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And we spout and speak to reveal the rush as it bubbles out
On the one hand, A Matter of Life and Death (1946) is my least favorite Powell and Pressburger. It's a superlative afterlife fantasy in the tradition of Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), which is the problem: it's the Archers doing, excellently, a kind of story other people do. I don't hate it. I like the premise, which flips the opening glitch of Jordan so that instead of snatching a man untimely into the afterlife, a psychopomp lets his assigned soul slip away into the world; I love its filming of Earth in color and the "Other World" in black and white, whence Wim Wenders and his Berlin angels; I really love its double-tracking of the plot in both mystical and medical registers and the way it refuses to resolve one over the other, eventually, rightly merging the two. I have always suspected that after the credits roll, somewhere among the stars Marius Goring's Conductor 71 and Edward Everett Horton's Messenger 7013 are gloomily comparing notes on their respective balls-ups and wondering if Alan Rickman's Metatron was right that angels can't get drunk. It has one of the great escalators of cinema. It's objectively good and I know it's widely loved. But it's easily the least weird thing the Archers ever committed to celluloid. I can't tell if its otherworld is deliberately dry or if my ideas of the numinous just for once parted ways with the filmmakers', but I found more resonance in the real-world scenes with their odd touches like a naked goatherd piping on an English beach, the camera obscura through which Roger Livesey's Dr. Reeves watches the town around him, or the mechanicals within mechanicals of an amateur rehearsal of A Midsummer Night's Dream, than I did in the monumental administration of heaven and the courts of the assembled dead. I watched it in the first rush of discovery following A Canterbury Tale (1944) and as many other films by Powell and Pressburger as I could lay my hands on; I was disappointed. It didn't work for me even as well as Black Narcissus (1947), which I want to see again now that I'm not expecting real India. On the same hand, the Brattle is showing a 4K DCP rather than a print, which means that I'd be settling for an approximation of the pearly Technicolor monochrome of the Other World, which is still astonishing enough in digital transfer that I really want to know what it looked like on the original 35 mm, and the same goes for the rest of Jack Cardiff's cinematography.
On the other hand, the screening will be introduced by Thelma Schoonmaker and this is how Andrew Moor in Powell and Pressburger: A Cinema of Magic Spaces (2012) writes about David Niven as Squadron Leader Peter David Carter, the pilot hero of A Matter of Life and Death (look out, textbrick, for once it's not me):
Never an actor of great range, Niven came instead to embody and to articulate a rather out-of-date ideal: gentlemanliness – or 'noblesse oblige'. His light tenor and gamin beauty are those of the nobility: he reveals, if provoked, the upright steeliness of a man with backbone, but this grit often shades over into a likeable, smiling insolence. Though we knew he could be naughty (and the actor was a noted practical joker), it was the forgivable naughtiness of a well-liked schoolboy It is usually his graceful amusement that impresses, rather than his physicality or intellect (to talk of 'grace' might seem antiquated, but old-fashioned words like that seem to fit). He could be the younger son of a minor aristocrat, at times silly but always charming, and in the last instance gallant, gazing upwards with a sparkle in his eyes, a light comedian who, through sensing the necessity of nonsense, is perfect as Phileas Fogg in Around the World in Eighty Days (Michael Anderson, 1956, US). He is fittingly dashing in The Elusive Pimpernel (Powell and Pressburger, 1950), where as Sir Percy Blakeney he embraces foppishness with gusto. His 'airy' quality is winning, and his poetic virtues shine in AMOLAD. He may be well-mannered and eloquent but, as charmers go, his 'classiness' sits easily . . . He is undoubtedly an affectionate figure. Unkindness is not in him, and he is important in our gallery of heroes. But he is never like John Mills, the democratic 1940s 'Everyman'. Mills is the boy next door to everybody and, while that is a nice neighborhood, we really aspire to live next door to Niven. Is it a question of class? We suppose Niven to be a good host of better parties. Mills is like us; Niven is exotic. Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and during the war Niven stood for some of the most valued of principles, but his quality (or was it just his prettiness?) seemed the stuff of a previous, and probably mythical, time. Niven himself was a Sandhurst-trained army man, who joined the Highland Light Infantry in 1928 and served in Malta for two years before drifting towards America and into film acting. In 1939, when he left Hollywood for the army, he was a star, and managed to complete two propaganda films during the war while also serving in the Rifle Brigade . . . In the opening sequence of AMOLAD, it is hard to think of another actor who could mouth Powell and Pressburger's airborne script so convincingly. Bravely putting his house in order, saying his farewells and leaping from his burning plane, he is ridiculously, tearfully beautiful. Notably, it is his voice, travelling to Earth in radio waves, which first attracts the young American girl June, not his looks, and later it is his mind which is damaged, not his body. It is difficult, in fact, to think of the slender Niven in terms of his body at all. We remember the face, and a moustache even more precise and dapper than Anton Walbrook's (which was hiding something). Like Michael Redgrave in The Way to the Stars, he is the most celebrated man of war – the pilot who belongs in the clouds.
