A Matter of Life and Death

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{{Infobox Film

 | name = A Matter of Life and Death
 | image = A Matter of Life and Death.jpg
 | caption = A Matter of Life and Death DVD Cover
 | director = Michael Powell
Emeric Pressburger   
 | producer = Michael Powell
Emeric Pressburger   
 | writer = Michael Powell
Emeric Pressburger
 | starring =David Niven
Kim Hunter
Roger Livesey
Raymond Massey
Marius Goring
Richard Attenborough
 | music =Allan Gray
 | cinematography = Jack Cardiff 
 | editing = Reginald Mills
 | distributor = Eagle-Lion Distributors
 | released = November 1, 1946 U.K.
December 25, 1946 USA
 | runtime = 104 min  
 | language = English 
 | budget = £320,000 (estimated)
 | imdb_id = 0038733

}} A Matter of Life and Death (1946) is a film by the British writer-director-producer team of Powell & Pressburger. The US title for the release was Stairway to Heaven, which was derived from the film's most prominent special effect: a broad escalator linking Heaven and Earth. The scenes that take place in Heaven are in black-and-white, and on Earth in Technicolor.

1 Story
2 Influence
3 References
4 External links

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Story

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Peter Carter (David Niven) is a WW2 British pilot trying to nurse a badly shot-up bomber home after a mission. He manages to get in touch with June (Kim Hunter), an American radio operator based in England. In the few minutes before he is forced to jump without a parachute, he falls in love with her.

Peter should have died at that time, but doesn't because of a mistake on the part of Conductor 71 (Marius Goring), the guide sent from Heaven to collect him. They miss each other in the thick fog over the English Channel. Instead, Peter wakes up the next day on a beach near June's base, completely bewildered at still being alive. Image:Archers-AMOLAD-Beach-Niven.jpg

Peter meets June who is cycling back from her night shift; the pair fall in love. Conductor 71 (a French aristocrat executed during the French Revolution) appears to Peter, stopping time to explain the situation and to convince him to accept his fate. Peter refuses and demands that the matter be put to a trial.

On Earth, Peter's visions of Conductor 71 are diagnosed by June's fascinated friend Doctor Reeves (Roger Livesey) as a symptom of a brain injury sustained in the fall from the plane, and he is scheduled for surgery. Reeves' death in a motorcycle accident makes him available to plead Peter's case, arguing that, through no fault of his own, he has fallen in love and now has an Earthly commitment which should take precedence over Heaven's claim on his soul.

The matter comes to a head - mirroring the outcome of the contemporaneous brain surgery - before a celestial court of the whole population of Heaven - in cinematographic terms, we zoom out from an amphitheatre to discover that it is as large as a spiral galaxy. Reeves and Abraham Farlan (Raymond Massey), the stern American prosecutor, call witnesses from history to give evidence. In the end, Reeves shows that June genuinely loves Peter by telling her that the only way to save his life is to take his place. She steps onto the stairway without hesitation and it begins carrying her away, leaving Peter behind. Then the stairway comes to an abrupt halt and June rushes back to Peter's welcoming arms. Love, it seems, does conquer all, even Heaven.

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Influence

The architecture of the film's Heaven is noticeably modernist; vast and open plan, with huge circular observation holes beneath which the clouds of Earth can be seen. This vision of Heaven was later the inspiration for the design of a bus station in Walsall, England, by architects Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, and the film's amphitheatre court scene was rendered by BT in an TV advertisement in about 2002 as a metaphor for communication technology, especially the Internet.

The film garners praise, often couched in sentences including words such as "subversive" and "surreal".

In 2004 the magazine Total Film named A Matter of Life and Death the 2nd greatest British film ever made in a poll of 25 film critics. It was beaten only by Get Carter.

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