by Oscar O’Sullivan

The year is 1946. The Second World War is over, just about. For the last half-decade, the entire filmmaking apparatus of the western world has been devoted to one and only one type of film – the propaganda piece. Tales of national heroism and perseverance are all that can be justified under wartime conditions, where every penny spent must be a penny that contributes to the war effort. A Matter of Life and Death is an obvious leftover of that production ethos. Delays in filming and the end of the war leave it in an interesting place, sermonising on a conflict that was no longer raging when it finally reached the public. While you may imagine that a leftover propaganda film released in the beginning of peacetime would be rejected and ignored by the public, this film not only survived but thrived, thanks to the same secret that makes Casablanca a timeless classic – it’s a really really good movie.

First of all, the propaganda element itself is so minor as to be completely incidental to the wider themes. For context, the final years of the war saw American troops stationed in Britain, where they gained a reputation for being loud, arrogant slackers who monopolised British food, pubs and women. In the face of growing national resentment, this film was conceived as an answer to the animosity, to convince the British public to patch things up with their guests for the greater good of the war. The plot concerns a charming British airman, played by David Niven, who falls for the voice of American radio operator Kim Hunter as his plane goes down off the coast of England. After saying his farewells, he bails out to his certain death without a parachute – but miraculously and inexplicably survives, washing up unharmed on the golden shores. Seizing his second chance, he wastes no time in finding and romancing his American girl. The scenario is a reversal of the situation that was irking the British public at the time – instead of an American G.I. snatching up an innocent British lass, we have the proper English gentleman falling for a strong-willed military lady from across the pond. Unfortunately for our star-crossed lovers, there’s been a mistake – Niven was supposed to die over the ocean, and only came out unharmed because the courier of souls lost track of him in the thick English fog – “a real pea-souper”.

This is where the films inspired supernatural element enters the picture. On the other side of the universe, a journey rendered lovingly as a magnificent star-strewn void, is the afterlife, a monochrome world of rules and regulations where a soul missing its appointed time is practically unheard of. So the unsuccessful courier is sent to earth to explain the error and convince the mistakenly alive pilot to come along quietly. Said courier is an inspired twist on usual representations of death, a flamboyant French nobleman with a penchant for chess and the ability to move through space but not time, seemingly freezing the world around Niven as he attempts to coerce him into giving up his borrowed life. When he refuses on the grounds that, in the twenty hours since his scheduled time of death, his life has been entirely changed by the introduction of true love to the mix, the afterlife is thrown into a frenzy. Given three days to prepare a defence, Niven struggles to explain his circumstances to his concerned lover and her crack psychiatrist friend Roger Livesly, who outwardly encourages Niven’s fantasies while secretly preparing a more grounded diagnosis – the airman has suffered head trauma and his own brain is now attacking him with visions of Frenchmen and afterlife courts. What’s more, if he doesn’t win his imagined trial his mind will tear itself apart. The film never reveals which perception is the correct one – while most everything that Niven envisions can be explained by real-world stimuli, there is nothing to suggest that both realities couldn’t be true at once – and of course, the question of his miracle survival never does receive a rational explanation.

Niven’s afterlife trial is where the propaganda of the film is most fully realised, with the case against him hinging on whether or not an Englishman and American woman can actually be in love. The deftness and wit of the script kicks into overdrive here, as Niven’s defence wages a war of words against a prejudiced American Revolutionary in a jaw-dropping amphitheatre filled with endless rows of heavenly spectators. One particularly hilarious turn in events has the jury replaced midway through the trial, as it is noted that each member is from a nation that has a historical grudge against England. Upon requesting a new jury made only of Americans, the prosecution smugly obliges, and the new jurors are revealed – each one an American citizen of the same ethnicity as the juror they replace. The film is even-handed in it’s national discourse, taking digs at both sides and ultimately agreeing that they have more in common than not, and that all this national rivalry is entirely besides the point when faced with the power of love.

As if the magnificent script wasn’t enough, the film is a visual tour-de-force and a special-effects showcase that puts modern efforts to shame. Earth is rendered in realer-than-reality Technicolor, from the claustrophobic cockpit of a doomed aircraft to the wide-open vista of the sun-soaked shoreline, dense gardens of roses in bloom and the warm coziness of a book-strewn office – even the sickly pale hues of the operating theatre are striking. What the afterlife lacks in colour it makes up for in sheer spectacle – matte paintings give an illusion of scale rarely seen since the days of silent film, while massive constructed pieces of scenery ground the actors in these ornate environments. The ultimate showstopper is the ‘Stairway to Heaven’, a humungous and fully-functional escalator that conveys characters back and forth through the infinite void of space, lined with enormous statues of great historical figures that dwarf the actors even further, making them appear like ants on the expansive steps. The afterlife scenes were actually shot on Technicolor film too, with the strips simply left untreated to create the distinct pearly look of the image. The excessive volume of Technicolor stock needed to shoot the film was also the main reason behind its extensive delays, as the majority of colour film being produced was reserved for U.S. Army training films.

Seeing this film in the cinema last night was a truly staggering experience, a virtuosic display of visual, musical, and writing talent. While I’ve heard of directing team Powell & Pressburger in film discussions before, it’s usually only in the context of subsequent directors praising them as inspirations. If this is indicative of their usual standard, then it’s criminal that they’re not regularly in the conversation for all-time greatest filmmakers – in fact, this alone should at least put them on the podium. A Matter of Life and Death is not only a 10/10, it’s the best film I’ve seen this year.