A Matter of Life and Death

a.k.a. Stairway to Heaven
Michael Powell, Emric Pressburger, 1946 (9.2*)
Not exactly your average war story: while returning to England from a bombing in 1945, pilot Peter Carter, played by David Niven, is too damaged to make it back, and his parachute is also destroyed. He has his crew bail out, and as what he assumes is his last act, he talks on the radio to an operator named June (Kim Hunter), a young American woman, who is touched by his situation.

Then he jumps out over the ocean, and instead of dying, he wakes up in the surf, walking to shore. It was his time to die, but his death angel (a 'conductor') couldn't find him in all that fog (see quote below). Of course, having already fallen for her, he soon meets June in person, and naturally they fall in love for real. When his angel finds him and tells him of the error, Peter argues that it's not his fault he's still alive, now he's in love, so just leave him in peace. The celestial beings who run heaven agree to a trial to decide his fate, so the trial becomes a matter of life and death for Peter.

He is sent back to earth to prepare for his trial, and continue his life there for a day anyway. There are some very innovative sequences when the angel appears, all the action freezes, but Peter and the angel continue in real-time, once during a ping-pong game with the ball in mid-air. The colors are sumptuous, Powell's attention to color details in small props like chess sets places his films a level above all others in their cinematic artistry. The heavenly trial and corporal earth-time are woven together flawlessly in the story.

This is another beautiful film from Michael Powell and Emric Pressburger, known as The Archers. It's generally assumed that Powell was the director and Pressburger the writer, but they shared each credit. Powell began as a Technicolor® specialist, a color film advisor trained by that company in the late 30's. This is one of their best collaborations, the others being Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes. All are beautiful to look at, among the most artistic in the history of film.

The title was changed to Stairway to Heaven in the U.S., because they thought America wasn't ready for a film with 'death' in the title the year after the war was over. (That's so funny, the U.S. being the top homicide nation of all time). A Matter of Life and Death was Powell's own personal favorite of all his works. IF this had more ratings from viewers (only 7k so far), it would be in the IMDB top 250, the average of 8.1 is high enough to be ranked around 190-200.

Quote: The fog was so thick I could've stepped out of the plane and walked back to England.

Note: Martin Scorsese was heavily influenced by Powell and flew to England to meet him and he brought him back to the U.S. to meet all the other directors, like Coppola and Spielberg, that were also students of his films. Powell was surprised to find that he was this well-respected by the next generation of filmmakers.

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The Red Shoes

Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1948 (8.3*)
One of the most beautifully shot films to have come from the Powell and Pressburger collaberation, known as "The Archers".

Moira Shearer plays a new ballet discovery whose life begins to eerily parallel one of her characters, whose dancing is enhanced by a pair of magical red shoes. She is soon torn between the love of her life and her love of dancing. Still one of the best films ever about dancing itself, this film has never become dated due to the artistry of Powell.

Director Michael Powell was an early technicolor specialist in the 30's before becoming a director and it shows in his films such as this one and Black Narcissus. Together, he and Pressburger usually shared directing credit, though it's understood that Pressburger was normally the screenwriter and Powell the director. This was recently voted #5 in a poll of all-time U.K. films by a panel of film pros there. In fact, Michael Powell had six films in the top 30. (which include Black Narcissus, A Matter of Life and Death, Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, and A Canterbury Tale)

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The Edge of the World

Michael Powell, 1937, bw (8.0*)
Filmed on one of Scotland's Shetland Islands, in a location so remote that the Roman Empire named one of the these islands the Latin for "edge of the world". This is a stark, beautifully shot black and white film whose style mirrors the harsh, simple, ascetic lifestyle of the people who inhabit the westernmost islands of the British Isles, beyond whose open sea lies "only America". Life is becoming increasingly harsh and unliveable for the fisherman of the island, due to overfishing from the bigger commercial fleets, and some nearby islands have had to be evacuated. The only current means of livelihood are wool and peat and there is little future for the island's youth, who are deserting for the towns and cities of the big islands.

Powell is perhaps less polished without his famous screenwriting partner Emeric Pressburger, (see The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp) but this remains a very interesting early Powell effort. In fact, one might say the stark island landscapes only broken by people foreshadowed Antonioni's L'avventura over 20 years later. The dvd features a documentary by Powell shot when cast and crew revisited the island of Foula, location of the film's shooting, and revisited original inhabitants who were also in the film 25 years previously.

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A Canterbury Tale

Micheal Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1944, bw (8.4*)
This newly restored high definition version of this British wartime film should remind everyone what a classic film it remains. Absolutely beautiful to look at, the films closing sequence contains some of the most beautiful black and white images in popular films.

