Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Harmonia (A) on January 24, 2009 at 21:09:02

In Reply to: RE: Can you provide ANY details? Any???? nt posted by tinear on January 24, 2009 at 14:51:45

Powell and Pressberger at their peak, which ought to tell you all you need to know about one of the most cinematic duos in movie history.

From Amazon.com's Robert Horton:

"A Matter of Life and Death is one of the best films by the storied English filmmaking team known as the Archers: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Among other felicities, this 1946 fantasy has one of the most crackling opening ten minutes of any movie you'll ever see: after a deceptively dreamy prologue, we are thrown into the conversation between an airman (David Niven) whose torched plane is about to crash in the English Channel, and an American military radio operator (Kim Hunter) operating the radio on the ground. Their touching exchange, made urgent by his imminent death, is breathtakingly visualized (you have never seen a WWII plane interior quite as vividly as this). What follows is glorious: Niven's death has been missed by an otherworldly collector (Marius Goring)--all that thick English fog, you know--and so he gets to argue his case for life before a heavenly tribunal. The heaven sequences are in pearly black-and-white, the earthly material in stunning Technicolor (the color is the cause of a particularly good in-joke). The Powell-Pressburger brief on behalf of humanity is both romantic and witty, and the wonderful cast is especially enriched by Roger Livesey (the star of Powell and Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp), as a doctor with a camera obscura and an enormous heart."

This is a wonderful and inventive film. I love it, although I probably haven't seen in in 15 years - an ommission I plan to remedy very soon, with joy. Niven is excellent in it, while the supporting cast is purely marvelous.

I think the best way to prepare for it is NOT to prepare or read reviews but to watch it and enjoy it with as clean an eye as possible. Like all great movies, it speaks for itself.