As opportunities had dwindled in the fallout from the release of Peeping Tom (1960), Powell gladly accepted the invitation from former collaborator Hein Heckroth to work on this adaptation, not long back in circulation following decades of legal issues, of Bartók’s opera Bluebeard’s Castle, for West German television. It tells the familiar story of new bride Judit (Ana Raquel Satre) curious about the secrets kept behind the locked doors in her husband’s (Norman Foster) abode.

The film will screen with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (15 mins, 1955), an adaptation of the Goethe poem popularised in Disney’s Fantasia (1940) in which a wizard’s charge tries to use magic to complete her chores.

Screening as part our Powell & Pressburger season, December 2nd – 20th.

Notes by Kevin Coyne