A World war II airman, shot down but accidentally missed by Death, falls in love while his right to live is debated in a heavenly courtroom. Stunning in its set design and fertile visual imagination, Powell and Pressburger's audacious romantic fantasy again eclipses the sometimes uninspired British film tradition.
Seen for the first time in black and white on a 12" screen on American tv in the mid 1950s, the images of this film (then known as "Stairway to Heaven") were burned fo... more >
Seen for the first time in black and white on a 12" screen on American tv in the mid 1950s, the images of this film (then known as "Stairway to Heaven") were burned forever in my consciousness, and colored my perception of love, honor, risk, determination and justice for all time. It matters not that this fantasy holds no secrets to the workings of Heaven as related in Scripture, it still speaks of the best and most valuable of the things that really matter in earthly life and character. I look forward to owning my own copy of the DVD for all time, and to the reviews of yet another generation of viewers who are about to discover the many-layered textures of this incredible film. It is one of the best that filmdom has ever produced!
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GRAHAM BARUGH on 27th April 2000
TO MY MIND THIS IS THE BEST FILM OF THE LAST CENTURY, PRESSBUGER AND POWELL, WERE LIGHT YEARS, AHEAD OF EVERYONE ELSE. more >
TO MY MIND THIS IS THE BEST FILM OF THE LAST CENTURY, PRESSBUGER AND POWELL, WERE LIGHT YEARS, AHEAD OF EVERYONE ELSE. < less
Don Henson on 1st September 2000
This film has everything – romance, comedy, drama, and fantasy – all rolled up into a package to delight audiences of any age. Michael Powell believed that film was a... more >
This film has everything – romance, comedy, drama, and fantasy – all rolled up into a package to delight audiences of any age. Michael Powell believed that film was an artifice that made poetry out of life. Even the most hardened realist would find it hard not to be drawn into the poetic world of, ‘A Matter of Life and Death’. The film is rich in texture and has complex multi-stranded themes that repay repeated viewings. It was made to a commission to cement Anglo-American relations and at the hands of Powell and Pressburger, it became a hymn to the individual against the system and took a gentle swipe at the vision of a grey bureaucratic post-war world that was looming in sight. The basic plot is simple: a British airman bales out of his burning plane and survives the fall without a parachute, falls in love with an American girl. The other world sends a messenger to bring him to where he should have been had he died. A doctor fights for the airman’s life while a court case is played out in Heaven to decide his fate. For sheer imagination it was, and remains, unparalleled in British cinema. Its’ special effects make you gasp in admiration (unlike today’s which often act more on the eardrums than the emotions), and its’ themes of love, responsibility and the individual still have resonance today. This film is a must for all romantics and anyone who wants to admire film craft at its’ best < less
