DOuG pRATt

A Matter of Color and Monochrome

March 22nd, 2009

By clicking here you’ll see most of my posts (including this one) concerning the film director Michael Powell. Here’s another one. Every first viewing I’ve had of a Powell movie always makes me want to share some of it. This time it’s “A Matter of Life and Death”, which was known in the United States as “Stairway to Heaven”.

“A Matter of Life and Death”, made in 1946, is ostensibly a romantic fantasy, but it ends up being a curious exploration of the relationship between England and America. Powell loved “The Wizard of OZ,” and here he reversed the color and black and white gimmick, so it’s the scenes on earth that are in color.

Powell/Pressburger movies are so unusual there’s really no point in trying to describe them. It’s much better to see for yourself. The opening scene with the radio conversation is magical, and if you’ve never paid much attention to David Niven before, you will here. (In the dialogue he mentions the name of the poet Andrew Marvell, who was born about the time Shakespeare died.)

The edit between the two scenes was inserted by me. Kathleen Byron, whose picture is the poster frame here, doesn’t appear in this video clip. Byron has only a small part in the film, but I’ve been meaning to feature her because, sadly, Kathleen Byron passed away on January 18. What a face. Another woman who, in my opinion, came close to Byron was the late Natasha Richardson — but only before she had her ill-advised nose job.

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