FILM CLUB - A Matter of Life and Death

Powell and Pressburger Film - 1946

You enter the film through a voice, as a misty blue fog clears and we realise we are looking out at the expanse of the universe. As he talks, the camera scans across it until we reach our moon and an indistinct muddy coloured Earth. As we zoom in closer we start to hear radio conversation emerging from the planet's atmosphere. Then its a specific interaction between an aircraft pilot Peter (David Niven ) and a female operative June (Kim Hunter ). His plane is hit and he has no parachute, so he's decided simply to bale out rather than crash and burn to death. But before he does, he engages in a long and occasionally poetic discourse with the operative. At the end of which they both realise, were he not about to die, they could have fallen in love with each other. The pilot falls, but wakes up on a beach, thinking he's arrived in heaven. But really he has fallen back to earth near to where June lives. They meet and fall instantly in love. But he knows something is not right, he should be dead and in heaven. Can he really have cheated death?

Emerging immediately at the end of the war, A Matter of Life and Death touches on the subject of loss during wartime and creates a big what if. What if one man were to refuse to die and plead to be able to continue his life, and to fulfill his need for love?  It embraces this idea in the sort of visually bizzare way one might expect from Powell and Pressburger. You are never quite sure if the realm Peter is appealing to, is Heaven, or simply a place his own consciousness has created. Whichever it is, this realm has noted his absconding and wants him back. They send Controller 71 ( Marius Goering ) a French 18th century fop, to try to trick him into returning up a very long escalating staircase.

There is a lot of flippant wit, verbally and visually, with many a spectacular set piece. Powell and Pressburger do, as usual, pull out all the stops. Earth is against type, notably vivid in Technicolour and the heavenly realm monochromatic in black and white. That escalating staircase, that moves between, cost them £3,000 to make, and that is 1940's war prices. So this was not cheap for what was essentially a one off prop. The opening dialogue between Peter and June is certainly affecting. But after that, the films emotional heart diminishes as the movie becomes more enraptured by its own playful conceit. I began to find all that a bit tiresome. It utilises a lot of superb cinematic tricks to great effect, but I've seen the film twice now, and each time it has left me feeling a bit nonplussed. There is a coolness as it turns the wheels of its increasingly cranky fantasy storyline. .

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8