A Matter of Life and Death
Apr. 28th, 2013 02:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cinema_babeWell this is a pleasant surprise.
Years ago I saw an old black and white WWII movie called A Matter of Life and Death. It begins with David Niven in a burning plane. He gets on the radio and tells the woman on the other end that the rest of his crew has died and that he is about to bail out of the place. He has one small problem
He has no parachute.
He understands the what the outcome will be and tells the young woman he is talking to that he will become a ghost so that he can visit her.
The movie cuts to Heaven where is buddy is waiting for him but he never arrives. Instead, he wakes up on a beach having seemingly survived falling out of a plane with no parachute. He meets up with the girl he had been talking to. Of course they fell in love in those moments they were talking on the radio and they think they have found happily ever after. Another small problem
Heaven is one angel short. Oops. As you can imagine, mayhem and hijinx ensue.
I was enjoying the movie, it's a fluffy WWII fantasy, but I fell asleep and missed the last half. I could never find it *anywhere*. Not on Netflix, not on YouTube. I couldn't even find it on IMDB or TCM's databases.
Mystery solved!
Apparently the original name of the movie was A Matter of Life and Death and that's the title it went by in England. When it came to the US, the studio demanded the title be changed to the more whimsical Stairway to Heaven. They felt the original title was too bleak for American audiences.
The other delightful thing is that the movie I began to see was in black and white. Again this was done for American audiences. The movie was originally filmed with all of the scenes in heaven in black and white and the scenes on earth shot in a rich technicolor, a relatively new process at the time.
One of my personal mystery has been solved, I feel much better now.
Years ago I saw an old black and white WWII movie called A Matter of Life and Death. It begins with David Niven in a burning plane. He gets on the radio and tells the woman on the other end that the rest of his crew has died and that he is about to bail out of the place. He has one small problem
He has no parachute.
He understands the what the outcome will be and tells the young woman he is talking to that he will become a ghost so that he can visit her.
The movie cuts to Heaven where is buddy is waiting for him but he never arrives. Instead, he wakes up on a beach having seemingly survived falling out of a plane with no parachute. He meets up with the girl he had been talking to. Of course they fell in love in those moments they were talking on the radio and they think they have found happily ever after. Another small problem
Heaven is one angel short. Oops. As you can imagine, mayhem and hijinx ensue.
I was enjoying the movie, it's a fluffy WWII fantasy, but I fell asleep and missed the last half. I could never find it *anywhere*. Not on Netflix, not on YouTube. I couldn't even find it on IMDB or TCM's databases.
Mystery solved!
Apparently the original name of the movie was A Matter of Life and Death and that's the title it went by in England. When it came to the US, the studio demanded the title be changed to the more whimsical Stairway to Heaven. They felt the original title was too bleak for American audiences.
The other delightful thing is that the movie I began to see was in black and white. Again this was done for American audiences. The movie was originally filmed with all of the scenes in heaven in black and white and the scenes on earth shot in a rich technicolor, a relatively new process at the time.
One of my personal mystery has been solved, I feel much better now.
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no subject
Date: 2013-04-30 02:18 am (UTC)A great watch, although pretty much any Powell/Pressburger production is.
The DVD of "A Canterbury Tale" is worth picking up, in part because it's a superb film of course, but also because the extras give you a look at how they mauled the U.S. version. This involved shooting a new opening, which brought Kim Hunter to their attention, which led to her appearing in "A Matter of Life and Death," so it's funny how these things work out. At least all they changed with "Stairway to Heaven" is the title, one trusts.
This tampering with U.S. versions of foreign films is ages old, of course. The dubious tastemakers at the American distribution company ditched the incredibly cool opening titles for Mario Bava's "Blood and Black Lace," for example.