10 War Movie Moments You'll Never Forget
1. The Afterlife Revealed - A Matter Of Life And Death
Is it controversial to call A Matter of Life and Death a war film? It's certainly not one in the traditional sense, and could arguably be more accurately categorised as a fantasy romance. Equally, though, war looms so large over Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's film that it feels wrong to ignore it in a list like this.
A remarkable effort from the two filmmakers, 1946's A Matter of Life and Death is both an expressionistic reckoning with the unfathomable scale of loss incurred throughout the Second World War, as well as a rousing, uplifting rallying cry for the joy of living. The film focuses on the love affair between a British bomber pilot who was fated to die and an American radio operator who stays with him as he goes down over the channel. The pilot, Peter Carter (played by a career-best David Niven), wakes up the next day alive and well on an English beach, and promptly begins a romance with the radio operator, June (Kim Hunter), who stayed with him in his final moments.
The problem is - Niven's pilot was meant to die the night of that raid, but his "Conductor" (a sort of angel, manifested here as an 18th-century French aristocrat) couldn't find him over the English Channel's fog. He thus has to plead his case to the afterlife - depicted here entirely in black and white, compared to the technicolour vibrancy of Earth - that he should live. At the same time, Peter is faced with a stark medical diagnosis, lending weight to the interpretation that his battle with the other side is purely hallucinatory, and perhaps a means of processing his survivor's guilt.
For how light and ethereal A Matter of Life and Death can be, there is something supremely weighty about the story, whose one actual scene of combat depicts death in stark, unforgiving terms. There's a real rawness here in that the film confronts the tragedy of the Second World War so soon after its end, particularly in that it finds the strength to retain an uplifting spirit and seek beauty, reaffirming a desire for love and life in the wake of so much death.
Most scenes in the film leave a profound impression, but none more so than the introduction of the afterlife in the opening act. Here, Powell and Pressburger reveal a tranquil, epic bureaucracy - a pristine visual creation in which souls ascend stairways and angels peer into the void of humanity below. It's the film's indelible visual hallmark, and a moving confrontation with one of our darkest hours.