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will.15's Avatar
Semper Fooey
Finally got around to seeing A Matter of Life and Death this evening, and I loved it. It felt very "modern" both because of the visual techniques and the storytelling ones (a reference to Technicolor? How meta). It rather reminded me of It's a Wonderful Life in that regard, and what do you know, they both came out in 1946.

Great stuff. Can't wait to dive into some of Powell and Pressburger's other collaborations.
I juat watched it for the first time all the way through. I just saw the beginning before. I didn't like it. After a good start it goes downhill.
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Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
I juat watched it for the first time all the way through. I just saw the beginning before. I didn't like it. After a good start it goes downhill.
I guess that means you have a dead heart and a dead imagination.


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On the last page there was a very serious and entertaining review from a "British person" about The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, I thought I should include my own, especially since it fits into mafo's MoFo Top 100 which is certainly working its way to a Top 200. I'm posting lots more there (here?) starting now.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Archers, 1943)




This film has always been mind-boggling and it continues to be so today. It basically crystallizes what the Archers are about: not just being "British", but being alive and unable to confess to one's own sins. The other thing about this film is that the writing (mostly Pressburger) and the direction (mostly Maestro Powell) are so personal that it takes film to a whole new level. Yeah, past Citizen Kane, but of all the RKO Films released in 1941, I prefer The Devil and Daniel Webster to Citizen Kane, so there, and I've been to Hearst's Castle five times.

This film is mostly about love and war. Since they seem to go so "well" together it make sense. However, I'm talking about things which aren't purely visual or emotional. Michael Powell is just about the most-visionary director in film history. Some of you here probably implied it but didn't take it that far. I'm totally obsessed with his subjective shots of motorcycles and cars. He also just uses effects, angles and unique lighting to convey emotions which even van Gogh would find difficult. Major General Clive Wynne-Candy (Roger Livesey) is a very sincere British officer who has been horored from 1943 back to 1902 (and then back again since the storytelling is so damn great), but he still believes in some kind of military code involving "gentleman officers" even though it didn't occur in either World War. The thing is that "Sugar" Candy's fave male person in the world is one he met quite by accident. This friend is Teo, a German officer who "drew lots" and "won" the honor to fight Clive in a duel even if he's never seen him. It will become the key event in both men's lives since it involves Miss Hunter's presence.

Something, which you'll have to decide is important or irrelevant is that Clive is such a big-game hunter and that Edith's surname is Hunter. One of the awesome things about this flick is that the gorgeous, 22-year-old, red-headed Deborah Kerr is so important and so visionary (ahead of her time) in each of her three encarnations.

I don't mean for this to be a or even my final word about The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, but you can easily write a book about it and more than one has been written. However, I would be remiss if I didn't mention some of Powell's "long takes" in the final film. The first one involves Clive fighting a young punk in the "bath". He went in as a 70-year-old and came out a 30-year-old, so that's planned. The other thing which HAS to be mentioned is that Anton Walbrook was/is one of the greatest actors to have ever lived. His scene prior to Britain entering WWII, where he has to explain why he didn't ditch Nazi Germany earlier (his wife and kids were being "absorbed/destroyed") turns into a scene which can almost only rival Quint's speech about the U.S.S. Indianapolis in Jaws.
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will.15's Avatar
Semper Fooey
I juat watched it for the first time all the way through. I just saw the beginning before. I didn't like it. After a good start it goes downhill.
I guess that means you have a dead heart and a dead imagination.

The trial didn't make any sense. It is supposed to be heaven and the prosecutor hates the English and the original jury hated the English? How did those hatemongers get in heaven? What was he on trial for anyway? The prosecuter was attacking him because of his nationality! If he was in love he could stay on Earth? Wouldn't God know the answer to that? I couldn't believe the premise. It is no way in the same class of It's a Wonderful Life or even Here Comes Mr. Jordan and the remake, Heaven Can Wait. Kim Hunter playing the American girl with her New England accent sounded practically no different than the upper class Brits she was playing with.

Defending Your Life also was superior.



The People's Republic of Clogher
I can't believe the premise of Alien but I still love it...


The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
I ordered the Criterion Edition DVD of Blimp this morning, as it happens.

I first saw it when I was a teenager and it immediately became the most captivating war-themed film I'd seen. This was in the era of Red Dawn, so it had stiff competition.

Damn those Criterion Blu Rays being region-coded. God Damn them all to Hell! /Chuck

I really should get the UK Peeping Tom BD but the thought of an HD-ified Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes has me jealously salivating.

