Hi Hello & Welcome then to this week’s noodle through the movies that matter to me.
This week it’s a matter of Life Love & Death, a matter of my favourite movie of all time.
Normally I take a look at two contrasting movies by or featuring one person, but there’s two reasons why I’m going to do something I’ve not done before (and which I may not do again). And so it is this week I’m going to take a look at and dedicate my column to just one movie - the glorious and magical A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH (1946).
Now the first reason is that it’s my favourite movie of all time it and deserves to get a level of attention and words above and beyond any other. The second is that the genius of Powell & Pressburger deserves at least two separate offerings in order to do any justice to their phenomenal (body of) work, so there’ll be another column another time focusing on a couple of their other masterpieces.
So, let’s go.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger first met in 1939 working on an Alexander Korda movie THE SPY IN BLACK. Powell had been brought in as Director to save the picture and Pressburger attached to do some re-writes to the screenplay. Powell was an archetypal Englishman educated at Dulwich College, Pressburger a Hungarian Jew who’d fled to Paris to escape the Nazi’s and ended up an émigré in England. But they hit it off and quickly recognised that although they were total opposites in background and personality, they had a common attitude to film-making and that they could work really well together.
After Powell had finished a couple more films for Korda he reunited with Pressburger to make their first movie together - CONTRABAND (1940) - the first in a run of Powell and Pressburger films set or made during WW2. This was quickly followed by 49TH PARALLEL (1941) - for which Pressburger won the Academy Award for Best Story - followed by ONE OF OUR AIRCRAFT IS MISSING (1942), which garnered two Academy Award nominations including Best Original Screenplay for Powell and Pressburger (incredibly this was to be Powell’s only Oscar nomination).
Three more wonderful mid-war films quickly followed in the hugely impressive shape of THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP (1943), A CANTERBURY TALE (1944) and I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING! (1945) before we arrive at our film - A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH in 1946.
The film opens with a disembodied voice opining against a celestial backdrop -
“This is the story of two worlds, the one we know and another which exists only in the mind of a young airman whose life and imagination have been violently shaped by war. Any resemblance to any other world known or unknown is purely coincidental.”
Now A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH was actually based on the real life story of an RAF Pilot who bailed from his aircraft into the sea and survived, but our boys wanted to shake that up a little, so as well as having DAVID NIVEN’s Squadron Leader Peter Carter bail into the English Channel from his flaming plane without a parachute, miraculously surviving washed up on a beach, it transpires that he was in fact meant to die but instead slipped through the hands of his celestial ‘conductor’ (MARIUS GORING) who now needs to make up for his mistake and finally escort Peter up to the heavenly destination he was bound for. Only problem is, the radio operator (KIM HUNTER) Peter had been sharing his last intimate words with as his plane plunged toward the sea meet each other on the beach as she’s cycling home, and fall in love.
Whilst convalescing, Hunter’s radio operator has Dr. Reeves (ROGER LIVESEY) meet and assess an unwell and headache-riddled Peter. At the same time Goring’s conductor returns to face the celestial music and discuss with his heavenly superiors what to do next with Peter, how to fix this otherworldly problem.
Tragedy strikes however as Livesey’s doctor dies in a fatal motorbike crash. However, the losing of his life now affords him the opportunity to represent Peter in his forthcoming appeal to the celestial court to spare his life. This heralds one of the most audacious and extraordinary courtroom dramas ever committed to film. Niven’s Peter can choose the counsel to help him win his appeal from everyone who’s ever lived, and he chooses Livesey’s doctor. So it is that Peter and the doctor have just three days to prepare whilst the galactic tribunal gathers to decide Peter’s fate (RAYMOND MASSEY is the opposition counsel). Why three days? Because here on earth Peter is to be operated on in three days, as a matter of life and death. They have to align.
Standing on one precipice Massey’s American prosecution counsel argues against the British pilot, and in one of the comic touches that deflates any excess profundity states that Peter and June could never be happy together because they come from different cultures. So it is by way of evidence that first we hear a radio broadcast of a dull English cricket match, followed by an American big band radio show. Massey then asks the jury "Should the swift current of her life be slowed to the crawl of a match of cricket?" Livesey’s Englishman and Massey (hardly inclined toward the English having died at their hands in the American Revolutionary War) butt intellectual heads in various sequences with flair, passion and no small wit. Ultimately however a tear of love shed onto a rose by June as she watches Peter being operated on (his heavenly trial takes place whilst he’s under anaesthetic) becomes crucial evidence offered in Peter’s favour.
And so it is after the jury decide in favour of Peter (and June) that Livesey’s doctor triumphantly declares “Nothing is stronger than the law in the universe, but on Earth, nothing is stronger than love”. Cue my tears.
Like many of the greatest Films, Directors, Screenwriters, Actors and Filmmakers - A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH won nothing. In fact reception upon it’s release was pretty ‘meh’. But also like many of the greatest Films ever made, in the end, it won out. Great Art always does. Great Art always finds a way, finds its audience, in the end. And so it is ‘The Archers’ gifted us a timeless classic - a romantic, comic, tragicomic, Technicolor fantasy on a visual and emotional scale imo unequalled and unparalleled.
The depth and sheer number of levels to this movie are breathtaking and mind-blowing, if you like that sort of thing. Personally I do, I love having my emotions and my mind thoroughly worked and challenged when it comes to film, for imo mutually exclusive they are not and I believe fucking well shouldn't be. A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH has as much intellectual, emotional, artistic, cinematic, visual and human meat on the bone for any cinephile any where any who, if that’s your bag. But but but, if you want to feel, if you want to connect with a movie, if you want to come away having been entertained enlightened and moved - then folks, give this baby a whirl.
Finally then, whatever I write going forward this will be the only time I’ll say this, but say it I will; if you’ve not watched this Movie, please please do.
Now it’s Art, so I can offer no guarantees you’ll love it as much as I do or that it’ll connect with you as much as it does with me. But, in a world where there’s a gazillion ways to waste your precious time I can (almost) guarantee that A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH will not be that, will not be any kind of waste of your time during your time on this here pale blue dot.
But hey, don’t take my word for it! Take the word of one of the world’s biggest Powell & Pressburger fans, biggest A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH fans, and close friend of Michael Powell towards the end of his life - the mighty MARTIN SCORSESE.
So that’s all for this week folks.
Have a great week, look after yourselves and others, and to you all… good night and good luck.
Michael.
OK, my bad for careless reading
Thank you Michael:)