So I'm thinking about it.
On the other hand, the screening will be introduced by Thelma Schoonmaker and this is how Andrew Moor in Powell and Pressburger: A Cinema of Magic Spaces (2012) writes about David Niven as Squadron Leader Peter David Carter, the pilot hero of A Matter of Life and Death (look out, textbrick, for once it's not me):
Never an actor of great range, Niven came instead to embody and to articulate a rather out-of-date ideal: gentlemanliness – or 'noblesse oblige'. His light tenor and gamin beauty are those of the nobility: he reveals, if provoked, the upright steeliness of a man with backbone, but this grit often shades over into a likeable, smiling insolence. Though we knew he could be naughty (and the actor was a noted practical joker), it was the forgivable naughtiness of a well-liked schoolboy It is usually his graceful amusement that impresses, rather than his physicality or intellect (to talk of 'grace' might seem antiquated, but old-fashioned words like that seem to fit). He could be the younger son of a minor aristocrat, at times silly but always charming, and in the last instance gallant, gazing upwards with a sparkle in his eyes, a light comedian who, through sensing the necessity of nonsense, is perfect as Phileas Fogg in Around the World in Eighty Days (Michael Anderson, 1956, US). He is fittingly dashing in The Elusive Pimpernel (Powell and Pressburger, 1950), where as Sir Percy Blakeney he embraces foppishness with gusto. His 'airy' quality is winning, and his poetic virtues shine in AMOLAD. He may be well-mannered and eloquent but, as charmers go, his 'classiness' sits easily . . . He is undoubtedly an affectionate figure. Unkindness is not in him, and he is important in our gallery of heroes. But he is never like John Mills, the democratic 1940s 'Everyman'. Mills is the boy next door to everybody and, while that is a nice neighborhood, we really aspire to live next door to Niven. Is it a question of class? We suppose Niven to be a good host of better parties. Mills is like us; Niven is exotic. Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and during the war Niven stood for some of the most valued of principles, but his quality (or was it just his prettiness?) seemed the stuff of a previous, and probably mythical, time. Niven himself was a Sandhurst-trained army man, who joined the Highland Light Infantry in 1928 and served in Malta for two years before drifting towards America and into film acting. In 1939, when he left Hollywood for the army, he was a star, and managed to complete two propaganda films during the war while also serving in the Rifle Brigade . . . In the opening sequence of AMOLAD, it is hard to think of another actor who could mouth Powell and Pressburger's airborne script so convincingly. Bravely putting his house in order, saying his farewells and leaping from his burning plane, he is ridiculously, tearfully beautiful. Notably, it is his voice, travelling to Earth in radio waves, which first attracts the young American girl June, not his looks, and later it is his mind which is damaged, not his body. It is difficult, in fact, to think of the slender Niven in terms of his body at all. We remember the face, and a moustache even more precise and dapper than Anton Walbrook's (which was hiding something). Like Michael Redgrave in The Way to the Stars, he is the most celebrated man of war – the pilot who belongs in the clouds.