I'm gonna have to save up for a region free player.
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Yeah, I mean, it's a premise. Also, there are little hints that maybe-kinda allow you to believe it was in his head, in which case every little problem listed fades away. But really, it's just an unusual, whimsical take on the afterlife.

I could be wrong, but I think they might even go out of their way not to verify that the place in question is heaven, anyway. So it might not be heaven at all, and if it is, it's clearly just conceptualizing it differently than most people do it. The former, I think, deflects all the criticisms listed, and the latter at least boils them down to a matter of taste, no?



I know there are hints that it's in his head, and this is largely a matter of taste, but I also had a very hard time swallowing the trial in A Matter of Life and Death -- enough that it really drags down my enjoyment of the film even in spite of some incredible scenes like when the pilot wakes up on the beach (that is the scene that seems most heaven-like and imaginative to me by far. Not the romantic stuff and least of all the trial.)

As Tacitus says, an unbelievable premise isn't worth disowning a film for, but I tend to agree with will. It's not just that it's unbelievable, but putting love "on trial" seems metaphorically clumsy and also feels somehow literal-minded to me. Even if it is supposed to be occurring in the flawed mind of a human being, I had a hard time caring, and especially caring about whether or not a brit could love an American (no-brainer: of course) and then extending that to the question of whether metaphysically America can "love" Britain felt nebulous and goofy. All that is in spite of some other good scenes, and many of Powell's other movies which are great (and I would count Colonel Blimp and A Canterbury Tale among those, so I hope that keeps me from being cast eternally into the pit of heartless imaginationlessness, whatever the "f" that means).



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
I loved the entirety of A Matter of Life and Death and listening to the complaints makes me seem like I live in a completely different world than some others. At no time did I feel the film ever dropped below the magical realm. As far as the specifics of the trial, I thought it was a court of justice and not law. I also don't think that love was put on trial and that the film has nothing to do with America loving England. I realize that in another thread someone implied that because of something she read on the internet, but that's not "evidence" to me. More about the trial later.

Overriding everything in the film is the wonderfully creative and incredibly visceral filmmaking skill on display, and at no time do I see it faltering. Yes, I said it was the most romantic film I've ever seen, and I'll admit the most romantic scenes are right up front, as are many of the most modern and spellbinding. But that doesn't detract from what comes later; it only serves to prepare you for something surprising. Apparently near the end, some got something they found so surprising that it bewildered them. After a scroll at the beginning tells you that it's all in the mind of a pilot, we have the incredible tour of the Universe followed by the super-intense scenes in the burning plane. After Peter jumps out of the plane, he "survives" and finds himself in what he believes to be Heaven but then he sees and finds June, the American he'd just met and fell in love with over the plane's radio. All that is awesome. But then again, so are all the sets and effects in the Afterlife, which is far more satirically bureaucratic than you would imagine a real "Heaven". Then there's the camera obscura, all the scenes playing with things happening outside of time, the hospital/operation scenes, the grand "courtroom" in the sky which appears to become a spiral galaxy and the stairway which goes up and down.

At every moment of the film, the breathtaking photography and the sure joy of visually-creative filmmaking is on display. I'll shut up and get to the trial. The ending is more about putting the bureaucratic system on trial than it is about countries, but the prosecutor gleefully holds a grudge against an Englishman since he was killed by one during the Revolutionary War. He could just have easily been a Hatfield killed by a McCoy for all the significance it entails, but that would be about a different trial. The defense is attempting to prove that since the mistake was not Peter's that he shouldn't pay for it with his life. Of course, during all this time, Peter is actually fighting for his life undergoing a serious brain operation. The defense's only "evidence" is June's tear but that is supposed to prove that love conquers all, even ethereal bureaucracy. I think that people who somehow read into the film's agenda something which says that America and Britain were somehow enemies after winning WWII and need to be reconciled have confused Britain with Russia. Not surprisingly, I don't find the film too-literal but the viewers who want to fight it (for whatever reasons) to be. Then again, if the scriptwriters can write out the plot and dialogue the way they want, I will agree that any viewer can interpret it whatever way they want. Just remember that I can do the same thing too with any movie. In fact, I actually like to think it all wasn't in his head. It makes me feel happier and better about the meaning of life. Oh, if you didn't know - it's all explained in the movies.



will.15's Avatar
Semper Fooey
The movie didn't work for me and I certainly didn't watch it with any attitude, only having a vague understanding of the plot. At every level, even technically, it was vastly inferior to another romantic fantasy from the same period, Portrait of Jennie. The movie is visually impressive at the start, but the trial is very stagily done and the dialogue there is clumsy. The trial wrecked the movie for me. I didn't quite fully grasp it at the time, but I think LS is right, and it was some kind of metaphor about the American/British relationship The trial doesn't make much sense if that isn't what it was really about. If it was all in his head, how did he survive that fall without a parachute?

