MOVIE · 1946

A Matter of Life and Death

ComedyDramaFantasyRomanceWar104 min

After bailing out of his burning plane over wartime England, RAF pilot Peter Carter (David Niven) survives long enough to meet June, the American radio operator who heard what he thought were his final words. Their sudden romance is interrupted when a messenger from the hereafter arrives to correct the mistake that left Peter alive, sending Peter into a celestial appeal for the right to remain on earth. Kim Hunter is June, steady and clear-eyed opposite Niven’s dry warmth, as Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger move between an English coast in lush Technicolor and a stark black-and-white afterlife.