Submitted by
Jeremy Robinson
An impossible romance?
By: Jeremy Robinson
A Matter of Life and Death (1946) showed Powell at the height of
his powers as a director and magical image-maker. It was favourite among
The Archers' films. His self-assurance with the camera is amazing; not only
in the operatic camera movements, the stylised sets, the extravagant and
subtle lighting, the visual conceits, but also in the beautiful pacing and
editing, and the skilful transitions between scenes. A Matter of Life
and Death was a fantasy set in a realistic wartime Britain involving
an RAF pilot Peter Carter (David Niven, never better) who is taken to heaven
by an angelic messenger, Conductor 71 (Marius Goring, as a foppish Frenchman
of the Revolution) while doctors (led by Roger Livesey's Dr Reeves) on Earth
fight to save his life. When Carter bails out of his burning Lancaster bomber
without a parachute, he should die, but somehow survives (the film was apparently
based on a real incident of a British gunner who fell 18,000 ft and survived);
in the governmental bureaucratic machine of Heaven, 91,716 people were 'invoiced'
but 91,715 were 'delivered'; Conductor 71 is thus sent down from Heaven
to fetch Carter. Meanwhile, Carter has fallen in with an American woman,
June (Kim Hunter), at an airbase in Kent. At Carter's trial in Heaven, the
airman is represented by his doctor, Reeves; the prosecution is led by the
anti-British Abraham Farlan, who died at the hands of the English in the
War of Independence. One of the goals of A Matter of Life and Death
was to ease Anglo-American relations at the end of the war (the film was
commissioned by the Ministry of Information to promote Anglo-American relations),
hence the many lines in the script about America and Britain. Some of the
British-American interplay is depicted in a comic fashion (to illustrate
the current state of Britain, Farlan uses a radio to play some cricket commentary
to the court; Reeves responds with some American jazz music). A Matter
of Life and Death started shooting in September, 1945, after the war
had ended; a reference to the atomic bomb appeared in the opening narration
('someone's been messing around with the uranium atom again') over an image
of a star exploding. The budget was 300,000. A Matter of Life and Death
was the first film to be chosen for the Royal Command Performance,
which was a starry affair, with 50,000 people turning up to see the celebrities
at the Odeon in Leicester Square.
The performances were strong (from Niven, Kim Hunter, Marius Goring, Raymond
Massey, and Powell regulars Roger Livesey and Kathleen Byron). Heaven was
shot in glowing black-and-white (because people will expect it to be filmed
in colour, Powell said), and Earth in exuberant Technicolor (it was Jack
Cardiff's first feature film, an extraordinary debut). Cardiff suggested
using Technicolor rather than standard black-and-white stock for the Heaven
scenes, to give it a pearly look, and also for the gradual transitions between
colour and black-and-white. Music was by Allan Gray, one the regular Archers
collaborators; his atonal theme on the piano, for the astral staircase scenes,
was perhaps the most memorable part of the score. There had been two wartime
films set in Heaven: Heaven Can Wait (1943) and Here Comes Mr Jordan (1941),
and two Fritz Lang films (Der M de Tod and Liliom).
Some of Powell's conceits included having Niven appear on Earth beside frozen
actors; bells that didn't ring; people passing through doors; time being
frozen (when Livesey and Hunter play table tennis, for example); whip pans
during the ping-pong match; a startling point-of-view shot through a huge
eyelid which closes when Niven is on the operating table; the use of Cocteauesque
film running backwards (a table that's fallen over is righted again); one
of June's tears caught on the petals of a rose (used as evidence by Dr Reeves);
dissolves between colour and black-and-white (on a close-up of a flower,
or Niven's tormented face, or the beaches of Kent). The dissolves to colour
allowed for some visual jokes and verbal ones (Goring's messenger, for example,
in an aside to camera when he visits Earth, says 'one is starved for Technicolor
up there'). The sets were remarkable on A Matter of Life and Death
(designed by Powell regular Alfred Junge) most memorable was the gigantic
moving staircase between Earth and Heaven (which gave A Matter of Life
and Death its other title, Stairway to Heaven), lined with giant
statues of famous people (Solomon, Voltaire, Plato, Abraham Lincoln). It
had 100 20 foot-wide steps (the crew nicknamed it 'Ethel'). The enormous
courtroom set in Heaven was also very impressive, with its rows and rows
of seats and arched roof. The settings on Earth were also highly stylised,
with Powell's customary eye for colour and detail (the outdoor studio set
where the lovers are together at night, for example, with its masses of
rhododendrons, roses and pink flowers).
