Matter of Life and Death, A (1946)
A Matter of Life and Death (1946), written, produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
Aka Stairway to Heaven.
In the last days of WW2 a British bomber pilot -- sole survivor, plane on fire -- is coming in hard. He has to jump without a parachute. In his final moments he has an audio-only meet-cute with an American female radio operator. It's love that lasts a few minutes, maybe a lifetime.
Afterwards, he is stunned to find himself still alive. Or is he? Is this heaven? No: heaven is a separate black-and-white art deco realm with war dead pouring in, happy to be there; the American air crews head straight for the Coke machine. As in Here Comes Mr Jordan (1941), the afterlife messengers have made a mistake: he was supposed to die and now they have to get him over to the Other Side by hook or crook.
I know my rights, he says. I want a Hearing.
Like of a lot of these metaphysical fantasies, it is very sweet, bordering on unsettling. The clever bit here is that he may be suffering from a brain injury and hallucinating the other-worldly part. The plot could go either way. As the psychologist says, it doesn't matter: he believes it and his survival depends on him winning his case as much as on a successful surgery.
Our players:
David Niven (The Bishop's Wife (1947), Separate Tables (1958), Bonjour Tristesse (1958)), returning to full-time acting after serving in the British Army. Both stalwart and poetic.
Kim Hunter (The Seventh Victim (1943)) is the cross-Atlantic love interest.
Roger Livesey (The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), I Know Where I'm Going! (1945)) is a favorite of Powell and Pressburger. Here he is the wise and kindly shrink who rides his motorcycle too fast.
Prolific Raymond Massey gives one of his comically nasty performances as the opposing counsel in Heaven, a Revolutionary War Bostonian patriot who hates all things British.
Notes:
Conductor 71 (Marius Goring) is a French aristo who travels from the pearly black-and-white heavenly realm to Earth which is in color: "One is starved for Technicolor up there".
The heavenly staff are the same actors playing the surgical crew. This reminds me of Ken Russell's segment in Aria (1987).
Powell and Pressburger had been asked to make an entertainment to strengthen Anglo-American relations during the war but it wasn't finished until after. I think that aspect is the least interesting part of the story. The heavenly trial goes on too long and the British vs American cultural dispute is cloying.
Notice there are no women on the jury?
Photographed by Jack Cardiff. Score by Allan Gray.
As I write this I see that a Criterion Blu-ray is due in July 2018. My thumbnails are from an old DVD.
