A Matter of Life And Death (Stairway to Heaven): Intellect as Hero of Love

In Fred Schepsi’s 1994 film IQ Albert Einstein, as played by Walter Matthau, gives his niece this advice, “Don’t let your head get in the way of your heart.” It’s a quaint cinematic moment that draws a hard line between two theaters of human function. The incompatibility of mixing between intelligence and romantic love is simply assumed and not questioned, as it is in many films. Rarely will a character appeal the case of love to the court of the rational, nor will they find their yearnings supported by the influence of intellectual genius.      

    
The cold-fish intellectual, prisoner of their sterile cerebral pursuits must instead be redeemed by love, overcoming their cold exterior at the encouragement of some primal attractive sexual figure. Consider a film like A Beautiful Mind where the persistent student played by Jennifer Connelly comes to symbolize the world outside of mathematics and wins the eccentric and aloof mathematician John Nash. Even though he remains haunted by specters of his uncoupled intelligence. 

Or consider any teen comedy where the smart kid is only hiding behind books for fear of the great big world. Love it seems can only be hindered by intellect. What will happen when the rebel, the cheerleader, the sorority girl, finally gets a hold of that sexually frightened nerd? Reliably the brain will be defeated and libido liberated. What acknowledgement is there that the heart and mind can share goals or perhaps even come to one another’s rescue?
            
 

            A Matter of Life and Death, produced in 1946 and written/directed by the team of Michael Powell and Emerich Pressburger, takes a nuanced view, not attempting to quantify love or make it a topic of Cartesian analysis, it sees the interconnectedness of love and intelligence. From the first time we see the hero in his doomed aircraft over the foggy English Channel radioing his position to an American operator stationed nearby knowledge, erudition, and experience are portrayed as items of immense value that at every turn aid the cause of love.

The fog clears and we see the concerned face of Kim Hunter as June the radio operator.  She is trying to establish details of the distress signal she’s received from Squadron Leader Peter D. Carter. He begins to recite poetry over the wire,

            “ ‘Oh give me my scallop shell of quiet/My staff of faith to walk upon/My scrip of joy immortal diet/My bottle of salvation/My gown of glory hope’s true gauge/And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage.’ Sir Walter Raleigh wrote that. I’d rather’ve written that than flown through Hitler’s legs!”
   
His plane is going down, he has no parachute and only this conversation with which to wrap up his business on earth. As played by David Niven, Peter, has lively eyes and a ready wit. He dictates a last communiqué for his family to the bravely listening June. He asks her what she believes about the after life and then quotes further,

“’But at my back I always hear/ Times winged chariot hurrying near/And yonder all before us lie/ Deserts of vast eternity’ Andy Marvel. What a Marvel!”

        He’s a man of agile mind who, when faced with mortality, quotes poetry.

“Do you love anybody?” he asks.
“I could love a man like you, Peter.” June says.

She and Peter have fallen in love over the radio in the last moments before his impending death. They’ve performed their duty as pilot and radio operator and then shared a hurried intimacy that an audience accustomed to war might well have understood.        

“I love you June.” Peter responds, “You’re life and I’m Leaving you.”     

Peter is a model of bravery, having given up his parachute to a crewmember and stayed with the plane. June is a sharp and attractive girl who meets the situation with courage. As Peter jumps from the plane there is no doubt in the audience’s mind that they are in love and are right for each other. Peter with his wit and resolve and June with soulful tears as he signs off. It’s a lightning strike romance, but one earned by exchange of words and honesty of feeling. The words used extol the intellect and the hearts of the characters are edified because of it.
      
A Matter of Life and Death is a fantasy film. Peter survives his fall because the courier sent from heaven to collect him loses him in the dense English fog. Heaven is presented in pearly mono-chrome, an effect achieved by shooting in Technicolor but not immersing the negatives in any of the coloring agents. Alarms sound and the courier is called to task by his superiors. Meanwhile Peter washes up on shore and only realizes he’s not dead after seeing June pedaling her bike along the sands, just as she’d said she would during their conversation.

     As the plot unfolds Peter is visited by the heavenly courier who missed him and now wishes him to come along like a good fellow and report to the after life. But of course Peter has no intention of leaving now that he has June. A trial scenario is arranged where Peter will have to convince a jury that he deserves to continue living.
     
Every time the heavenly visitor appears Peter cocks his ear as though he’s hearing distant music. He reports smelling fried onions in each instance and then displays further physical symptoms, such as an upward drifting toe and reduced lateral field of vision, all consistent with a neurological condition that would explain his ethereal experiences.
     
In his review of Diane Broadbent Friedmen’s book, “The Brain Revealed by The Mind of Michael Powell,” Prof. Oliver Sacks notes that the Director made painstaking research into the subject of neurological disorders that gives the film a seamless authenticity. The character in the film that identifies Peter’s condition is Doctor Frank Reeves. He’s another of the film’s well-formed adult human beings who is valued for his intelligence rather than being shown as hindered by it. As June points out to him, “…what you don’t know about neurology would fill a peanut.”

     Doctor Reeves is also a bit rakish and an adventurous type who rides his motorcycle very fast and enjoys gadgets. As played by Roger Livesy he could easily take the romantic lead of his own movie. But here his function is more avuncular, commenting on the romance of June and Peter, providing a steady knowledge and sound advice. In conversations with Peter we find out that both he and the doctor are comfortable speakers who spar easily. We also find out that Peter is a published poet and an advanced history student at Oxford who has served with considerable distinction in the war.
     
As we learn all this June is present and even though she’s off screen as the men speak we as the audience sense her eyes on Peter, deepening with respect as well as the flush of love.
     
As the film progresses the crisis deepens. Peter must choose lead council for his defense in heaven. As his trial draws near his neurological condition worsens in the earthly realm. When the trial finally arrives he is put under the knife for emergency surgery to repair adhesive arachnoiditis.
     
It is Dr. Reeves’s insight and diagnosis that gives Peter a chance for recovery and his care for his patient’s relationship that makes him sympathetic. Reeves’s mind is as much a hero of June and Peter’s love as anything else in the film. He also observes that it is the strength and coherence of Peter’s mind, forming his condition into a winnable narrative of the trial, that is giving him a fighting chance.

     Eventually the doctor even serves as Peter’s advocate in the trial. Peter has been given choice of all the greatest minds in history as possible council. He considers the possibility of being defended by Plato, “No one knew more about reasoning than Plato.” says his courier by way of consideration.
     
“He was eighty-one when he died.” Peter responds. “He might be too old to think love important. And didn’t he quote Sophocles when asked if he could still appreciate a woman?”
    
 “What did the old boy say?”
     
“He said, ‘I’m only too glad to be rid of all that. It’s like escaping from bondage to a raving madman’.” 
     
Thus Peter establishes that Plato is not the man for the job. He knows it is risky to separate heart and mind and he is, like the film as a whole, actively seeking that middle ground where intellect can be made hero of love.