So I'm thinking about it.
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Bureaucracy in Hell is wryly amusing, but in Heaven it's always a little disappointing, even if there is precedent in folklore. I can deal with it if it's implied the mundaneity is only a veil to keep from overwhelming newly-arrived human souls.
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It works for me in comedy: I like it in Here Comes Mr. Jordan, where it's gravely tongue-in-cheek in a way that still allows for grace notes of the otherworldly among the clerical red tape, and it's broader but still funny in The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945), which is a mess but an enjoyable one, and I was even cool with it in The Adjustment Bureau (2011), a rare (and surprisingly decent) modern entry in this subgenre. A Matter of Life and Death is not primarily a comedy, except maybe insofar as it aspires to the Dantean sense, and it fell flat for me. There are moments in the Other World that I do like: the vast, dreamlike escalator itself, the ancient statues lining it where Lincoln stands beside Plato and Solomon. Raymond Massey playing a patriotic American is existentially confusing, though.
Speaking of bureaucracy in hell, have you seen Angel on My Shoulder (1946)? I find everything about this movie adorable, including Claude Rains as one of my favorite screen depictions of the Devil.
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Having said that, it's not one of my favorites. I think the romance lets it down (although onscreen m/f romance is almost never something I like, so take it for what it's worth) as does the sudden arrival of international relations as a theme in the last half hour.
Roger Livesey is marvelous, though.
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That would make sense. What I remember feeling is that I couldn't believe its heaven—it wasn't strange enough—whereas its earthly world was full of all sorts of plausible quirks. I'd seen the Archers be so good with the fantastic in so many different forms, it was an unexpected letdown.
Having said that, it's not one of my favorites. I think the romance lets it down (although onscreen m/f romance is almost never something I like, so take it for what it's worth) as does the sudden arrival of international relations as a theme in the last half hour.
It's the film of theirs that feels most like Hollywood. It's the most conventionally romantic. It behaves the most like other people's movies. I had forgotten about the aggressive international relations until you mentioned it, but it's a much clunkier handling of the theme than in A Canterbury Tale: romantic love is the expected way of bridging borders, but I really appreciate when it's woodworking instead. I keep falling back on saying that A Matter of Life and Death isn't weird enough, but it really isn't. It isn't just the Other World. It's the whole atmosphere. Some of it could only have been the Archers, but too much of it could have passed muster at MGM.
Roger Livesey is marvelous, though.
Agreed: I don't think I've ever seen him in anything where he wasn't. I still don't think he'd have been a good Colpeper, but he was a perfect Frank Reeves.
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That's understandable. As far as I can tell, the Archers could do numinous accidentally.
I am sure it will disappoint me again if I see it on Sunday, but I do want to know if I can see in David Niven what Andrew Moor does. My first pick for ridiculously beautiful person in A Matter of Life and Death would have been Roger Livesey, even with that beard.
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It has one of the great escalators of cinema --a *very* intriguing sentence!
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May I ask which ones those are?
--a *very* intriguing sentence!
It's true! I can recommend the film for it so long as you take the rest into account!
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Weirdly, one that jumped into my head as I was trying to think of some was the very end of the movie Morgan (1966). Looking at Wikipedia's plot synopsis of it, I see that we're meant to take the final scene as him at an insane asylum, but when I saw it (as a teen, babysitting), I thought he'd died (because the scene previous had been of him lying in a pile of junk (IIRC--it's been decades), looking like he was dying. So that last scene, of him tending a garden, with his wife--who'd left him--visiting him and smiling and pregnant--I took to be him in heaven, and it definitely worked for me as such. I guess it's just wish fulfillment (Morgan's wishes), but they're such nurturing wishes.
