A Matter of Life and Death

Squadron Leader Peter Carter (David Niven) is a British Royal Air Force pilot trying to fly a badly damaged and burning Lancaster bomber home after a mission over Germany. He ordered his crew to bail without revealing that his own parachute has been shot up. He manages to contact June (Kim Hunter), an American radio operator based in England, and talks with her before jumping without a parachute. Peter should have died at that point, but Conductor 71, the guide sent to escort him to the “Other World“, misses him in the thick fog over the English Channel. The airman wakes up on a beach near June’s base. At first, he assumes he is in the afterlife, but then, after a de Havilland Mosquito flies low overhead, discovers to his bewilderment that he is still alive. Peter meets June, cycling back to her quarters after her night shift, and they fall in love. Conductor 71 (an aristocrat executed in the French Revolution) stops time to explain the situation to Peter and urge him to ac