By the way, I definitely think it was heaven because none of the dead soldiers were German or Japanese. Apparently they went straight to Hell.



I loved the entirety of A Matter of Life and Death and listening to the complaints makes me seem like I live in a completely different world than some others. At no time did I feel the film ever dropped below the magical realm. As far as the specifics of the trial, I thought it was a court of justice and not law. I also don't think that love was put on trial and that the film has nothing to do with America loving England. I realize that in another thread someone implied that because of something she read on the internet, but that's not "evidence" to me. More about the trial later.

Overriding everything in the film is the wonderfully creative and incredibly visceral filmmaking skill on display, and at no time do I see it faltering. Yes, I said it was the most romantic film I've ever seen, and I'll admit the most romantic scenes are right up front, as are many of the most modern and spellbinding. But that doesn't detract from what comes later; it only serves to prepare you for something surprising. Apparently near the end, some got something they found so surprising that it bewildered them. After a scroll at the beginning tells you that it's all in the mind of a pilot, we have the incredible tour of the Universe followed by the super-intense scenes in the burning plane. After Peter jumps out of the plane, he "survives" and finds himself in what he believes to be Heaven but then he sees and finds June, the American he'd just met and fell in love with over the plane's radio. All that is awesome. But then again, so are all the sets and effects in the Afterlife, which is far more satirically bureaucratic than you would imagine a real "Heaven". Then there's the camera obscura, all the scenes playing with things happening outside of time, the hospital/operation scenes, the grand "courtroom" in the sky which appears to become a spiral galaxy and the stairway which goes up and down.

At every moment of the film, the breathtaking photography and the sure joy of visually-creative filmmaking is on display. I'll shut up and get to the trial. The ending is more about putting the bureaucratic system on trial than it is about countries, but the prosecutor gleefully holds a grudge against an Englishman since he was killed by one during the Revolutionary War. He could just have easily been a Hatfield killed by a McCoy for all the significance it entails, but that would be about a different trial. The defense is attempting to prove that since the mistake was not Peter's that he shouldn't pay for it with his life. Of course, during all this time, Peter is actually fighting for his life undergoing a serious brain operation. The defense's only "evidence" is June's tear but that is supposed to prove that love conquers all, even ethereal bureaucracy. I think that people who somehow read into the film's agenda something which says that America and Britain were somehow enemies after winning WWII and need to be reconciled have confused Britain with Russia. Not surprisingly, I don't find the film too-literal but the viewers who want to fight it (for whatever reasons) to be. Then again, if the scriptwriters can write out the plot and dialogue the way they want, I will agree that any viewer can interpret it whatever way they want. Just remember that I can do the same thing too with any movie. In fact, I actually like to think it all wasn't in his head. It makes me feel happier and better about the meaning of life. Oh, if you didn't know - it's all explained in the movies.
When I said they put love on trial I was refering to the fact that they put the love between the pilot and the radio opperator on trial, with the teardrop as evidence (whether or not "they" are the phantoms of his mind). What does the teardrop of love have to do with "putting the beaurocracy on trial?" I agree with you that part of the theme of the movie was combatting heaven's beaurocracy (the caprices of fate?) and I think that's an interesting theme; I just don't agree that it's all the trial was about.

I think it was TheGirlWhoHadAllTheLuck who found the internet trivia about the movie's propagandistic aim. I found that interesting after the fact, but I never looked it up or based my impression of the movie's message on that. It came from my impression that prior to the war America had been known for having strong isolationist/anti-internationalist elements, and that diplomacy is often opportunistic rather than altruistic (a matter of love.) Russia has nothing to do with it for me, I wasn't viewing the movie in terms of the binary oppositions Russian would imply: diplomacy vs. war mapped onto love vs. hate. I do think there is an implied opposition there, but it's altruism vs. opportunism (like after the first world war?) mapped onto True love vs. momentary passion, which does seem relevant to immediately postwar English/American relations. I'm not sure this is the right way to read the sentiments of the movie, but it's how I read the cardboard brit-baiting prosecutor antagonizing the very idea of internationalism, by asking if it's even possible for Americans and English to love each other at an individual level. And if that guy is a figment of the British hero's mind then doesn't that imply that he's questioning internationalism and love himself (putting it on trial)?

