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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 · Audaciously creative as well as infinitely romantic, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's film tells the story of World War Two British Air Force pilot Peter Carter (David Niven) falling in...
- Gregory Wakeman
British Air Force pilot Peter Carter (David Niven) is on his way home to England from a World War II bombing mission in a badly damaged aircraft. Before he bails out of the plane into the ocean, he...
- (39)
- Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
- PG
- Fantasy, Drama
Mar 15, 2022 · Powell and Pressburger’s wartime drama, starring David Niven as an erroneously alive bomber pilot, is visually. extraordinary and politically topical. A Matter of Life and Death is the utterly unique, enduringly rich and strange romantic fantasia from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
- 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.
David Niven plays Peter Carter, a young airman seemingly doomed before his time and trapped between life and death, between a Technicolor earth and a monochrome heaven. There have been other films that have dealt with heaven and earth but none possessed quite the ambition or visual flair of AMoLaD.
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Apr 6, 2024 · A Matter of Life and Death. A British pilot survives a plane crash, meets a US servicewoman and falls in love. In heaven, however, a mistake is discovered.
