A Matter of Life and Death

1946's A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH joined my All-Time Favorite list before its entire run time elapsed.  Well before.   It is one of those very special films you realize is special within minutes of its first reel.  Here, an opening crawl reports of the story at hand, one which involves the real world and one which exists only in the mind of  WW II Royal Air Force pilot Peter Carter.   And, disclaimer: Any resemblance to any other world known or unknown is purely coincidental.  Hmm.  Next, we hear narration as we pan the midnight blue galaxies of the universe ("Big, isn't it?"), describing novas and stars as we get closer to Earth, and the fiery cockpit of Carter's aircraft, certain to crash.  The pilot has no parachute.

The bravura sequences continue as Carter (David Niven) radioes June (Kim Hunter), an American operator stationed in Britain.  As he bravely faces his imminent death, fire and noise all about him, he maintains a friendly, calm banter with the woman, realizing he is falling in love.  She feels the same way.  Carter bails from the plane, ready to meet his fate, and.........washes up on the beach, dazed, but alive.

A mistake.  The "Other World", an afterlife that might resemble heaven, realizes despite centuries of  impeccable accounting regarding the newly deceased, they have missed one.  It was that blasted English fog!  An emissary called Conductor 71, once a French aristocrat during the eighteenth century Revolution, is dispatched to bring the squadron leader back to where he now belongs.  His number was up.  Carter won't have it.  See, after he landed but before his emissary arrived, he actually met his radio love and felt Cupid's arrow.  He wants an appeal for his ticket to the after world.  After all, it wasn't his fault that the celestial bureaucracy screwed up and give him a few extra hours in the land of the living!  But what counsel to choose? Abraham Lincoln? Mohammed? So many great minds to consider.

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger have created something undeniably magical with A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, which was originally released in the U.S. as STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN for marketing reasons. Their screenplay is endlessly ingenious (but never coldly so; this film has plenty of heart) and their direction as cinematic as most anything I've seen.  I've read that it was Powell's favorite among his resume, which also includes great films like THE RED SHOES and THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP.  The editing between Carter and June at the beginning is masterful and comprises what well may be one of my Top Ten scenes, ever.  It's exciting, warm, and yet oh so British.

The scenes in the Other World are fascinatingly rendered with elaborate sets and shot by Jack Cardiff in a Technicolor saturated monochrome, while the scenes back on Earth are in beautiful Three Strip.  Visually, it's all rather stunning.  The special effects are also impressive for their time,  the centerpiece being that, indeed, stairway to heaven upon which Carter and Conductor 71 ride.  It was an specialized escalator with steps twenty feet wide.

Niven is delightful in an early role.  Everyone in the cast is, with special mention going to Roger Livesey as Dr. Reeves.  One of the many remarkable things about A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH is that it was commissioned as a propaganda piece for the war.  Powell and Pressburger deliver that, with the armed forces of both sides of the Atlantic sufficiently honored.  But what a treatise on politics, history, and culture that has been fashioned around it! The otherworldly trial is a classic unto itself.  Erudition of the highest, and a romance that does not trigger nausea receptors.  This film is solid gold, and unmissable in my book.

But was it all really only in Carter's mind?

P.S. - The Wolfgang Press tune "Louis XIV", one with which I've long been acquainted, includes a sample of dialogue from this film.  I had one of those "Aha!" moments when I heard it here.