Set in a gorgeously photographed Technicolor England and a monochrome heaven, A Matter of Life and Death took the imaginative daring of jointly credited writer-producer-directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger to new heights.

David Niven plays a British airman who survives a plane crash and falls in love with an American radio operator (Kim Hunter), only to be summoned to the afterlife by a heavenly ‘Conductor’ (Marius Goring). But is heaven just a hallucination brought on by brain injury?

Powell and Pressburger layer breathtaking visual tricks on top of this whimsical premise, such as a celebrated point-of-view shot in which our hero’s eyelid closes over the camera lens. The film also works as a sly satire on Anglo-American relations at the end of WWII.

“There are more stunning ideas in this one film, concerning a mistake made in heaven about a WWII pilot who should be dead but isn’t, than the whole of British cinema can usually muster in a decade.” Nick James

“A most peculiar and potent cocktail of romance, theology, global bridge-building and national tub-thumping, this thoughtful drama about one pilot’s deferred mortality remains, if nothing else, a definitive monument to the power of Technicolor. The vivid imagery and the cineliterate style(s) deployed by a creative team at the top of their game express the film’s intricate worldview. It searingly conveys a world grappling with uncharted new places, trying to pick up the pieces after unimaginable calamity.” James Healy

Film	Year	Director
Wayne's World	1992	Penelope Spheeris
Hoop Dreams	1994	Steve James
The Hudsucker Proxy	1994	Joel Coen
What Makes This Song Stink, Episodes 1-7	2021	Pat Finnerty
A Matter of Life and Death	1946	Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Bo Burnham: Inside	2021	Bo Burnham
Ratatouille	2007	Brad Bird
BioShock	2007	Ken Levine
Goon	2011	Michael Dowse
Holy Motors	2012	Léos Carax

Henry Barnes

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