A Matter of Life and Death

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s timeless romantic fantasy, with David Niven as an airman trapped between life and death.

First mooted as a project to foster an improvement in Anglo-American relations, A Matter of Life and Death emerged as a timeless romantic fantasy. David Niven plays Peter Carter, a young airman seemingly doomed before his time and trapped between life and death, between a Technicolor earth and a monochrome heaven.

There have been other films that have dealt with heaven and earth but none possessed quite the ambition or visual flair of AMoLaD. Ranked joint 78th in the 2022 Sight and Sound Great Films of All Time poll.