A Matter of Life and Death · reception & legacy
1946 · Michael Powell
How A Matter of Life and Death has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Commissioned to soothe fraying Anglo-American relations after the war, it got a mixed reception from sniffy British critics who found it fanciful — yet in 2017 a Time Out poll of film industry figures voted it the greatest British film ever made.
What's debated
The perennial cinephile dispute: is this Powell & Pressburger's masterpiece, or does that crown belong to The Red Shoes or Black Narcissus?
Its footprint
The vast escalator to the afterlife is one of British cinema's most referenced images (the US retitling, Stairway to Heaven, came from it), and the Conductor's quip that 'one is starved for Technicolor up there' is endlessly quoted as the cheekiest meta-joke in 1940s film.
Where it stands
A canon climber supreme — championed by Scorsese and restored in 4K, it's gone from wartime curio to fixture of 'greatest British film' conversations and a Letterboxd darling.