Dedicated to the work of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and all the other people, both actors and technicians who helped them make those wonderful films.
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Director: Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger
Great art can come from unlikely sources. This most original and unabashedly
romantic of British films was made at the suggestion of some bureaucrat
at the Ministry of Information. World War II had just finished, and the
Labour government wanted to keep Anglo-American relations running smoothly.
Bizarrely, the job was given to Powell and Pressburger, Britain's most
flamboyant filmmakers. Instead of a worthy propaganda film, they came up
with a fantastical plot which uses love as the link between the two nations.
In the near-perfect opening, English bomber pilot Peter D Carter (David
Niven) spends his last few minutes in a burning plane discussing poetry
and cracking jokes through the crackly ether with American radio operator
June (Kim Hunter). The punchline comes when Carter announces "I'm bailing
out, but there is a catch: I've got no parachute".
After leaping towards his certain death, Carter is bewildered to find himself
alive on an English beach. He finds June and they fall in love. In the
meantime, his unscheduled absence has caused a crisis in heaven. The story
runs in parallel between Carter waiting for brain surgery on earth and appealing
to a celestial court to keep his new leash on life. Powell reversed the
logic of `The Wizard Of Oz', shooting England in lushest Technicolour, while
the highly bureaucratic heaven is rendered in precise black and white. Technically,
it remains an extraordinary film: unforgettable effects include a camera
oscura overlooking a village, the massive stairway to heaven and the shot
of Carter's eyelid closing seen from inside his head. Cinematographer Jack
Cardiff and designer Alfred Junge deserve an enormous amount of credit.
But the burden still rests on Niven's shoulders. `A Matter Of Life And Death'
is the highpoint of his long career. As a war hero himself, he was the obvious
choice for Carter, the pilot and poet who has to embody all that is good
about England (and it is specified as England, rather than Britain). He
does: he's relaxed, charming, funny, romantic yet logical. The only weak
point of the film comes when the trial becomes a tired argument about the
qualities of England versus America. Niven's acting is a far more convincing
defence of an idealised Englishness than any list of poets.