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A Matter of Life and Death Movie Review

A Matter of Life and Death is a 1946 British fantasy film directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and starring David Niven. It’s a very imaginative flick.

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“One is starved for Technicolor up there“

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A British wartime aviator who cheats death must argue for his life before a celestial court. As was the case with most 40s fantasy movies, this one is also concerned with death and the afterlife. However, unlike others, this is a movie that deals much more in detail with such a premise, and it develops this whole rich world that feels very much lived in.

There is a lot to talk about here, but let’s first address the film’s obsession with nationalities. Yes, for some unbeknownst reason to me, the movie focuses extensively on the clash between the British and the Americans. Although that made the film overly specific and some may say even dated, I mostly enjoyed that element here that resulted in one truly terrific, highly entertaining courtroom drama extensive sequence that ended the movie gloriously.

Yes, the movie is admirable for portraying all the different nationalities and even races together in the afterlife, but still more could have been done with this premise as the execution was too tame with most of these minorities not getting any roles per say.

Conductor 71 is for some reason or another a Frenchman. He is excellent. He is by far one of the funniest things in this movie as his accent is funny and his blunt delivery of jokes and lines was hilarious. Marius Goring was phenomenal in this role and very lively and charismatic.

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I also really liked David Niven who is of course always excellent. His Peter is believable and very likable, thus you end up rooting for him to return to the world of the living. Kim Hunter as June is unfortunately forgettable as his love interest, and that’s a big weakness of the movie – the romance is undercooked and far from exciting. The whole movie is too male-centric, but at least the men are all greatly developed with Reeves and Farlan being terrific, wonderfully realized characters. Their squaring off at the end was so much glorious fun.

A Matter of Life and Death is also unforgettable in that scene with the different figures of history. That elevator was so well imagined and I would even say iconic. I also really liked the other fantastical elements such as disappearing effects etc. I wanted even more of those as the effects done on this film are excellent for this time period.

Yes, this movie is very accomplished technically speaking. The editing is fabulous, and it was very important for this particular movie to be well edited as the structure of the plot demands it with all the cuts and jumps from life to afterlife and so on and so forth. The pacing is also very good and the direction from these two great directors was excellent for sure.

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However, I would say that the film overall could have been better. I did like the humor quite a bit as it was very funny at times, but it was too silly in certain areas and it needed to have been more dramatic and much more romantic. Still, the dialogue is excellent as is the cinematography, the great costumes and absolutely astonishing production design.

Astonishing sets, great costumes, fantastic editing and terrific world building made A Matter of Life and Death a glorious technical achievement. Although it lacks in terms of emotion, romance and drama, it compensates that with excellent humor as many scenes are very funny, especially some hilarious lines of dialogue. The characters are also colorful and goofy (especially of note is very fun Conductor 71), leading to a hugely entertaining fantasy flick.

My Rating – 4

You can get A Matter of Life and Death on Amazon.