Cinema

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's stylish 1946 classic, A Matter of Life and Death, is reissued in a new print at the IFC…

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's stylish 1946 classic, A Matter of Life and Death, is reissued in a new print at the IFC for a week from next Friday.

David Niven memorably plays the RAF pilot (right) who bales out of his blazing aircraft without a parachute - and whose right to go on living is debated in a celestial court.

The earthly sequences are in colour, while Heaven is depicted in monochrome. The confident fantasy that results can hardly have been what the British Ministry of Information had in mind when it proposed the film as a propaganda piece to promote Anglo-American relations.

The film also stars Kim Hunter, Roger Livesey, Raymond Massey and Marius Goring.