Wow! How did I never hear of this before?

On Manuel de Falla’s birthday, I’ve been bouncing around YouTube, looking for exceptional or unusual material, and as always, the effort – if anything so enjoyable could be described as such – has paid off.

I have always been a great admirer of the filmmaking team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who made such strange, astonishing films as “The Red Shoes” (1948) and “The Tales of Hoffmann” (1951), and yet somehow I have never encountered this one, apparently made by Powell alone, after the team had amicably split.

“Honeymoon” (1959) reunited Powell with legendary Ballets Russes principal dancer and choreographer Léonide Massine, for a film based in part on Falla’s ballet “El Amor Brujo” (here translated as “Bewitched Love”). Massine created the role of the Miller in Falla’s “The Three-Cornered Hat” with the Ballets Russes and a specially-assembled all-Spanish company, back in 1919. Naturally, after his turn as the sinister shoemaker in “The Red Shoes,” Massine here assumes the role of the creepy Ghost.

Supposedly the film is something of a Spanish travelogue with musical interludes. Mikis Theodorakis, of “Zorba the Greek” fame, wrote the aptly named “The Honeymoon Song.” It was later covered by The Beatles.

For the leads, Powell was hoping to reunite with his “Red Shoes” star Moira Shearer and Paul Scofield, of all people. Instead, he got Ludmilla Tchérina, once the youngest prima ballerina in history when she danced “Romeo and Juliet” in Paris in 1942, while still in her teens, for the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. Tchérina had worked with Powell in both of his previous dance films. For the male lead, the director was less fortunate, stuck with Anthony Steel, whom Powell despised. (He described him as “the archetypal British s**t.”)

Allegedly, “Honeymoon” is regarded as one of Powell’s least-impressive achievements. Unquestionably it is at least as much “Red Shoes” as it is authentic Falla. Still, I am grateful to have discovered it.

The “El Amor Brujo” sequence is posted here in two parts.

Happy birthday, Manuel de Falla!

Check out the freaky graveyard scene at 6:49 (here linked directly), which leads into the ballet’s most famous music, “The Ritual Fire Dance.” Like a Goya painting brought to life!