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) critics named "A Matter of Life and Death" the second greatest British film ever made, behind "Get Carter". It ranked 90th among critics, and 322nd among directors, in the 2012 "Sight & Sound" polls of the greatest films ever made. On 2 May 1945, Squadron leader Peter Carter is a Royal Air Force pilot trying to fly a badly damaged and burning Lancaster bomber back to his base in England after a mission over Germany. He has ordered his crew to bail out, without revealing that his own parachute has been shot up. He manages to contact June, an American