As to your eloquent defense of the movie's cinematic merits, I don't feel like I have enough of a handle on the whole film after one viewing several months ago to say much about it either way. Most of the times it's those qualities (like the beach scene) that make a movie feel "romantic" to me, rather than the story, so if it grows on me it may be in that dimension. Heck, I didn't even dislike the whole movie, I'm happy to let you have the last word on it.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
I know you didn't literally think of anything concerning Russia but that's why I wanted to mention it. All the things which you and will object to are choices made by Powell and Pressburger in the manner they tell their story. Let's say it is in the mind of the airman, then Peter isn't putting love on trial; rather, he's fearing whether he's a good enough man and that his good fortune when death missed him will not help him keep June in the long run since he claims that he must win his case before the conclusion of the operation. Whether the heavenly episodes are real or not, Peter knows he has a serious brain injury, and along with other things mentioned in the film, it could have been caused by his jump from the plane. Also, since I don't want to get too literal while discussing this film, it's easy to research numerous instances of people surviving jumping out of planes without parachutes and a few of those were actually WWII pilots.

The Anglo-American question that gets batted about concerning this film is whether or not the U.S. stopping of the Lend-Lease program caused a rift between the countries after the war. It was suggested by someone in the government that the Archers make a film somehow obliquely addressing this question to improve relations. However there is not one shred of evidence that the Archers took the suggestion to heart, especially considering that they were independent filmmakers who didn't share their scripts with anyone during filmmaking. They were basically financed by the Rank Organization who were all too happy to give them their money based on the commercial success of their previous features. However, it's certainly true that the Archers are very British filmmakers who revel in expressing their Britishness through cinematic legerdemain (even if Pressburger is British though absorption via Hungary).



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
Black Narcissus (Archers, 1947)


Powell & Pressburger's Black Narcissus is a fine example of taking a simple story and embellishing it with as many visual flourishes and emotional crescendoes as it can handle, all photographed in spectacular Technicolor by Jack Cardiff. Although it shows Powell's love of weird angles and suspenseful staging and comes very close to being the Archers' lone horror film, I sometimes wonder if the story is strong enough to bear up to all the elegance bestowed upon it. Then I think about something like David Lean's Summertime, another gorgeous and involving film with a thin story, and I remember to be thankful for all the cinematic pleasures we have in this world.



The plot concerns a small group of five Anglican nuns, led by young Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr), sent to the Himalayas to help the poor, uneducated people by opening a school and a hospital. They find the palace which is to house their convent to have been a former residence of a local ruler's harem and there are many pieces of art throughout which emphasize the carnal nature of humanity. Then the nuns meet the current ruler's agent Mr. Dean (David Farrar) and he arrives in short shorts and immediately seems to turn everything with the sisters into some kind of sexual battle. One of the nuns, Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) is obviously taken with Mr. Dean. There are other characters introduced, including a local teenage girl (Jean Simmons) who attracts men like flies to honey, the ruler's son (Sabu) who wants a proper education, the local Holy Man, a servant woman who thinks she's the Boss, and a young boy who comes and lives there.



The film has dozens of memorable images, from the cross shaped table the nuns eat at in their original order to the sparking Irish lake Sister Clodagh fishes upon in flashbacks where she remembers her past life. But most of what makes it spectacular are the scenes in the mountains where incredible models, matte paintings and sets make one feel they are actually there. Most all the nuns start to lose their composure due to the thin atmosphere, the remoteness and the sensuality which seems to surround them, and Powell can film a blackout from sexual hysteria as well as anyone, but sometimes things get so hot and heavy that it almost seems risable to me. Now, trust me, I know this film is considered one of their best and I like it a lot, but when you're supposed to be feeling for all the characters, sometimes it just seems too pat and easy a setup. At times I also feel the acting isn't quite as controlled as it should be, especially David Farrar and Kathleen Byron, but I'm coming around to them a little bit more now that I've watched this about eight times. Besides, one of the Archers' fave actors, Esmond Knight, is a hoot in his one scene as the local ruler ("The General") who sets the whole thing in motion by offering his palace to the nuns for free. Then there's also the stunning finale which foreshadows Vertigo, so maybe I should just shut up and raise my rating. I'm not going to do that though because I don't think it's any better than I Know Where I'm Going!, another one of the Archers' "modest" stories turned into something special through bravura filmmaking and creative intensity. Even so, if you can't tell or don't know me that well, this is a definite thumbs up.




