Their films were grand, poetic, wise, adventurous, headstrong, enraptured by beauty, deeply romantic, and completely uncompromising.

Martin Scorsese

The work of filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger is discussed with passion and authority by Martin Scorsese in this richly enjoyable documentary, for which he presents his thoughts and recollections directly to camera. When the British establishment shamed itself by turning its back on these homegrown masters, it took this Italian-American filmmaker to rediscover them in the 1970s – and now the Powell/Pressburger films almost cannot be seen except through the medium of Scorsese’s glorious evangelism; their movies and his have virtually become intertextual events.
As he takes us through the great Powell/Pressburger films such as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, I Know Where I’m Going!, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffmann, Scorsese also plays clips of his own films, including Raging Bull and The Age of Innocence, showing how he had been influenced by these predecessors. […] Scorsese, who had discovered the Powell/Pressburger movies on TV, sought out Powell and effectively brought him back to Hollywood where he ended up marrying Scorsese’s inspired editor Thelma Schoonmaker; it was the cine-creative equivalent of a royal alliance. […] But the Powell/Pressburger relationship is one of the most fascinating dualities in movies. They were both credited as writers, producers and directors…
Powell and Pressburger emerge from this film, more than ever, as sui generis: inventors of their own kind of film, gentleman amateurs of cinema in some ways – although Powell had served a rigorous apprenticeship working for the Irish silent movie director Rex Ingram. But in a way the Powell/Pressburger movies were a kind of manuscript culture in cinema; they did what they wanted, as if their work was only to be circulated among like-minded souls.
The title of this film – Made in England – is of course what was stamped on the screen at the end of their Tales of Hoffmann. But Scorsese allows us to absorb the tacit paradox that their films were also made in Hungary, in Germany and in France. Powell and Pressburger were an international powerhouse, not a little-Englander sentimentality factory.

Peter Bradshaw, “The Guardian”, 21 February 2024