Branchage Festival, 25-28th September 2008, Jersey.

Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Year: 1946
Duration: 104 min
Country: UK

GREAT BRITISH DIRECTORS

Powell and Pressburger, David Lean and Alfred Hitchcock go head to head in our retrospective screenings in association with The Jersey Film Society and the Jersey Evening Post...

We hand-picked two classic films from each of these filmmaking giants, and we left it up to you the audience to vote for the films you want to see. The results are in and the winning films have been chosen...

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
(Michael Powell / Emeric Pressburger, 1946)

A British wartime aviator played by the impossibly charming David Niven parachutes to sure death from a burning plane, but not before falling in love with Kim Hunter’s RAF girl, whose voice he hears over the radio in his final moments. Cheating death, our hero must argue for his life and survival before a celestial court. It's a glorious, fantastical and life-affirming masterpiece and Powell's self-professed favourite film, representing the pinnacle of Powell and Pressburger's achievements. Quite simply one of the best British films ever made.

MICHAEL POWELL (1905 – 1990) & EMERIC PRESSBURGER (1902 – 1988)

The Powell & Pressburger director / producer / writer collaboration was known as The Archers, lasting from 1939 to 1955, creating some of the greatest and most loved British films of the 20th Century. Powell was born in Kent, entering the film industry as a general studio hand in 1925 before starting a career making quota quickies.

Pressburger was born in Hungary and worked as a journalist before fleeing from the Nazis to Britain in 1935 where he was employed as a screenwriter by fellow Hungarian exile Alexander Korda, who introduced him to Powell. As The Archers, Powell and Pressburger made 20 films together.

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