will.15's Avatar
Semper Fooey
Here is what Wilipedia says about what was the inspiration for A Matter of Life and Death:

Anglo-American relations
The film was originally suggested by a British government department to improve relations between the Americans in the UK and the British public [10] following Powell and Pressburger's contributions to this sphere in A Canterbury Tale two years earlier, though neither film received any government funding nor input on plot or production. There was a degree of hostility against the American servicemen stationed in the UK for the invasion of Europe. They were viewed in some quarters as latecomers to the war and as "overpaid, oversexed and over here" by a public that had suffered three years of bombing and rationing, with many of their own men fighting abroad. The premise of the film is a simple inversion: The English pilot gets the pretty American woman rather than the other way round, and the only national bigotry is voiced by the first American casualty of the Revolutionary War against the British. Raymond Massey, portraying an American, was a Canadian national at the time the film was made, but became a naturalised American citizen afterward

So the issue wasn't lend lease, but British hostility to American servicemen stationed there. The story makes more sense with that context, and certainly Brit wartime audiences would have understood it, but few contemporary viewers will. In my opinion it dates the movie because it is too rooted in the period and not clear to people who didn't live through it. To make it palatable to the British it sugarcoats how it gets across its message, putting the Brit on trial rather than an American. It was those "Yanks" messing with English girls, not the other way around, that was pissing off the English. If that was what the movie was about, if it had the courage to say what it meant, it would be more understandable and powerful.



I don't think it's lacking courage to flip things around. Lots of stories about racism or sexism do that because it makes the point more powerful and accessible to the people who most need to hear it. It's clever, not cowardly.

None of this makes it a good movie, necessarily. But for its purposes I think that particular decision was a good one.



will.15's Avatar
Semper Fooey
If it was an American pilot on trial, and his prosecutor was a British pilot from WWI who received a Dear John letter from his girl dumping him for an American soldier before his mission that cost him his life, you don't think that wouldn't have made the story much stronger? The Raymond Massey character's anger towards the British seems too disconnected to the story. It requires too much explanation during the trial to make it relevent to what Niven is being tried for.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
Don't take Wikipedia that seriously. That quote sounds entirely like opinion and not fact. I understand the movie perfectly. I understand that others will disagree but I can't relate to that. There's nothing for me to "get".



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
......one of our aircraft is missing (1942)




This Archers film is unique in a few ways. First, the title is spoken before the words come on screen; that might explain why the title looks so unusual. Second, Michael Powell plays an RAF dispatcher/air traffic controller seen a few times in the beginning. Third, the film has no musical score, and that accentuates the suspense since basically, this is a suspense film. It may not have a ton of thrills, but there are several times when it seems that the main characters will be captured or killed. The plot concerns a British bomber designated "B for Bertie" which makes a bombing run to blow up key sites in Germany. On its return, it's shot down, but the crew parachutes into Nazi-occupied Holland where they're aided by the Dutch Resistance.



In many ways, this film is the inverse of Michael Powell's previous film, 49th Parallel. In that film, a German u-boat, commanded by Eric Portman, is stuck in Canada and a small group of its crew comes on land to try to get home or find allies to help them set up a Nazi stronghold in Canada. They find some friendly people but they all are exceedingly anti-Nazi. It also has a huge group of "guest stars", including Laurence Olivier and Leslie Howard and a rousing musical score by Ralph Vaughan Williams. This film has a small crew of RAF pilots, including Eric Portman, seeking help from mostly sympathetic Dutch. True, there are some Germans and some Nazi-sympathizers, but most people help the crew try to escape out to the English Channel in a small rowboat. Plus as I mentioned earlier, there is no musical score.



The major suspense scenes include the flight across the Channel on the bombing run, all beautifully photographed by Ronald Neame; there's a tense moment in a Dutch church where Priest Peter Ustinov is giving a service while a Nazi soldier walks throughout the building looking for something or someone; and then there's the scene near the end, some of it shot in subjective camera, where the crew tries to escape in the small boat and has to sneak under a bridge which is guarded. The cast also includes Archers stalwarts Pamela Brown and Robert Helpmann, as well as Googie Withers, looking extremely elegant and beautiful as a Resistancer whose husband is currently sheltered in England, broadcasting a positive message over the radio. The film is well-acted and also impeccably-edited by David Lean. I find it to be a middiling Archers effort but well worth a watch.



The only film of his I've seen is Peeping Tom, largely due to its connection with Psycho. But I thought it was great, and I really wanna see The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus.
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