Michael Powell has a special place in the hearts of British film lovers. Hitchcock went to Hollywood. David Lean was most at home with international epics. But Powell was English through and through, and “Englishness” was one of his favourite subjects, even if much of that came from his Anglophile Hungarian-born writing partner, Emeric Pressburger. Powell’s own English style stands in marked contrast to the prevailing bland realism which characterized the industry around him: he was a florid romantic, with a love for expressionism, for poetry and surrealism.
With Pressburger, during and after World War II, Powell made an unparalleled series of passionate, idiosyncratic, unforgettable British films, including The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, The Red Shoes, I Know Where I’m Going, Black Narcissus and A Canterbury Tale. All of them are wonderful. But the most beloved of all is A Matter of Life and Death.
It began life as a commission from the wartime Ministry of Information, which required a film stressing goodwill between the Brits and their American allies. It ended somewhere else, a transatlantic love story framed by an English airman’s morbid neurological fantasy after his plane comes down in the Channel. Peter Carter (David Niven) washes up on Saunton Sands, where he falls in love with an American nurse (Kim Hunter). Guilty that he has cheated death, Peter dreams that he must plead permission to extend his lifespan before the highest court of all, in Heaven. With all the philosophers and poets in history at his disposal, who will he choose for an advocate?
Powell shoots “reality” in vivid, vibrant Technicolor, and Carter’s celestial “episodes” in black and white. Likewise, the film’s temperament encompasses the old school stiff upper lip and something that conjures its fervid opposite.
Sunday’s Pantheon screening will be preceded by a 15 minute introductory lecture and feature a book club-style discussion afterwards.
Apr 21: Introduced by William Brown, Assistant Professor of Film, University of British Columbia; Honorary Fellow for the School of Arts, University of Roehampton, London
There are more stunning ideas in this one film, concerning a mistake made in heaven about a WWII pilot who should be dead but isn’t, than the whole of British cinema can usually muster in a decade.
Nick James, Sight & Sound
Bursts with tantalizing ideas, surprising connections, suggestive flights of fancy.
Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice
Presented by
Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
David Niven, Roger Livesey, Raymond Massey, Kim Hunter
UK
1946
English
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Producer
Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Screenwriter
Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Cinematography
Jack Cardiff
Editor
Reginald Mills
Original Music
Allan Gray
Production Design
Alfred Junge
Also in This Series
Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise)
The crowning glory of classical French cinema, this sumptuous melodrama brings to life the early 19th century Boulevard du Crime in Paris, where popular audiences for mime shows and carnival rub shoulders with wealthy patrons of classical theatre.
The Wild Bunch (Director's Cut)
The Mexico/Texas borderlands, 1913: Pike (William Holden) leads his gang of aging outlaws on a foray south for one last hurrah. Peckinpah's masterpiece, a savage lament for men who believe in nothing but find respect by dying in vain.
The Ascent
During the darkest winter of WWII, two Soviet partisans venture through the backwoods of Belarus in search of food, always at risk of falling into enemy hands. In her masterpiece Larisa Shepitko zeroes in on profound spiritual and philosophical themes.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Céline Sciamma's queer costume drama -- about a painter covertly studying a young noblewoman who refuses to sit for her portrait -- was voted 30th Greatest Film Ever Made in a 2022 poll, the highest ranking film of the past decade.
I Am Cuba
Infused with a palpable love for the country and a righteous anger at the injustices of the Batista era, I Am Cuba features some of the jaw-dropping camerawork ever filmed. A euphoric celebration of Cuba, the Revolution, and revolutionary cinema.
The Colour of Pomegranates + The House Is Black
This month's Pantheon screening is a double-bill, Sergei Parajanov's extraordinary evocation of the life and work of C18th Armenian poet Sayat Nova, and, The House is Black (22 min), the only film directed by the great Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad.
Fantasia
Walt Disney pushed the boundaries of animation and sound recording when he put together a movie concert: eight classical pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Stravinski et al, each animated in a different style. It's playful, sometimes cute, other times inspired.
Image: © Disney, 1940