After miraculously surviving a jump from his burning plane, RAF pilot Peter Carter (David Niven) encounters the American radio operator (Kim Hunter) to whom he’s just delivered his dying wishes and, face-to-face on a tranquil English beach, the pair fall in love. When a messenger from the afterlife arrives to correct the clerical error that spared his life, Peter must mount a fierce defense for his right to stay on earth—painted by production designer Alfred Junge and cinematographer Jack Cardiff as a rich Technicolor Eden—climbing a wide staircase to stand trial in a starkly beautiful, black-and-white modernist heaven. Peppered by humorous jabs intended to smooth tensions between the wartime allies Britain and America, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s richly humanistic A Matter of Life and Death traverses time and space to make a case for the transcendent value of love.

Supplements Audio commentary from 2009 featuring film scholar Ian Christie New interview with editor Thelma Schonmaker Powell, director Michael Powell’s widow New interview with film historian Craig Barron on the film’s visual effects and production design Interview from 2009 with filmmaker Martin Scorsese The Colour Merchant, a 1998 short film by Craig McCall featuring cinematographer Jack Cardiff An essay by critic Stephanie Zacharek

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