The opening of A Matter of Life and Death has rightly been celebrated:
everyone remembers the desperate, emotional dialogue between Carter in his
stricken Lancaster bomber somewhere over the Channel on a fogbound night
and radio operator June. It is a wild, improbable opening, with Carter reciting
poetry, speaking metaphysically and crazily, and falling in love in the
space of five minutes with June. The scene, fantastical though it is, is
grounded in a carefully constructed reality, with the Lancaster cockpit
torn apart, the wind howling through it, and Carter's mate, Bob Trubshaw
(Robert Coote), dead and bloodstained beside him. Few films have such a
strong beginning. It's all highly unlikely, but so brilliantly pulled off
that the viewer is swept along by it. This is film-making at its best. This
scene was not the very first one, however: there was a prologue, involving
a complex panning shot around the universe that ends up on Earth; this section
of the film, with its narrator explaining about supernova and galaxies,
was like a populist scientific lecture. The urge to explain was undercut
with humour (the opening of A Matter of Life and Death is 'this is
the universe ... big, isn't it?'). Then came some dissolves to a model map
of Europe at war, seen through fog from miles above, with the narration
explaining that the fire in Germany or Poland was a city after an Allied
bombing raid. The movement from outer space to Earth, moving closer and
closer, has been used many times in movies. After this scene, the themes
of A Matter of Life and Death gradually emerge: love and death, love
and war, Heaven and Earth, America and England. The Romantic aspects of
A Matter of Life and Death included many references to poetry (Byron's
famous poem 'She Walks in Beauty Like the Night' was quoted over Hunter
on her bike); references to Shakespeare (the Americans are putting on A
Midsummer Night's Dream) in the country house; in the final scene, the judge
quotes from a poem about love from Sir Walter Scott.
A Matter of Life and Death had a mythic, fairy tale simplicity to
it: viz., the early scenes, with Niven being washed up on the beach following
his leap from the burning Lancaster bomber; after stumbling ashore, he meets
a young, nude goat-herd, playing a flute and surrounded by goats, a character
out of Greek mythology; immediately after this encounter, he meets June
riding on her bicycle.
A Matter of Life and Death is impossibly romantic? and Romantic.
Wartime Britain was evoked in an idealised fashion, with the Americans and
British being uncommonly friendly. Jokes were made about national stereotypes
(the American GIs have a Coca-Cola machine laid on for them in Heaven, for
example, while Niven's Lancaster pilot is pure stiff upper lip). Also, Goring's
Frenchman made many comparisons between the British and French. British
stereotypes included Shakespeare, Romantic poetry, a country house, a rural
Kent village, the English coastline, with its cliffs and dunes, stiff upper
lip mannerisms, women compared to roses ('English rose'), the doctor on
his motorbike (a T.E. Lawrence figure? He also dies in a motorcycle crash).
Despite these idealisations and Powell's overriding urge towards fantasy,
anti-naturalism and romance, parts of the earthbound scenes are 'realistic':
Powell said the film was a 'surgical operation' grounded in reality, not
a fairy tale. As an example, he cited Dr Reeve's death, at night, in the
rain, burning to death when his motorcycle goes up in flames. The same sense
of brutal realism was included at the end of The Red Shoes, when Moira Sharer's
feet were cut off by the steam train.
Other pure Powell touches in A Matter of Life and Death included
Dr Reeves (Livesey) being first introduced to the audience as a latter-day
alchemist or magus: he is shown in a darkened room working a camera obscure,
with the images of a Kinetic village being projected onto an oval garden
table. Here Reeves is like the film director as deity, overseeing and (optically
controlling) the denizens of his Kent village.
The ending of A Matter of Life and Death was profoundly romantic,
and as gloomily sentimental as the slushiest Hollywood tearjerker: the court
descends the heavenly stairway to observe the medical operation on Carter;
Carter (now in his flying gear) has to prove to the court that he loves
June; she is asked to do the same. The ultimate is giving up one's life
for the beloved, so June is asked (by Dr Reeves) to prove she loves Carter
by stepping onto the staircase and taking his place in Heaven. She does
so, and the stairs start to move upward, separating the lovers; Powell cuts
between close-ups of June and Carter staring at each other. Then, with a
jolt, and in a close-up on the tearful June, the stairs stop; June runs
down the stairs to embrace Carter. Reeves informs the assembly that although
the law may be the strongest thing in the universe, 'on Earth, nothing is
stronger than love'. The film ends with the lovers embracing, having been
granted a long life by the court.
Jeremy Robinson
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