Chichester Cinema at New Park
A Matter of Life and Death
Classics – Restored & Reissued
A visual tour-de-force, a marvellous romance, a witty commentary on Anglo-American relationships, and a feverishly imaginative fantasy, ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ is Powell and Pressburger's masterpiece.
Before plunging into a transformative encounter between an RAF pilot (David Niven) about to crash and the girl answering his Mayday call, the film opens with a brief meditation on... well, the infinite universe. For this stirring story of the pilot's battle for life - and the love of his life - is also one of the great films about time.
Alternating between Earth and Heaven, the script incorporates eternity, the legacy of history, an ordinary human lifespan, the transience of happiness, the fleeting magic of a moment, and time stopped still - all eloquently evoked by expert play with pace and chronology. With heart-stopping beautiful images, the film embraces both the dizzy joys of being alive and the sad inevitability of death with such a sure sense of poetry and drama that by the time it ends, one still feels it has only just begun. New 35 mm print.
UK · 1946 · E. Pressburger and M. Powell · 104min
| Sun | 18 Jan | 13:15 | Book | |
| Mon | 19 Jan | 18:15 | Book |
