h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One of my favourite films ever, a good romantic thriller without being over the top. David Niven is wonderful, as is Roger Livesey

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038733/

It should certainly be on the TV more often

Isn't that the one with the ever-so-camp French guy who loves chess?

That's it, He is an angel/heavenly messenger though from the time of the revolution, so I guess it's all ok

What's really nice is that the scenes on Earth are in colour, while the scenes in Heaven are in Black and White.

I know that films like "IF" (surely another contender) sometimes used a mix of black and white and colour film because of cost issues; it's just the choice of Heaven as the black and white one that works so well.

It gives it a (suitably) unearthly feel.

It was a Powell-Pressburger film. They did such a huge variety of films, Black Narcissus and The Battle of the River Plate to name a couple. Apparantly, Martin Scorcese was a huge fan of theirs and his first film - Mean Streets - was almost a tribute to them. When he finally met Michael Powell and asked his opinion of Mean Streets Michael Powell gave a favourable response but said "Even I didn't use that much red !".

Powell and Pressburger directed some amazing films, and this one is their masterpiece in the eyes of many. It's possibly their most well known, along with The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus. They had a very distinctive style which I can't even begin to describe, and often worked with the same actors - Roger Livesey, Bernard Mills, Kathleen Byron, and Marius Goring was the camp Frenchman Check out Roger Livesey in the starring role in Powell and Pressburger's Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Didn't they also do 'Peeping Tom'. A really deep, almost Freudian film that almost got banned at the time. So many films have used this one as a starting point it's untrue. Great film makers, though to be honest we ' British' can only lay true claim to one

Michael Powell directed that one on his own, and I must admit that I've never seen it. I do know about the controversy surrounding it though.

Checking out the credentials - this thread deserves an entry of its own.

I've considered writing an entry about P+P for a long time, but I really don't think I could do them justice.