Capital Celluloid 2023 — Day 12: Thu Jan 12

A Matter of Life and Death (Powell/Pressburger, 1946): Castle Cinema, 7.30pm

This 16mm presentation by the Cine-Real team is also screening on January 8th. Full details can be found via this link.

Chicago Reader review:
This enduring 1946 Technicolor fantasy by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger began as a propaganda piece meant to cement wobbly British-American postwar relations, and some of that theme survives, notably in the climactic trial scene set in heaven. But the rest is given over to a delirious romanticism, tinged with morbidity, mysticism, and humor. David Niven is the British fighter pilot who misses his appointment with death, falling in love with a Wac (Kim Hunter) on his borrowed time. Powell had more and bigger ideas than any other postwar British director: his use of color and bold graphic images is startling and exhilarating, as is his willingness to explore the subsidiary themes of Pressburger’s screenplay, never sacrificing creative excitement to linear plot. And yet, for all its abstraction, the film remains emotionally specific and affecting.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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