A Matter of Life and Death (film) It was also made into a play by the Kneehigh Theatre for performances at the National Theatre in London, premiering in May 2007. Explanatory notes Citations Bibliography A Matter of Life and Death (film) A Matter of Life and Death is a 1946 British fantasy-romance film written, produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and set in England during the Second World War. The film stars David Niven, Roger Livesey, Raymond Massey, Kim Hunter and Marius Goring. The film was originally released in the United States under the title Stairway to Heaven, which derived from the film's most
A Matter of Life and Death (film) title screen – repeated as the Foreword to the 1946 novelisation by Eric Warman – contains an explicit statement, however: "This is the story of two worlds, the one we know and another which exists only in the mind of a young airman whose life and imagination have been violently shaped by war", but goes on to say "Any resemblance to any other world known or unknown is purely coincidental". The architecture of the other world is noticeably modernist. It features a vast and open plan, with huge circular observation holes, beneath which the clouds of Earth can be seen.