inline comments, and not others. Certainly, the article generally needs more references, but not every evaluative adjective needs to be specifically cited. For instance, P&P are notable and significant British filmmarkers whether or not someone finds a film critic to say so - this is an example of what I was talking about above.

In any event, the most productive and useful thing to do at this point is to see if you can find some citations to fill in the gaps that you perceive. I don't have a lot of offline resources on this topic, but I'll take a look at what I have an add in what I can. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 03:13, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. The last item I'll note for now is that the list of external links needs to be pared (see Wikipedia:NOT#LINK); Some of them could be used as references. 68.167.191.137 (talk) 03:22, 5 March 2008 (UTC).
The external links are hardly extensive. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 03:31, 5 March 2008 (UTC)


I don't know, you turn your back on something for five minutes ...
I've added citations for all the places they were asked for.
The powell-pressburger.org site is hardly a "fan page" it's a site run by the Powell and Pressburger Appreciation Society. Contributors include many people still in the industry who like and promote their films and it is referred to for information about P&P by the British Film Institute, The Criterion Collection when they make DVDs of the films and many others.
The list of external links and the bibliography is already kept pared down to a minimum. I could add a LOT more but don't.
I'll have another look at this page this evening and see if there's anything that's been removed that shouldn't have been -- SteveCrook (talk) 07:44, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the cites - I thought a lot of the material must have come from Powell's book, but I couldn't immediately locate it to confirm. I hope that whe you peruse the article, my tinkering won't have eliminated anything important - I tried not to. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 07:59, 5 March 2008 (UTC)