Trawling Through The Thrift Stores with Joseph Finn

 Happy Thursday, everyone!  It's opening day of baseball here in the States and this week is gonna be a short one because, well, I'm moving in a few weeks and packing sucks.

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A Matter Of Life And Death is a weird odd duck in the filmography of Michael Powell and Emric Pressburger, probably the best British filmmakers of the 20th Century.  It was ostensibly at the time, being made in the later parts of WWII, as an attempt to bolster British-US relations when the US was just really getting into the war and heading up into -Day, but didn't end up coming out until 1946.  It's the story of  RAF pilot Peter Carter (David Niven), who miraculously survives a plane crash and falls for eh American radio operator (Kim Hunter) to whom he was relaying what he thought were his dying words.  Their relationship develops in color and then...well, the bureaucracy of the universe shows up to correct that miracle.

See, Carter should have died in that plane crash. So now he has to defend his continued existence to the powers that be.  And, for whatever reason, these powers that be are obsessed with British and US history.  (I mean, we know why in this case.)   And in one of the weirder and more effective special effects of the 1940's, Carter gets taken up in a stairway to heaven*, full of blatant metaphors and calls for British-American unity, to plead his case.

Subtlety?  This movie cares not for such things.

So the movie is a kind of fascinating mix of romance and calls to arms, color and black and white and  American and British militarism wrapped up in their respective historical mythology.  It's a fascinating piece of work that I feel everyone should see at least once, if not only for David Niven being the most David Niven you can possible imagine.   I mean seriously, look at that moustache.

A Matter of Life and Death is currently only streaming on something called Classic, but if your local library doesn't have it on the shelf I'd be very surprised.

*Indeed, the movie was originally released in the USA under the title Stairway To Heaven.

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My one recommendation for the week is Spencer, a movie that plays much better when you realize Kristen Stewart is playing Diana as a horror film protagonist who knows she's in a horror film.  It's a fantastic piece of work and currently streaming on Hulu.