The Matter of Life & Dying (1946) is a film per British writer-director-producer team of Powell & Pressburger. A America title for the release was Staircase to Heaven, which was from either a film's virtually all large special effect: a wide marble escalator linking heaven and globe.

Story

A film stars David Niven as Peter Carter, a WW2 British bomber pilot forced to bail out over the English Channel forswearing a chute; Kim Hunter as June, the British-depending U.s. radio operator world health organization talks to him in the couple of minutes prior to he jumps & by owning whom he late lessens soft on; Roger Livesey as Dr. Reeves, a doctor friend of June, world health organization cares for & late pleads for the life of Carter prior to the supernal court; & Marius Goring as the poor Conductor 71, world health organization fails to catch Carter's soul when his person drops from either a plane, & world health organization so is responsible Carter existence alive beyond a date appointed for his dying.

A film's action requires place olympian games inside Technicolor, and witharound heaven in black-and-white. Around essence, Carter, world health organization should use died, doesn't clean soh since Conductor 71 was unable to watch him falling owing to the "English Fog" on top a channel; Conductor 71, a Frenchman, is unimpressed. Carter lands in a sandbank, & is noticed by June world health organization is cycling back from either her nightshift; the pair fall smitten. Conductor 71 appears, stopping instance to discuss by owning Carter a reasonableness of Carter coming immediately to Heaven, since his instance was higher. Carter, infatuated, garbage &, inter alia, demands that a matter of his dying become put to test.

Within Earthly time, meanwhile, Carter's visions of Conductor 71 are diagnosed by Doctor Reeves when arising from either either a brain injury sustained in the fall from the plane, & he is scheduled for surgery. the demise of Reeves witharound a bike accident makes him available in Heaven to plead his friend's out break: which is that, across there are no fault of his own, Carter has fallen enamored & currently has an earthly commitment which should have precedence all over Conductor 71's claim in Carter's soul.

the matter comes to the head prior to a ethereal court of the whole people of heaven - inside cinematographic terms, you zoom retired from either an amphitheatre to discover that the extent of its size occurs as spiral galaxy. Carter steps in to a mammoth moving stairway to Heaven when the test requires place, when Reeves & Conductor 71 call for witnesses from either history to provide evidence for even of these side or a more.

Influence

A architecture of the film's Heaven is observably modernist; vast & open project, sustaining immense broadside observation holes below which a clouds of Globe may be seen. This vision of Heaven was later on the inspiration for the project of a bus terminal around Walsall, England, by architects Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, & a film's amphitheatre court scene was rendered by British Telecom inside an TV advertisement in astir 2002 as a metaphor for communication technology, especially the Internet.

A film garners praise, typically couched inside sentences including words like "subversive" & "surreal".

Inside 2004 the magazine Total Film named A Matter of Life & Demise a Second greatest British film ever manufactured.