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A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1946)
🕑 Added 2021-07-05 04:01:15 +0000 UTC
It has to be said: the British are simply made of sterner stuff. From 1939 to 1945, Powell and Pressburger essentially made World War II the primary subject of their filmmaking. It plays a role even in A Matter of Life or Death, which would otherwise be a somewhat slight afterlife-fiction on par with something like Here Comes Mr. Jordan. In fact, the influence of this film on Albert Brooks' wonderful Defending Your Life is unmistakable, and Brooks' film demonstrates just how easy it is to adopt the earlier film's basic premise, but in an utterly abstract, apolitical manner.
The Archers steadily produced war films until the armistice, at which point they offered audiences the glorious one-two punch of Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes. Of course, Hollywood made wartime pictures as well, but they tended to be comedies and musicals, or bland actioners like A Yank in the R.A.F. starring Tyrone Power. Among the highest-grossing American films during the war, only three really grappled with the conflict in a substantive way: The Great Dictator (1939), Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, and To Have and Have Not (both 1945).
Of course, with blitzkriegs raining down in London, any attempts at out-and-out cinematic escapism might have seemed in poor taste. But the fact remains. The Archers produced several of the greatest British films of all time while taking the U.K.'s participation in the war as a dramatic foundation, when it wasn't the overt subject altogether.
A Matter of Life and Death's most poignant scene is also its first. The film opens with Squadron Leader Peter Carter (David Niven) radioing in from his plane just before it's about to go down. He doesn't have a chute, so he plans to jump to his death rather than burn up in the crash. He contacts June (Kim Hunter), an American radio operator, who talks to him right up until his bailout. They both realize that Peter is about to die, and in the short moments beforehand they form a profound bond. This sets the scene for the film's sudden slip into the supernatural.
Supposedly due to the pea-soup fog surrounding Britain, the celestial processor who was tasked to collect Peter's soul simply missed him. As a result, he doesn't die, and actually encounters June in person. The bureaucrat, a French gentleman of the Ancien Régime known only as Conductor 71 (Marius Goring), comes down to earth to belatedly reap Peter's soul, but the old boy puts up a fight, demanding that he be allowed to stay with June. Since the post-plummet meet-cute was indeed the result of a heavenly error, Those In Charge agree to give Peter an appeal.
The very notion that death can be cheated, not with a sullen game of chess or some form of dubious sacrifice, but merely by exercising one's right to due process, seems quintessentially British. In fact, the temperamental differences between Brits and Yanks becomes one of the defining themes in A Matter of Life and Death, picking up on this thread in A Canterbury Tale and elaborating on it for comic-philosophical effect.
Helping Peter in his quest is Dr. Frank Reeves (Roger Livesey), a modest country doctor of great skill and perspicacity. He "believes" in Peter's hallucinations regarding the afterlife, because he feels that they are material symptoms of a severe brain injury. As such, they are very real to Peter, and Frank is confident that the result of the appeal process will determine Peter's capacity to live.
The Archers's frequent concern with seeing and the visual world is apparent here. We meet Dr. Reeves as he stands in his camera obscura, watching the town from above. What Peter sees and does not see, as compared with the larger world's perceptions, are understood by Frank as one of personal vs. global standpoint, immanence vs. transcendence. The airman's active, erudite mind is described by Frank as a liability, since Peter is working overtime to create logic out of his survival which, in terms of probability, makes no sense. So in a way, A Matter of Life and Death is about survivors' guilt, something that plagued many World War I veterans and that Powell and Pressburger knew would soon be rampant again.
Nevertheless, this is a film that ends well, pulling away from its existential questions in order to resolve virtually everything as if by magic. Well, argumentation and rhetoric have a role to play as well, since Frank, acting as Peter's counsel for the appeal, manages to show that the differences between Brits and Americans are superficial rather than constitutive. Through this nifty dialectical trick, Frank goes one step further, suggesting that the brotherhood of the Allies would, in fact, save the world from the tyranny of death.