The story uses Chaucer's classic Canterbury Tales as inspiration, updating it to wartime England; The three travelers to Canterbury are a local girl whose husband is missing in action, who's come here to work; an American GI sergeant interested in the local scenery; and a British sergeant stationed nearby for pre-invasion training. The three become involved in the "glue bandit" crime when the girl becomes a victim of what has to be the most bizarre crime in cinema mysteries. Along the pilgrim road to Canterbury we see the British countryside around Kent, where Powell was born. We are also shown perhaps the most jubilant and whimsical children's mock battle ever captured on film. It's more than a road film, or a local travelogue, though parts are obviously in "Major Exposition" style, to all Powell to relate the history of the area to the audience, a history of a road that goes back 1000 years.

Powell chose two real soldiers for the army sergeant roles, and this was filmed without any major stars at all. Perhaps the soldiers are a little amateurish as actors, but there's no doubt they are real soldiers. On the dvd from Criterion, they've included scenes added to the American release of the film, a perplexing new opening with Kim Hunter on a rooftop in New York discussing this area of England with Sgt. John Sweet, the American soldier in the film. This was her only scene, yet she shared star-billing with all the film's real actors! This is ranked #537 on our Top Ranked survey, #334 on the critics consensus 1000, and deserves the higher ranking in my opinion. It's a small and unassuming film, yet has the Powell/Pressburger magic working.

The film's page at Criterion

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Black Narcissus

Micheal Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1947 (8.5*)
This is one of the most visually stunning films ever made. At the time, it broke new ground in the use of Technicolor, and won Oscars® for cinematographer Jack Cardiff and art director Alfred Junge. The story is a simple one: a group of nuns, led by new a new Mother Superior played by Deborah Kerr, are sent to a remote Himilayan village in India because a local general has donated a large house to them for use as a school and medical clinic.

The location is a daunting castle-like stone building halfway up some steep mountains, overlooking the valley and road below. It was built by a king to house his wives in an isolated locale where they couldn't run away or otherwise misbehave. The nuns are at first excited by the response of the locals, whom they truly desire to help. Soon however, hardships, the spiritual setting, and other temptations begin to erode the faith of some and raise questions of their ultimate survivability. This film is more about locale affecting people than any other picture in memory.

To make this an even more amazing work of art, the entire picture was shot at Pinewood Studios, England using sets, and matte or background paintings! The restoration to dvd has brought back the brilliant lighting and color, copied by Cardiff, a painter, from the art of Vermeer and Rembrandt; "clean light" was one element he mentioned in an interview on the dvd. Being an early trained Technicolor expert actually got Cardiff this job, as this was Powell's first film in color. Kerr is excellent as usual, but the film acting laurels are stolen by Kathleen Byron, who slowly disintegrates under the strain in an unforgettable performance. Two Oscars®.

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Peeping Tom

Michael Powell, 1960 (6.8*)
I'm recommending this for fans of both Psycho and the Powell/Pressburger films, such as A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven), The Red Shoes, and Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. However, it's far more similar to Psycho than the other films of Powell's. This is an eerie story about a psychopathic film cameraman, who carries a handheld film camera around to photograph everyday events, almost as an obsession.

We find early in the film that his father was a scientist, who specialized in fear, especially in children. It apparently left Mark, played icily by Carl Boehm, with a decidedly Peter Lorre voice (it's uncanny!), a bit scarred emotionally and also voyeristic. He also enjoys watching people's emotional reactions, and especially on film. Of course, we also know early on he's a bit homicidal as a result, so the suspense comes in seeing if he will kill the women he's close to or if he's too close to bear hurting them.

For Powell, it's a bit overt compared to his more artistic films. As inspired by Psycho, it's actually quite good, as for me that film degenerated into a near laughable conclusion, while Peeping Tom never does that at least. Well filmed like all of Powell's, just not one of his best efforts to me.

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The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1943 (8.2*)Entertaining spoof of traditional 18th century British military aristocracy, which became a mid-war critique of the ‘gentleman’s war’ mentality of previous wars, now being rendered obsolete and ineffective against the Nazis. This version is a restored 1983 one that added back originally deleted footage, so now the running time is over 2.5 hrs, making it an epic comedy; though many call this version a masterpiece of cinema, I think that's overblown. It's more like that generation's Dr. Strangelove, though a lot slower and less innovative. It is to be praised for the stand it took however, actually being critical of the British military's 'old guard'.

Roger Livesey has a career role as General Wynne-Candy, a part originally written for Laurence Olivier but his studio wouldn’t release him to Archer for this film. Deborah Kerr has a field day in three separate roles, one for each generation, as the film covers half a century in a man’s life. Despite some incredible individual scenes (such as a duel that features a rising camera shot from above), down a star for the length hurting the overall pace.

Based on a British newspaper cartoon called Colonel Blimp, which poked fun at the outdated military aristocracy that had ruled during the Crimean and other wars up through WW1. Churchill fought the film’s release, thinking it would hurt morale, and the attempted ban made the film a box office giant as the studio advertised the “film banned by the government”, who then (in a secret memorandum) said the film “is so boring that hardly anyone will sit through it.”

Note: Powell (director) and Pressburger (writer) also did The Red Shoes in 1947, and Black Narcissus (1947) which were better films overall.

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