Powell, Pressburger, and Sonbert: How RUDE AWAKENING Was Influenced by The Archers
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On the occasion of Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell and Pressburger, a month-long retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art showcasing the work of directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, GME reflects on Warren Sonbert’s 1976 polyvalent montage film RUDE AWAKENING, which was directly inspired by the legendary British filmmaking duo.
Sonbert, whose body of work and legacy GME represents, described RUDE AWAKENING as being “about Western civilization and its work; activity ethic and the viability of performing functions and activities.” As highlighted in the program notes for an October 2013 screening of the film at the Tate Modern: “Sonbert’s vivid colour palette enhances the ritualistic nature of each action observed. Set against this lush panorama, Sonbert subverts the expectation of classic cinematography with a liberal sprinkling of avant-garde techniques. The incorporation of the materiality of film, the treatment of light, and the use of a hand-held camera, all suggest the influence of Stan Brakhage.”
Brakhage, however, was not the only filmmaker that influenced Sonbert’s RUDE AWAKENING. Powell and Pressburger — the creative partnership behind such classics as THE RED SHOES (1946) and BLACK NARCISSUS (1947) — produced and distributed their work under their company “The Archers,” which was denoted at the beginning of their films with a logo featuring an arrow landing in the center of a bullseye. Sonbert explicitly echoes Powell and Pressburger’s logo in RUDE AWAKENING by starting the film with a brief shot of a young man shooting a bow and arrow, prior to his montage footage commencing.
On a structural level, Sonbert’s polyvalent montage technique in RUDE AWAKENING parallels Powell and Pressburger’s narrative conceits. Sonbert utilized his unique editing approach to represent a constantly shifting tension between balance and disequilibrium, just as in Powell and Pressburger’s films, a psychologically-wounded protagonist (think of Sammy Rice in THE SMALL BACK ROOM) performs an act of bravery to overcome his own vulnerability and return himself, as well as Britain in wartime, to a sense of normalcy and equilibrium.
The clip below demonstrates Sonbert’s homage to Powell and Pressburger by fusing the introduction of RUDE AWAKENING with the logo for The Archers: