Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger | A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven) / 1946

to be or not to be

by Douglas Messerli

 

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (screenwriters and directors) A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven) / 1946

 

Beginning with in 1941 in the early years and World War II and immediately following it, filmmakers devoted several films to interchanges between earth and heaven, as dead men’s lives were disputed by the living and vise versa, the heavenly messengers having been too eager or failed in bring men into the realms of death. In Alexander Hall’s Here Comes Mr. Jordon (1941) boxer Joe Pendleton is swept away to heaven by an accompanying angel (Edward Everett Horton) 50 years ahead of time, causing a major problem when the heavenly representatives attempt to find him another earthly body, particularly since love is involved and Joe is worried about his sweetheart’s ability to recognize him. In Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life of 1946, an angel (Henry Travers) is sent to earth to dissuade the local Building and Loan manager, George Bailey, from taking his life by revealing to him how his town and its denizens will be affected by his death. And in the following year in Henry Koster’s The Bishop’s Wife an angel (Carey Grant) arrives on Christmas Eve to help Henry Brougham (David Niven) make a decision about building a grand new cathedral or neglecting his poorer congregations, his wife, and family.

 

    Also in 1946 Niven, playing Squadron Leader Peter David Carter, was visited by yet another heavenly guide to take him off to heaven after he has amazingly survived jumping from a high-flying airplane into the ocean without a parachute. In this case the angelic Conductor 71 (Marius Goring) has missed acquiring his “victim” because of a heavy British fog that has spread over the half the country.

     The Powell and Pressburger movie, A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven) begins, in fact, with Peter’s call to headquarters to explain his situation: on his lap sits the head of his dead friend, Flying Office Bob Trubshaw and below him the lower half of his plane is engulfed in flames. Having no parachute, he reports in, mostly just to hear the voice of a human being before he jumps to his certain death.

    The voice, in this case, comes from an American serving on a British base, June (Kim Hunter), whose gentle attempts to help and worries for his safety is just what Peter was seeking, he declares, before he must end his life to join his friend Bob.

      But we soon see Bob in heaven waiting for Peter who has failed to show up. Such an incident has not happened in over 1000 years, and Conductor 71 is due for a thorough grilling. The head registrar Angel (Kathleen Byron) sends him back immediately to reclaim the man by convincing him to come along nicely to heaven with him.

     Peter, however, is not only surprised by his incredible salvation but by this time has already met with and fallen in love with girl behind his midnight earth-angel’s voice, who he’s found bicycling along the beach. And before either of them even know what they’re doing, they’ve kissed and retreated to a hidden glen to make love, drink scotch, and plan for their future.

      It doesn’t help that Conductor 71 is an effete and quite effeminate Frenchman who “lost his head” in the French Revolution, and is more of a romantic that even this cupid-ridden Anglo-American couple. With lips painted in bright red lipstick, 71—the number which is described in numerology as “the angel number,” since according to the numerology site I visited “the number 7 represents spiritual awakening, inner guidance, intuition, and the development of psychic powers.” The number 1 “stands for new beginnings, creation, independence, and leadership.” In short, you should “trust the journey.”

      But why should Peter trust his newly gained life to a queer Frenchman, who in order to talk to him without interruption, steals his scotch and puts his new found sweetheart into a blissful doze? When Peter asks the intruder what he wants now, the ridiculous French queer answers: “You my friend.” And soon after, knowing that Peter is a chess expert, he attempts to allure him to the futurist paradise by telling him that they could play chess* together for eternity—presumably his heavenly equivalent of eternal sexual bliss. Fortunately, he turns him down, demanding an appeal in the heavenly court of law.

     The incident also provides him with a terrible headache that, when June is awakened, easily explains to her why her new lover is speaking so absurdly about the voices he has heard. Good level-headed American soldier that she is, she immediately pops into for a visit with the local doctor, Frank Reeves (Roger Livesey), who also just happens to be a noted specialist in neurology—a big difference from the numerology obsessed heavenly messenger which he immediately realizes is a product of Peter’s damaged brain, determining through a quick bit of research and connecting it up with Peter’s olfactory sensations when he had the visions, that he will have to have surgery quickly in order to be saved.

