A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

A Matter of Life and Death (1946) is a romantic fantasy film created by the British writing-directing-producing team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and set in England during the Second World War. The film stars David Niven, Roger Livesey, Raymond Massey, Kim Hunter and Marius Goring.

The film was originally released in the United States under the title Stairway to Heaven, which derived from the film's most prominent special effect: a broad escalator linking Earth to the afterlife. The decision to film the scenes of the Other World in black and white added to the complications. They were filmed in Three-strip Technicolor, but the colour was not fully developed, giving a pearly hue to the black and white shots, a process cited in the screen credits as "Colour and Dye-Monochrome Processed in Technicolor". This reversed the effect in The Wizard of Oz. Photographic dissolves between "Technicolor Dye-Monochrome" (the Other World) and Three-Strip Technicolor (Earth) are used several times during the film.

In 1999, A Matter of Life and Death placed 20th on BFI's list of Best 100 British films In 2004, a poll by the magazine Total Film of 25 film critics named A Matter of Life and Death the second greatest British film ever made, behind Get Carter.

Synopsis

Squadron Leader Peter Carter (David Niven) is a British Royal Air Force pilot trying to fly a badly damaged and burning Lancaster bomber home after a mission over Germany on 2 May 1945. He has ordered his crew to bail out, without revealing that his own parachute has been shot up. He manages to contact June (Kim Hunter), an American radio operator based in England, and talks with her for a few minutes before jumping without a parachute.

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