A Matter of Life and Death (film) afterward. David Niven was a fan of chess. Peter and June play chess while they await Dr Reeves. Then Conductor 71 "borrows" a chess book Peter has accidentally knocked off the table, Alekhine's "My Best Games of Chess". After the trial is won, Conductor 71 throws the book from the stairway; June finds it in his jacket pocket "to serve the 'was it a hallucination or did it really happen?' motif of the film", according to Mig Greengard. He also noted, "Lots of chess in movies past and present, but I can't recall another prominent appearance of a real chess
A Matter of Life and Death (film) were set on Niven playing the part, and eventually told Goring that the Conductor was his only choice: if he turned it down, they would approach Peter Ustinov to play the part. Powell and Pressburger went to Hollywood to cast the role of June with no possible actress in mind except, possibly, Betty Field, who was in a play in New York at the time. The suggestion of Kim Hunter came from Alfred Hitchcock, who had recently used her to read lines from behind the camera for Ingrid Bergman's screen test for "Spellbound". Hunter had stage experience and had been