Artist Stairway To Heaven

Heaven is part airport terminal, part celestial City Hall in Stairway To Heaven (a.k.a. A Matter Of Life And Death), a fanciful World War II romance from director Michael Powell and screenwriter Emeric Pressburger. David Niven plays an RAF bomber pilot whose plane crashes, leaving him in need of a brain operation. While under anesthetic, Niven finds himself in a massive courtroom, arguing that he should be allowed to live so he can pursue his true love, American ground controller Kim Hunter. A lot ofStairway is about the differences between Brits and Yanks, but it’s also about the similarities between our world and the one beyond.

Updated 11/23/2009