Michael Powell

As "The Late Show"'s Tracey MacLeod explains at the start, this fine 40-minute documentary was shown to coincide with the publication of Michael Powell's second, posthumous volume of autobiography in 1992. I haven't read either book, but this could be why it skims so rapidly over his glory days working for J. Arthur Rank and focuses on the period from "The Red Shoes" onwards: the lesser works, the struggling to find funding for ambitious projects, the act of professional suicide that was "Peeping Tom," then the years of impoverished obscurity before Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker gave him a new lease of life. So it might not be the best place for a tyro to start, but should be watched back-to-back with the 1981 "Arena" documentary, which takes the exact opposite approach.