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A Matter Of Life And Death
Release Date: 24 March 2000
Distributor: UIP
Certificate: U
Starring: David Niven, Kim Hunter, Robert Coote, Kathleen Byron, Richard Attenborough
Director: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Running Time: 106 mins
Don't you just hate it when someone starts talking about some old forties movie and adopting a wistful look and gazing nostalgically up at the sky they say "Ah They don't make them like that any more."

Well, I'm afraid those words are just aching to pass my lips right now.

Made in 1946 with the horrors and heartache of war and conflict still immediate and fresh in people's minds it tells the story of a British airman, played to perfection by David Niven, who survives what should have been a fatal air-crash and his ensuing reluctance to head heaven-ward when an angel comes to collect him with the unwelcome news that no-one is allowed to cheat death.
One of the main reasons that he feels that he deserves a second chance is that over the course of a couple of hours he has also fallen in love with the American air controller (Kim Hunter) who has desperately tried to talk him back to safety and we find ourselves thrown into one man's struggle to make sense of the world around him and fighting for one small chance to live again.

The special effects and film tricks, which are used to convey the differing worlds of Heaven and Earth are as simple as they are striking, with the stairway to the afterlife and Heaven itself filmed in black and white while all earth-bound action is seen in glorious Technicolour. The action freezes whenever heavenly messengers appear as if time can be made to stand still at any point making for the constant presence of some all-powerful all-knowing force.
The humour in the movie is neither underplayed nor overstated considering the upsetting nature of the subject matter but juxtaposed with the constant comings and goings of the souls of nurses, soldiers, airmen, sailors, civilians and other assorted victims of an ongoing war gives the film a pathos which at the time must have affected audiences in a way that we can now only safely speculate on.

The finale of the film is undoubtedly it's most wonderful and awe-inspiring moment as Niven stands in a colossal celestial courtroom in the centre of thousands of spectators where he is allowed to plead his case to have that second chance. His pleas are not just those of an airman in limbo, battling to return to a human existence, but of any of us who were thrust into that same situation where we would want to cheat death and be allowed an opportunity, however slim, to hang onto this mortal coil.
I can feel myself adopting a wistful look and my gaze slowly and nostalgically turns skyward