When Powell and Pressburger were invited by the Ministry of Information to ‘do something’ for postwar Anglo-American relations, few would have imagined they could combine the Technicolor fantasy of The Wizard of Oz with a moving evocation of English history and a vivid sense of war’s intense relationships. Almost alone among WW2 films, it deals with the mysterious exaltation of the flyer, while including such unforgettable jokes as Marius Goring’s delight at a brief return visit from Heaven to Earth: ‘one is starved for Technicolor up there’ (which restoration allows us to see was a dubbed afterthought). The cruel ironies and injuries of war gave Powell and Pressburger a chance to go beyond realism and create the first of their ‘two worlds’ fantasies, foreshadowing The Red Shoes. Here Jacob’s Ladder becomes the majestic anachronism of a cosmic escalator, establishing the film’s dialectic of traditional and modernist imagery. What makes it both magical and profound is the perfect double plot: Peter Carter’s ‘case’ is medical on earth, but in his (and our) imagination it is metaphysical – a struggle for the very soul of Britain.

Ian Christie