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- Intended to smooth tensions between the wartime allies Britain and America, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s richly humanistic A Matter of Life and Death traverses time and space to make a case for the transcendent value of love.
www.criterion.com/films/28833-a-matter-of-life-and-deathA Matter of Life and Death (1946) - The Criterion Collection
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A Matter of Life and Death is a 1946 British fantasy - romance film set in England during World War II. Written, produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the film stars David Niven, Roger Livesey, Raymond Massey, Kim Hunter and Marius Goring.
Dec 15, 2021 · Now celebrating its 75th anniversary, A Matter of Life and Death still finds new fans. Gregory Wakeman looks at how a wartime propaganda film became a cinematic classic.
- Gregory Wakeman
Dec 8, 2017 · 71 years after its premiere, A Matter Of Life And Death is back on the big screen in a shiny, 4k restoration.
- Plot
- Cast
- Production
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- Critical Reception
- Preservation
- Analysis
- Adaptations
- In Popular Culture
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In 1945, Squadron Leader Peter Carter, a Royal Air Force pilot, is flying a badly damaged and burning Lancaster bomber over the English Channel, after a mission over Germany. Carter is expecting to die, after ordering his crew to bail out, without revealing to them that his own parachute has been destroyed. The only radio operator receiving him is ...
In order of appearance: Cast notes: Goring was offered the role of the Conductor, but insisted that he wanted to play Peter instead; however, Powell and Pressburger were set on Niven playing the part, and eventually told Goring that the Conductor was his only choice: if he turned it down, they would approach Peter Ustinovto play the part. Powell an...
A Matter of Life and Death was filmed at D&P Studios and Denham Studios in Denham, Buckinghamshire, England, and on locations in Devon and Surrey. The beach scene was shot at Saunton Sands in Devon, and the village seen in the camera obscura was Sherein Surrey. Production took place from 2 September to 2 December 1945, used 29 sets, and cost an est...
A Matter of Life and Death was chosen for the first ever Royal Film Performance on 1 November 1946 at the Empire Theatre, in London, in the presence of George VI and his wife. The performance was in aid of the Cinematograph Trade Benevolent Fund and £30,000 (£ in pounds) was raised. It then went into general release in the UK on 15 December 1946. T...
Upon its premiere in New York City, Bosley Crowthersaid "the delicate charm, the adult humor and visual virtuosity of this Michael Powell—Emeric Pressburger film render it indisputably the best of a batch of Christmas shows...the wit and agility of the producers, who also wrote and directed the job, is given range through the picture in countless d...
The Academy Film Archive preserved A Matter of Life and Death in 1999. The film underwent a 4K restoration at Sony Pictures Entertainment for a 2018 Criterion Collectionblu-ray release.
Title
According to Powell in his A Life in Movies, the United States was the only market in which the film's name was changed, except that most European countries used "A Question of Life and Death" rather than "A Matter of Life and Death". The American title was the idea of Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin, two lawyers just starting out in the film business, who would be marketing the film in the US, and insisted that no film had ever done well there with the word "death" in the title. When Pressbu...
Carter's visions
The film's narrative does not clarify whether Carter's visions are real, or hallucinatory. The fact that the same actor plays the celestial judge and the brain surgeon tends to indicate that they are a hallucination. To ensure that Carter's symptoms – including his visions – were consistent with the diagnosis and treatment depicted, the filmmakers read and integrated a significant amount of medical research, according to Diane Broadbent Friedman. Interpretations of Carter's visions of the "ot...
The other world
The producers took pains never to refer to "the other world" as Heaven, as they felt that was restrictive. However, in the first minutes of the film, a very young Richard Attenborough appears as a dead airman registering in the "other world" and asking: "It's heaven, isn't it?" This is followed by the "other world" female attendant commenting to Flying Officer Trubshawe that some people might think it would be "heaven to be a clerk". An introductory title screen – repeated as the foreword to...
Radio
The film was twice adapted for the American CBS Radio series Lux Radio Theatre, both with the title "Stairway to Heaven", starring Ray Milland on 27 October 1947 (episode 587) and featuring David Niven on 12 April 1955 (episode 918). The film was also adapted for the American NBC Radio series Screen Director's Playhouse series as "Stairway to Heaven", airing on 26 July 1951 and starring Robert Cummings and Julie Adams. A two-part adaptation by Ben Cottam was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 14 and 21...
TV
An adaptation titled "Stairway to Heaven" aired as a live performance on the American television show Robert Montgomery Presents on 9 April 1951 on NBC, starring Richard Greene.
Theatre
The film was adapted as the musical Stairway to Heaven at the King's Head in Islington in November 1994. It was also made into a play by the Kneehigh Theatre for performances at the National Theatrein London, premiering in May 2007.
A short sequence, in which Peter Carter asks June her name, was used in the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics, in the "Frankie and June" musical number.J. K. Rowling and Daniel Radcliffe, while discussing the near-death or afterlife scenes from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, said that the film was their favourite and was in mind by...A classic image from this film has been included in a 2014 set of postage stamps to celebrate Great British Films.A sketch in the second series of the comedy sketch show Big Traingently lampoons the scenes in which Carter's character is conversing with June as his plane is stricken. In the sketch, June has sev...- Michael PowellEmeric Pressburger
- Michael PowellEmeric Pressburger
- John Longden
- Its cinematic inventiveness. This is a film that dares to imagine on the largest possible scale, whether it is the tour of the universe with which it opens or the irresistible reversal of Wizard of Oz logic that depicts heaven in monochrome and Earth in ‘glorious Technicolor’ – for life, the audience will learn, is too wonderful to leave any sooner than is absolutely necessary.
- Its seriousness. Genial in tone, charming and accessible, the film told a simple love story that was designed to appeal to anyone who had a heart. Yet, refusing to retreat into escapism, it addressed the important challenge of its time.
- Its realism. Such is the fantasy dimension of the film that it is easy to overlook the extraordinary documentary eye with which it is constructed. In telling the story of a brain-damaged airman who has hallucinations of another world, Powell and Pressburger pay a scrupulous respect to the neurological reality of how these visions might have taken place.
- Those performances. Should I ever find myself in a burning aircraft I like to think that I shall be able to muster the same sang-froid with which David Niven, as Flight Lieutenant Peter Carter, recites his favourite poetry before bailing out without a parachute.
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.
After miraculously surviving a jump from his burning plane, RAF pilot Peter Carter (David Niven) encounters the American radio operator (Kim Hunter) to whom he has just delivered his dying wishes, and, face-to-face on a tranquil English beach, the pair fall in love.
