"Tell me, do you believe in the survival of human personality after death?"

"I don't know, I'd never thought about it, do you?"

"I don't know, I've thought about it too much."

🎵🎵 ooooh heaven is a place on earth 🎵🎵

The decision to make all of the fantasy sequences black and white while the "real life" sequences are technicolor speaks so much to the unorthodox philosophy of this movie. The afterlife may not be such a bad place, but there's something more appealing, more romantic about the fleeting, the evanescent, the malleable. Eternity is static (everyone dead is wearing the uniform in which they died, clinging to the beliefs with which they died), while on earth there is love, sadness, hope, grief, learning, growing, drama, etc. The afterlife isn't necessarily heaven. Heaven is love, so choose life.

There's no way to approach this movie that doesn't find it an unmitigated success. It's wonderfully romantic. It's hilarious and entertaining. It's a fantasy spectacle with jaw dropping analog effects. It's a post-war curative that inspires patriotism and a spirit of cooperation. This is one of the best movies.

I had seen this back in the day when I was a young pup under the title of "Stairway To Heaven" and loved it! David Niven and Kim Hunter were wonderful together as the star crossed lovers!

A marvelously charming and whimsical tale that was a real treat to watch!

My one and only gripe was the totally unnecessary and quite frankly unwanted heavy handed spiel about this American versus British garbage! Barring that little misstep it's still a winner in my book!

Film was recommended by Viktor Prentovski via my Movie Request Hotline List! Thank You Viktor for recommending it, it was a real blast from the past!

One of the greatest moments in all of cinema is when Marius Goring looks at the camera and says “one is starved for technicolor up there.”

Written, produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, A Matter of Life and Death is a captivating stew of imagination, magnificence and parable. It's a genuinely extravagant and commanding magnum opus, and the extraordinary sets by Alfred Junge further boosts it above its already remarkable conceptions and creative screenplay. It accomplishes a superb combining of black and white and colour, with the human characters often intentionally appearing washed out. A Matter of Life and Death is an enduring anecdote of compassionate sincerity and courtship that is both verbally delightful and visually sensational.

“One is starved for Technicolor up there…”

Buddy, one is starved for Technicolor down here.

2020 Challenge: 241/100 

They don’t make them like this anymore. 

Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death one of the best fantasy films ever to be released. Immaculately shot and designed, masterfully directed and perfected acted, the somewhat familiar yet nonetheless imaginative story of a man’s interactions with the afterlife is truly riveting cinema. The duo’s decision to shoot in both b&w and color is still stunning to this day, and the special effects hold up surprisingly well. I’ll put this up there with West Side Story, Lawrence of Arabia, La La Land, Ad Astra, and Interstellar as one of the best looking films ever made. 

I get why the sentimentality and overall positive energy might not be everyone’s cup of tea; I’ll admit I could see how this could be cheesy and and on-the-nose, but I thought it was simply wonderful. 

I need to see this again!

The final scene tore me to pieces.

I dismissed it at first for being weighted down with blatant exposition - only because the images are STUNNING. Heaven's production design resembling the angular, shadowy aesthetic of German expressionism with breathtaking, imaginative beauty. The film Christopher Nolan has always wanted to make but likely never will : love vs logic as a chess game. It triumphs where Nolan fails; though designed mechanically, the human element allows it to transcend. Inspiring.

Powell and Pressburger made half a dozen of the best films ever made. Of them this is the weakest due to the slightly bizarre moralising on the merits of America vs Britain in the courtroom scene that really is quite dated. Apart from that though, it's brilliant.

Måste se om denna. Jag fattade absolut ingenting, så det blev en ganska långtråkig upplevelse. Men jag måste se den igen.
Tre av fem (tror jag)! Tack och hej!

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A Matter of Life and Death

Rating: 6/10

What an entirely sweet film. If the end of Orwell's 1984 posits grim future for his country and the status of "love", then Pressburger and Powell's film is a true post-war fantasy (in this case, we're talking the latter of the Great Wars). Critique of the empire (but no abolishment), and the promise of living in peace are topics of wartime, laid over the simple narrative of two lovers. It can be awkward, but the charm from the fantastical segues and terrific set design distract from the very political themes. In technicolor, quite gorgeous. Great animation. A really relaxing watch for a rainy night.

I thought about this film offhandedly yesterday, so of course Cora and I watched it today. I just love, well, love. But A Matter of Life and Death is so much more than the average romance movie of the time. It’s a medical drama that’s extremely empathetic to mental illness (especially for the 40s), and it’s an optimistic dream of what life after the war can be. It praises diversity and equality and it even digs at imperialism in an, admittedly, small way that is rarely seen in English films, especially of the time. It’s also very funny. I really do love this movie. And it makes me cry because it’s so sweet.

Wouldn't it be weird if a film from 1946 had the best special effects ever?

This was not at all what I expected it was gonna be and I liked it a lot.

A combination of postwar reconciliation, "feel good" sensibilities, human universality, and fantastical elements, Stairway to Heaven is both a firm crowd-pleaser and, thanks to the ambiguity as to whether or not the events of the film actually take place and the wholesomeness of the material, maintains a long shelf-life. The film takes a surprisingly charitable look at both race and national relationships as well, though this is less remarkable in a British rather than an American release of the period. The film performs a balancing act, managing to remain sweet, charming, and humorous without descending into the territory of the saccharine. One can only imagine how welcome a film of this type was to a world just emerging from more than half a decade of global conflict.