So this, the next up new movie on the 2022 S&S list (tied at #67), is a movie by Powell and Pressburger. They were already well-represented on the 2012 list, with A Matter of Life and Death and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. But this time around, Col. Blimp is nowhere to be seen (it’s fallen all the way to #196 on their longer list, below P&P’s Black Narcissus and tied with their “I Know Where I’m Going!”), and here this one is springing up above the others.

And I can see why this one is so popular: It’s a good movie. It has cool (and long) ballet sequences that really work with the dreamy Technicolor vibe of the movie. It’s got an interesting structural echo in the story-within-a-story retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale. It has something to say about the perceived conflict between creating great art and happiness. It creates a kind of heightened mood of artistic agony, which finally overtops its restraints.

But is it the best of the Powell and Pressburger movies? I think that depends on what you’re looking for. I think you can make the case that visually, it’s the most interesting (though the portrayal of the afterlife in A Matter of Life and Death has its own appeal). But in terms of story, I have to give it to Colonel Blimp, and its meditations on youth, age, the nature of war and honor, and the rise of modernity. But I’m not surprised that this one won out — it has a different kind of vibe to it, one that feels more heightened, like they steered hard into the territory Jacques Demy made his career in. (Though I do wonder: Why now, and not in 2012? It had a big restoration that was done in 2009, and got a fresh Blu-ray release in 2010, so should have been fresh in everyone’s memories at that time; I suppose it might just be random.)

At any rate, recommended to anyone who likes ballet movies, though it’s less trippy than Suspiria or Black Swan.