The Story Archive

A Matter of Life and Death

Powell & Pressburger · 1946 CE · Film · English · Contemporary

An RAF pilot jumps from his burning bomber without a parachute after falling in love over the radio with the American operator taking his last words, and an error in the celestial ledger leaves him alive to be claimed. Earth is Technicolor and the other world monochrome — a deliberate inversion — while a foppish revolutionary conductor shuttles between them and the case goes to a heavenly tribunal. Commissioned to ease Anglo-American friction, it is regularly voted among the greatest British films.

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