A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

A British wartime aviator who cheats death must argue for his life before a celestial court.

Directors:

Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Writers:

Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Stars:

David Niven, Kim Hunter, Robert Coote

1 win & 2 nominations.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
David Niven	...	Peter D. Carter
Kim Hunter	...	June
Robert Coote	...	Bob Trubshaw
Kathleen Byron	...	An Angel
Richard Attenborough	...	An English Pilot
Bonar Colleano	...	An American Pilot (as Bonor Colleano)
Joan Maude	...	Chief Recorder
Marius Goring	...	Conductor 71
Roger Livesey	...	Doctor Frank Reeves
Robert Atkins	...	The Vicar
Bob Roberts	...	Dr. Gaertler
Edwin Max	...	Dr. Mc.Ewen
Betty Potter	...	Mrs Tucker
Abraham Sofaer	...	The Judge / The Surgeon
Raymond Massey	...	Abraham Farlan

Storyline

Returning to England from a bombing run in May 1945, pilot Peter Carter's plane is damaged and his parachute ripped to shreds. He has his crew bail out safely, but figures it is curtains for himself. He gets on the radio, and talks to June, a young American woman working for the U.S. Army Air Forces, and they are quite moved by each other's voices. Then he jumps, preferring this to burning up with his plane. He wakes up in the surf. It was his time to die, but there was a mix-up in heaven. They couldn't find him in all that fog. By the time his "Conductor" catches up with him twenty hours later, Peter and June have met and fallen in love. This changes everything, and since it happened through no fault of his own, Peter figures that heaven owes him a second chance. Heaven agrees to a trial to decide his fate.

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Plot Keywords:

british pilot | year 1945 | american woman | heaven | appeal | 

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Taglines:

Neither Heaven nor Earth could keep them apart!

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Genres:

Comedy | Drama | Fantasy | Romance | War

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG for thematic elements

Details

Country:

UK

Language:

English French Russian

Release Date:

March 1947 (USA)

Also Known As:

A Matter of Life and Death

Filming Locations:

D&P Studios, Denham Studios, Denham, Buckinghamshire, England, UK

Box Office

Budget:

£320,000 (estimated)

Gross USA:

$3,815,000, 31 December 1947

Company Credits

Production Co:

The Archers

Technical Specs

Runtime:

104 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Color:

Black and White (Dye - Monochrome) Color (Colour) (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This movie has been adapted for the stage twice. First, in 1994 as a musical by Thomas Morgan and Kevin Metchear, at the King's Head Theatre, London, England, and then again in 2007, as a play, by Tom Morris and Emma Rice at the National Theatre (Olivier), London, England.

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Goofs

When the table tennis game is frozen, the ball moves back a few inches from the first shot of the game to the second, and the position of Frank's left arm changes.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Narrator: This is the universe. Big, isn't it?

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Crazy Credits

Foreword (Scrolled up the screen at the start of the film): This is a story of two Worlds the one we know and another which exists only in the mind of a young airman whose life & imagination have been violently shaped by war [Pauses, then scrolls up to reveal] Any resemblance to any other world known or unknown is purely coincidental.

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Alternate Versions

The US release was cut to avoid showing the naked shepherd boy in the sand dunes.

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Connections

Referenced in The Event: A Matter of Life and Death (2010)

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Soundtracks

Shoo Shoo Baby
(1943) (uncredited)
Music and Lyrics by Phil Moore
Sung on the radio by an unidentified man at the trial

User Reviews

Stunning archery

The opening flourishes left me purring with delight at their inventiveness - the altered version of the Archers' logo, the introductory disclaimer, the way the camera pans over the cosmos. It's strange to think that `It's a Wonderful Life' came out in the same year. No great coincidence: the 1940s was awash with heaven-and-earth films; but the glowing cotton wool nebulas and cutesy angels of the competition look tattered, something best passed over in silence, when placed next to Alfred Junge's vision.

It continues to look great all the way through, as more and more striking ideas are sprung upon us. I'm not a great fan of mixing colour with black and white in general. One of the two visual schemes almost always looks ugly when placed next to the other. Not so here. Powell dissolves colour into monochrome and monochrome into colour as if it's the most natural thing in the world, a mere change of palettes. Both the colour photography and the black and white could stand on their own.

As for the story ... this may be Pressburger's best script, or at least it would have been had the conclusion been a more logical outcome of preceding events. Other than that it's tight, yet with more going on than I can possibly allude to here. Was the heavenly stuff real or imaginary? (Or both? Perhaps Carter dreamt up a fantasy that was, as it so happened, true.) Everyone says we're meant to neither ask nor answer this question, but I don't see why. I'm sure we ARE meant to ask the question. The film even gives us clues as to what the answer is - indeed, the problem is that there are too many clues and they seem at first to be pointing in different directions. The fact that other things ought to occupy our attention as well doesn't mean that this shouldn't occupy us as well. There is, as I've said before, a lot going on.

Consider the scene in which Abraham Farlan (Heaven's prosecuting lawyer) plays a radio broadcast of a cricket match, and contemptuously says, `The voice of England, 1945.' Dr. Reeves (the defence) acknowledges the exhibit with a great deal of embarrassment, and then produces one of his own: a blues song from America, which Farlan listens to as though he's got a lemon in his mouth. Reeves looks smug.

Snobbery? Well, I don't see why it's snobbish to condemn blues music - and that's not what Powell and Pressburger are doing, anyway. As the song is being played, we get a shot of the American soldiers listening to it: several of them nod their heads to the rhythm, perfectly at home. THEY don't find it incomprehensible. There's something valuable about the song and neither Reeves nor Farlan knows what it is. Reeves probably realises as much. All English audiences (and all Australian, Indian, etc. audiences as well) know without being told that there is something of value in the cricket broadcast, too; and that while Reeves understands THAT, he is unable to explain it to Farlan - hence the blues broadcast, which shows that people can understand each other without sharing an understanding of everything else. It's a clever scene.

One last thing. I found David Niven a bit cold, without the charisma he would acquire later in his career; but even so, I don't think a film has grabbed my heart quite so quickly after the action began, as this one did.