For a contrast of success and failure from the same author, I'd say I liked heaven as Aslan's Country in the Narnia series, as basically what-you-like-about-being-alive-but-better, and didn't care so much for heaven in The Great Divorce, though I liked several of the things that *happened* in that heaven (several of the metaphysical points being explored). The overall *place*, though, felt alienating. Whereas, I thought the depiction of purgatory/hell in The Great Divorce was excellent: it too was alienating (but on purpose this time), chilly, lonely, self-absorbed, genuinely awful. Endless mainly empty back streets in the outlying districts of an industrial city,** in the rain. But I think it's easier to create good portrayals of hell than heaven.
Oh--another portrayal of heaven in fiction that I liked, though it's not called heaven, is in Lloyd Alexander's The Rope Trick.
**It's a cliché to have hell be industrial and heaven pastoral; I don't think it has to be that way. I think you can have an urban-seeming heaven (e.g., New Jerusalem) and a non-industrial hell--some barren, blasted landscape, maybe.
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I guess in our life on earth, misery can be grinding, destructive, crushing for a LONG TIME. Whereas, moments of joy are brief. If people are lucky, they can exist in a state of contentment and engagement with the world, and that's heavenly, but I think people tend not to see it that way; they see it as just their base state (if they're so lucky as to have that as their base state).
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I can see that being disappointing. It also sounds like lopsided writing, if hell is unpleasant just to witness but heaven is blank unles you're participating in it. Unless it's some kind of tightly closed, subjective experience, I should think that a reasonable heaven would make you feel good just to be near.
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I know it may not have been intended as a recommendation, but this really makes me want to see Morgan.
But I think it's easier to create good portrayals of hell than heaven.
I think that's true. Which is another reason why I don't understand the charge that goodness is boring—if it's so simple, why is it so difficult to represent properly?
Oh--another portrayal of heaven in fiction that I liked, though it's not called heaven, is in Lloyd Alexander's The Rope Trick.
That must be late Alexander, because I haven't read it. What's its not-called-heaven like?
It's a cliché to have hell be industrial and heaven pastoral; I don't think it has to be that way. I think you can have an urban-seeming heaven (e.g., New Jerusalem) and a non-industrial hell--some barren, blasted landscape, maybe.
Diane Duane's Timeheart is a very good urban heaven, or at least the piece of it that we see in So You Want to Be a Wizard (1982) is: it's New York City, the best version of itself at the heart of time where nothing that is loved is lost.
Davy Jones' Locker as depicted in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) is great sailors' hell: a barren white salt pan, no ocean for miles or millennia and not even the hallucination of it after a while. (There were so many plotting problems with the second and third films, but the mythology was impeccable.)
The Rope Trick
What's its not-called-heaven like?
"But--what is this place?" Lidi pressed. "How did we get here?"
"You went though the threads," Ferramondo said. "as I told Pompadoro--go beyond the threads and everything's possible. Here? Quite a remarkable place, altogether fascinating. You'll be amazed at what there is to see and do. I doubt that anyone's come to the end of it. But you'll want to find that out for yourselves."
Daniella, frisking with the cat, had come to Ferramondo. "Are there piggies, too?"
"Of course," Ferramondo said. "All the animals. You've met my donkey, Aceto--he got here before I did and the dear old fellow waited for me. Pistachio and I arrived together. Go along with them. They'll show you whatever you like."
Re: The Rope Trick
I'll try to read it. Thank you.
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I remembered this when watching the movie last night. I think what I particularly liked about that scene was that Peter, waking up after his jump without a parachute, has every reason to suppose he’s arrived in the afterlife; and for a while everything he sees—-the shoreline, the black dog supervising him from the dunes, the young goatherd with his pipe—-supports that assumption by looking appropriately mythic.
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Yes! I like that way of seeing it a lot.
For the record, it turned out that I did like the film much better when I showed it to