Movie #16: Released in 1946, directed by the Archers (Emetic Pressburger and Michael Powell), 104 minutes. New to me!

LetterBoxd Score: 4 stars

This is the first film in the Sight and Sound series that has color (well, some of the time). Color is incredible; it makes movies seem so modern!

Something about this movie, Casablanca, and Le Regle du Jeu feel modern in their structure. Like something gelled and the form of a movie script took shape. Maybe it is that most scenes propel the story forward in one way or another, whereas in earlier films like the work of Chaplin or Keaton, or L’Atalante and M, you sometimes have scenes that feel like they are slice of life or something?

Visually, the movie most stands out most in the scenes set in heaven, with some fantastic set design.

Most famously, there is the stairway to heaven:

I thought this image was quite striking as well:

I thought the best scene of all though was the trial for our protagonist, which features an enormous auditorium full of people from different professions and eras who, apparently, all still hang out together in costume that reflects their group identity. But it was funny to see the phalanxes of nurses and puritans and so forth.

Ultimately though I’m not a big fan. I just didn’t get very attached to the characters or their plight. It didn’t move me emotionally. I didn’t think it was very funny. And it gives a weirdly central role to Anglo-American relations that just doesn’t matter much today (though I can see it feeling very important in 1946).

Weirdly, this movie came out just a few months before It’s a Wonderful Life, another film about heavenly intervention into the life of a person during World War II. It’s a Wonderful Life is clearly less visually inventive. But I love it in a way that I don’t love this. Part of it might be pure nostalgia; if I grew up with this, I might find it more charming. But I think, in its way, It’s a Wonderful Life is more epic canvas. It deftly portrays an entire human life with much empathy. In fact, the power of the move comes mostly from the darkness that underlies it during it’s first 75%; the end is, objectively considered, too saccharine. And yet, and yet – it’s funny! I feel like this is a personal view I’m coming to while watching these movies; the absolute best should be funny and strive to paint with a big canvas.

Why would someone think it’s one of the ten greatest movies ever made?

The film is creative on a number of fronts. Maybe these are not actually the first, but their the first I’m aware of and display good taste for the time even if not:

• Depicts heaven as a kind of bloodless bureaucracy
• Has the idea of a cosmic trial by jury
• Introduces movement through frozen time (seemingly by having actors hold very still!)
• Makes great use of color and film in the shots below

For me, the film suffers from the fact that many of these ideas have become commonplace though.

Next week: The Red Shoes