The Eternal Magic of Powell and Pressburger: A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

I was introduced to the work of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger at university. I was eighteen, still overwhelmed by the move from Ipswich to London, and intimidated by my film school peers who spoke of film movements I’d never heard of and equipment I’d never seen. I sat in our lecture hall as the tutor lovingly described the stairway to heaven in Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death, feeling lost and wondering whether I’d made a mistake.

My thoughts of self-doubt evaporated when my tutor screened the film and I was transported to a wondrous world of technicolour, where a tale of life, death and love opened my heart to the idea that older movies could transform you, opened my mind to the depth of film history, and ignited a thirst to devour as much of it as I could. A Matter of Life and Death is a fantastical tale about British RAF pilot Peter (David Niven), who falls in love with American radio operator June (Kim Hunter), after he mistakenly survives an airplane crash due to an error in Heaven. The angelic Conductor 71 (Marius Goring), is sent to collect Peter to rectify the mistake, but Peter argues that he should have the opportunity to appeal his fate because his circumstances have changed now that he has fallen in love. Peter recruits the help of June’s friend Frank (Roger Livesey), to act as his defence in Celestial Court and fight for his right to stay on Earth, and during the proceedings, at Frank’s suggestion, June willingly offers her life in exchange for Peter’s. The court deem June’s grand gesture to be proof of Peter and June’s genuine love, ruling in favour of Peter and granting him a new lifespan so that he and June may live together happily on Earth.

This story sent me on a cinematic journey of self-discovery that would define my sensibilities as a young filmmaker. Five years later my short film screened in NFT1 at the BFI London Film Festival, and to close out my festival experience I watched a restoration of A Matter of Life and Death in the same room. I felt a sense of enormity as this film had shaped me, and now I had shared a screen with it. The experience of seeing that movie in that place at that time filled me with a sense of belonging, daring me to dream that I’d found my calling, and I think that’s what A Matter of Life and Death represents: an invitation to dream. Powell and Pressburger’s cinematic cannon is one filled with wide-eyed wonder where not even the sky is the limit, and to watch their films is to experience magic.

Michael Powell had grown up through the infancy of cinema, at a time where he and other filmmakers were inventing new techniques and tricks as every year passed. In order to keep up with their ambitions they had to innovate, and part of the magic of a Powell and Pressburger movie is borne from the experience of watching their team invent and innovate in front of your eyes. In her recent Screentalk at the BFI, Thelma Schoonmaker – legendary editor and widow of Michael Powell, summed it up perfectly: “Michael [Powell] could create heaven and earth. He could stop time. He was able to do anything he wanted.”

Michael Powell could stop time, and could also control the elements, his interest in the elemental being a long-standing theme in his work. The Edge of The World concerns a community who have to leave their way of life on an island due to adverse weather, and the final act of I Know Where I’m Going hinges on the life-altering experience of being trapped at sea in a whirlpool. In A Matter of Life and Death, Powell turns the elemental mystical, the film beginning with an omnipresent narrator guiding us as we dissolve from outer space – “Big, isn’t it?” – into a thick fog hovering over Britain, from which June eventually emerges. Peter will soon disappear in this same fog, evading death and finding the opportunity to fall in love.

Powell’s world lives and breathes – we see Peter’s plane engulfed in flames, we feel the heat as sweat drips down his forehead, the wind then roars as the plane continues its descent and, as Peter jumps, the camera follows him down the hatch to be submerged by the fog. Within the first ten minutes we learn that there is no place that Powell’s camera cannot go; in space, in an aircraft, above land, into fog. In the third act Powell makes it rain, creating a torrential weather storm that causes Frank’s fatal motorcycle crash – a feverish set piece that uses projection, stunt doubles, clever cutting and special effects. There’s something biblical about it, with the fog giving life and the rain taking it away.

The filmmaking duo create heaven and earth, but with their use of colour they define their own mythology. Emeric Pressburger’s ingenious idea of having the living world in technicolour and heaven in black and white imbues the film with a sense of urgency – it’s the here and now that’s full of dynamic possibility and beauty. Having jumped from his plane with no parachute, Peter wakes up in the sea and logically assumes himself to be dead, and Powell shoots the coast as if it were an otherworldly space – a vast seafront that sparkles with colour. Jack Cardiff’s images are serene, peaceful and idyllic, which Peter believes to be heaven, but he soon realises that he is miraculously still alive and is reunited with June in the flesh.

In the worlds of Powell and Pressburger, miracles happen on Earth while mistakes happen in Heaven, and the film literally drains of colour as it transitions from Earth to Heaven – which is depicted as monochromatic and bureaucratic, and where an investigation takes place as to how Peter has mistakingly survived. Upon our return to Earth, The Conductor (Marius Goring), purrs that “one is starved of technicolour up there”, as he admires his surroundings. It’s a simple trick, but one that fuels the duo’s ideology that our world is the one full of mythical beauty and endless possibility.

What’s most magical to me is the overwhelming sense of compassion that runs through A Matter of Life and Death, as this is a film that’s about living and about loving – a sentiment that exists in its story and its images. It’s in the act of entrusting a stranger with your last moments before you jump out of a plane to certain death; it’s in the solitary tear that drops from June’s eye, which is collected by The Conductor as evidence of feeling. It’s in the glorious close-up of June and Peter pressed together, literally clinging onto each other for dear life; its in the act of June trusting Frank when the stakes are at their highest, stepping onto the stairway to heaven to conclusively prove her love. It’s in the fact – a fact that is proven in a Heavenly court of law – that you can fall in love with someone in thirteen hours.

For the last eighteen months I have been off work and largely housebound due to Long Covid, and over the past few weeks I have watched in horror as the COVID enquiry unfolded. I sought A Matter of Life and Death out because I needed comfort – I wanted to be transported from the prison of my flat to rich worlds, to escape my fatigue, my heart palpitations and my muscle aches. In a week where Boris Johnson is on record as saying he saw Coronavirus as “just nature’s way of dealing with old people”, and Suella Braverman described homelessness as “a lifestyle choice”, I found myself wishing we lived in Powell and Pressburger’s fantastical worlds – one where the powers that be can be reasoned with compassion, and where, above all else, love wins. This film is a testament to the endless possibilities of the world we live in as, if a pilot can escape death and fall in love – something Powell deems to be the most important act in all of his worlds – then anything can happen. It’s gloriously hopeful and life-affirming, and on Monday night I wept in the comfort of its warm glow when I needed it most.

In a year where I’ve stopped living as I know it, this film made me feel alive.

Jimmy’s Archive – A Matter of Life and Death (1946)