A Matter of Life and Death AKA Stairway to Heaven opened in New York on Christmas Day 1946 to a rave review from Bosley Crowther in the New York Times who placed the Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger film among his ten best of the year the following Sunday while dismissing Frank Capra’s similarly themed It’s a Wonderful Life, “which would have got into the charmed circle if its philosophy had been less candified.”

As with Bicycle Thieves AKA The Bicycle Thief, the British title of A Matter of Life and Death is more salient to the film’s theme than the American Stairway to Heaven, a title that was imposed on it in the U.S. because it was presumed that Americans wouldn’t want to see anything with “death” in the title so close to the end of World War II. The same thing happened the previous year with the U.S. release of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp which had its title shortened to Colonel Blimp. That assumption would be put to rest by the success of Kiss of Death when it was released in September 1947.

The Hollywood film that A Matter of Life and Death is most frequently compared to is 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. That’s because both films exist in two worlds – real and fantasy – the difference being that in The Wizard of Oz the real world is in black-and-white and the fantasy world is in color whereas the reverse is the case in A Matter of Life and Death.

Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life opens with a despondent James Stewart contemplating suicide, thinking the world would be better off if he had never been born. He is then guided by guardian angel Henry Travers into seeing what a difference the world would be if he hadn’t been in it. Powell and Pressburger’s film begins with a philosophical David Niven about to jump out of his burning plane without a parachute, resigned to certain death towards the end of World War II. Thinking he has died and awakened in heaven, he is surprised to learn that he is in the English countryside near the house that the American radio operator (Kim Hunter) who had spoken to him before he jumped, is quartered. When a heavenly emissary (Marius Goring) comes to collect him, he is no longer content to meet his fate and fights it with his doctor (Roger Livesey) as his advocate against heaven’s advocate (Raymond Massey).

Like all of Powell’s films from The Thief of Bagdad to Peeping Tom, the film is gorgeously designed and photographed. Art direction was by Alfred Junge (Goodbye, Mr. Chips) who had worked with Powell and Pressburger on I Know Where I’m Going! and would work with them again on Black Narcissus for which he would win an Oscar. He would receive a later Oscar nomination for Knights of the Round Table. Cinematography was by Jack Cardiff (The African Queen) who would also win an Oscar for Black Narcissus and then lens The Red Shoes for Powell and Pressburger. He would earn subsequent Oscar nominations for War and Peace, Sons and Lovers (for his direction), and Fanny.

Like Junge and Cardiff, Powell and Pressburger worked with many of the actors in A Matter of Life and Death on other films. Roger Livesey previously starred in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp opposite Deborah Kerr and I Know Where I’m Going! opposite Wendy Hiller. Marius Goring would be Moira Shearer’s love interest in The Red Shoes and Kathleen Byron (old Mrs. Ryan in Saving Private Ryan) who plays a heavenly clerk here, would next be the mad nun in Black Narcissus.

Criterion’s 4K restoration Blu-ray is sublime with all the extras we’ve come to expect from them including a lengthy 2018 interview with Powell’s widow Thelma Schoonmaker (Raging Bull).

Steven Spielberg is the most successful director of his generation. He’s given us masterpieces like Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Schindler’s List, and the aforementioned Saving Private Ryan. Because he’s been so brilliant so much of the time, people are often disappointed that every film isn’t a masterpiece. There are those that have been disappointed by many of the Spielberg films that I love, including A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Catch Me If You Can, War Horse, and Bridge of Spies. Although I was underwhelmed by his year-end 2016 and 2017 films, The BFG and The Post, I nevertheless enthusiastically anticipated his latest, Ready Player One, but what a disappointment!

The film’s art direction and special effects are dazzling, but the film is one gigantic exercise in nostalgia for pop culture, mainly of 1980s films, which does not particularly interest me.

Ready Player One is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Universal has added more films that can be made on demand on DVD-R by Amazon to its Universal Vault Series. Among them are 6 Bridges to Cross and Private Worlds.

Joseph Pevny’s 1955 film 6 Bridges to Cross is one in a long series of Hollywood films about a close friendship between men on both sides of the law going back at least as far as 1934’s Manhattan Melodrama and 1938’s Angels with Dirty Faces. In this one, George Nader and Julie Adams play the street cop and his wife who take an interest in charming thief Sal Mineo who grows up to be the equaling charming crime czar Tony Curtis while Nader advances in his career to detective and then lieutenant of detectives. What makes this one of current interest is the threat of deportation of the Mineo-Curtis character who was brought to the country by his father when he was a year old. Although his father became a citizen he never completed the paperwork that would have made his son a citizen. The threat of deportation is so abhorrent to Curtis that he makes a life altering change to avoid it. The performances of the four stars and Jay C. Flippen as the Boston superintendent of police hold your interest throughout.

Gregory La Cava’s 1935 film Private Worlds earned Claudette Colbert an Oscar nomination the year after she won for It Happened One Night. Although considered quite daring at the time, this film about mental illness was rendered practically irrelevant by 1948’s The Snake Pit and all but buried by 1975’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Never officially released on home video before, bootleg copies taken from old TV broadcasts have been a chore to sit through. We finally have it in watchable condition. Forget the now hackneyed story of psychiatrist Colbert succeeding in a man’s business and enjoy it for the performances of Colbert at the height of her popularity opposite rising stars Charles Boyer, Joel McCrea, and Joan Bennett. Veteran character actor Esther Dale is a hoot as a dragon lady of a hospital matron, not quite a Nurse Ratched, but close enough.

This week’s new releases include Tully and the Blu-ray release of Village of the Damned.