      A great deal happens, however, before that. The heavenly conductor returns to tell him that an appeal has been granted, but that he only has a few days to prepare his case and find a proper counsel. But with all the dead greats from Hammurabi and Plato to Lincoln, and numerous others a fitting representative shouldn’t be hard to find. On the other hand, Heaven will be represented by a US citizen, Abraham Farlan (Raymond Massey) who was killed by a British gun in the early days of the Revolutionary War and, accordingly, has a hatred for all things British and is clearly more prejudiced against Peter Carter since he is Britisher in love with an American woman.

      How Heaven has allowed in a bigot of his kind is not explained. But in Michael Powell’s and Emeric Pressburger’s imagination there doesn’t seem to be a Hell. Everyone goes to the world of the afterlife. Even so, I might choose to remain in the grave than be escalated up into world portrayed in this celestial spot, where everyone shows up in the clothing they were wearing at the moment and are gathered together with others with similar attire, so that all the Puritans sit together, as do the American soldiers, the British officers, the Red Cross workers, etc.—suggesting that this afterworld is even more tribal than the one we know, which arguably has been the major justification of wars throughout the centuries. All those millions and millions of people packed into a single celestial space! I’m sure I wouldn’t at all be happy, even if I could feel, “In his will is our peace.”

 

     But then, since it logically is simply a product of Peter’s damaged brain, we don’t have to buy into this vision of the afterlife. Since Peter believes its so, however, argues Dr. Reeves, he may in fact be destroyed if he doesn’t win his appeal—at least his mind might, with a possibility of insanity. An operation is needed, he determines, that very night.

       In fact, given the vision of the afterlife that Peter has already conjured up, particularly if it’s all just his imagination, he may be showing signs of what used to be thought of as insanity already. I mean, why should the man who has so easily fallen for June have even summoned up a gay queen like Conductor 71 to take him away from his earthly love if he wasn’t already slightly queer. Or perhaps it’s just his psyche presenting him with an emotional alternative, permitting him a gay old time in heaven playing chess or a busy heterosexual life of kids and husbandly duties back on earth.

       Did I mention that Peter Carter is a poet? And we all know poets need time alone without all the noise of family life. Poets, I might add, are generally presented in cinema as another incarnation of the dreaded “pansy.”

       If nothing else, Powell and Pressburger seem to be weighing the dice. Will he die an unmarried man with certain fussy “tendencies” (he’s already quoted Sir Walter Raleigh to June as his plane is going down, claiming “I’d rather written that than have flown through Hitler’s legs.” My, what an image! And a moment later he quotes Andrew Marvell. As June reports back, “We cannot read you, please report your location.” Peter seems to be already to be headed into outer space.

      As expected it’s now a stormy, rainy night and the ambulance hasn’t yet arrived, even though not having been able to chose a defender Peter lies in a sweaty coma. The good doctor has no choice but to get on his trusty motorcycle and ride off to the hospital to see what happened. Inevitably, he runs, quite literally, into the ambulance on his way, killing him and sending him up the stairway into afterlife. The earthbound Peter, so it appears, as chosen Reeves to represent him in the appeals court. And meanwhile, back on earth, Peter’s delicate operation has begun, with June dropping a tear or two as she waits in worry. Reeves takes the tear back to heaven in the folds of a rose as evidence.

      The question thus becomes will the poet fly off to heaven as some version of a fairy or come back to down to earth to marry June and live the life of an ordinary heterosexual male.

 

    In 1946 there was no other possible choice: Reeves wins his case. The operation is a success, the attending doctor having followed the specialist’s careful notes. But not before the heavenly jury determines that they need come down to earth to prove that Peter and June truly love each other. Peter’s very determination to stay on earth proves his love. To prove her love June is asked if she would give up her life for him, which she readily agrees to, jumping as asked onto the escalator-like Stairway to Heaven for a short while before it rumbles to a stop, proving that love is stronger than everything, even death. Peter is given a new, much longer death date, and presumably the happy couple lives happily if not forever, certainly for a long life—without the intrusion of perfumed players of chess.  

       

*Niven, so the biographers report, was terribly fond of the intellectual game, and played it almost professionally.

 

Los Angeles, April 29, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (April 2024