A Matter of Life and Death (U)

A WW2 British fighter pilot shot down in flames over the English Channel spends his last moments quoting love poetry to a young American wireless operator whom he’s never met. He ends up arguing for his life (and for love) in an austere heaven peopled by Pilgrim Fathers and frivolous French aristocrats alike. Imaginative, witty and subversive in its sudden switches from glorious Technicolor to otherworldly black and white, from wartime Britain to an eerie parallel existence, like many Powell and Pressburger films it somehow manages to put its finger on what it means to be quintessentially British and ends up as one of the most poignant and moving films you’ll ever see.