The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Colonel Blimp started life as a satirical cartoon for the London Evening Standard by Sir David Low. An ageing, plump, pompous and eternally red-faced blowhard, Blimp was Low's idea of the militaristic upper-classes; the kind of chest-puffing Jingo who would voice his frequently contradictory declarations from a Turkish bath wearing nothing but a towel. At first, it would seem that Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is directly adapting the political cartoons, as the old man Colonel is rudely disturbed from his sleep in a Turkish bath by a group of youngsters who have arrived early for a planned war game, to declare that such chivalry in war will not be practised by the enemy. We then go back 40 years, and any hint of satire makes way for a story of romance, friendship, and growing old.

During the Boer War in 1902, the young Clive Candy (Roger Livesey) receives a letter from Edith Hunter (Deborah Kerr) in Berlin, who warns him that a known rogue named Kaunitz is spreading anti-British propaganda. Going against orders, Candy travels to Germany and ends up causing a scene by provoking Kaunitz. To settle matters, a duel is arranged with a randomly-chosen German officer, who turns out to be Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook). While recovering from their wounds in a military hospital, the two men hit it off and begin a friendship that will last for more than 40 years. Moving through the First and Second World Wars, we follow Candy as he rises through the military ranks, fails and succeeds in love, before finding himself an old man, greatly outdated and socially displaced.

It's astonishing that this film got made at all. On top of being rather experimental in terms of tone and narrative structure (it feels very much like the English equivalent of Citizen Kane), Colonel Blimp was shot in glorious - and expensive - Technicolor during wartime, running at almost three hours when most films wouldn't dare to push 100 minutes. Winston Churchill tried to ban it, believing it to be an anti-war propaganda piece poking fun at the idea of 'British-ness', when it is anything but. Instead, the film deliberately gives out mixed signals, lovingly embracing the idea of gentlemanly conduct during a bloody war, while pondering the necessity of brutality, especially when faced with an enemy who play like the Nazis did (and were doing at the time, of course). While British propaganda was making sure to send a clear and strong message about the enemy, Colonel Blimp makes one of its main characters a sympathetic German, and is clear to highlight that these nations will be friends again in the future.

Livesey is staggering as Candy (who later becomes Wynne-Candy). The make-up work is absolutely flawless, easily trumping the big Hollywood productions we get these days. The man genuinely ages before our eyes, and Livesey manages to entirely convince as a man gaining experience and weariness through the years. He may be a man whose values are slowly becoming obsolete, but he remains a good man, and a thoroughly lovable one. Walbrook delivers an understated performance, and brings a tear to the eye during a monologue in which tries to convince British officials why they shouldn't deport him back to Nazi Germany, and Kerr juggles three roles - as Candy's lost love Edith; his wife Barbara; and his driver 'Johnny' in his later years - with absolute ease. It has remarkable scope yet is incredibly intimate, and it's a film that should have been branded across every cinema screen in the country by the War Office. Quite possibly the finest film ever to emerge from our rainy shores.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is one of the most deeply moving films I've ever seen. It's amazing how independent producers (the Archers--Powell & Pressburger) managed to put together a lavish Technicolor epic without government assistance in wartime England--but they did it. it contains one of the most subtle "why we fight" themes--to preserve the English (and, hopefully, American) sense of fair play exemplified by the title character. The emotional kicker is a scene which takes place in 1939 in a British police station, where the German (played by Anton Walbrook--a German refugee actor) calmly and drily narrates how and why he came to settle in England. Just the thought of the scene moves me to tears. It's a marvelous piece of acting. The narrative technique--the story contained in one, long flashback--was in vogue on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 1940s--one can think of Sam Wood's Saratoga Trunk (Warner Brothers, 1943) as a good example--but the shift from 1942 to 1902 is accomplished by a very deft piece of editing. Colonel Blimp enters the pool of the Royal Automobile Club an old man, and emerges 40 years earlier! Colonel Blimp's true subtext is how civilization, friendship, and love survive times of chaos and barbarism (not to mention war) and, indeed, triumph by their survival. It is especially timely at the time of this writing (late March 2003).

Once in a while, I see a film I wished I'd seen before. This movie is one of those. It was a complete and total surprise. I'd heard of it, but never anything definitive. It is simply one of the greatest films I ever saw. From the first shot to the closing credits, it was wonderfully acted, beautifully photographed, and superbly directed. Everything worked: the music was effective, the costumes and makeup were perfect.

Roger Livesay and Deborah Kerr, in particular, shone beautifully. There was a chemistry between them that was especially magical during the early years. Livesay aged well, not just in the way he looked, but in the way he acted. He gave the impression that as an actor, he understood that generals always fight the previous war, and his General Candy felt, by films end, exactly that sort of general.

I recommend this movie without qualification to anyone who appreciates the art of moviemaking, and the pleasures of watching.

"The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" (1943) is a directorial masterpiece. It was the film in which Michael Powell finally fulfilled the promise that he had shown sporadically in his earlier films - in scenes such as Conrad Veidt's darkly comic encounter with a mountain-goat while trailing a bicycle up a cliff in "The Spy in Black" (1939); the opening shot of "Thief of Bagdad" (1940) as the camera tracks closer to Jaffar's ship and reveals a painted eye on the boat's prow; or in the eerie opening sequence of "One of Our Aircraft Is Missing" (1942), where, without a crew to guide it, a Wellington bomber, flying over the southern coast of Britain, suddenly smashes into a power line and implodes in a blazing white ball of flame. Here, in "Colonel Blimp," based on the stuffy, elitist character created by David Low, director Powell found a unifying style that encompassed the other-worldly vision that is sustained throughout the film's lengthy running time (2 hours, 43 minutes) - a style that is, at once, austere yet elegant; moody but curiously euphoric; hard at its core but sentimental around the edges.

As evidenced by the film's title, Pressburger's script does deal in a very generalized way with issues of Life and Death, but he carries his vision into the realm of the abstract, and he does so in circular fashion. More specifically, he explores a younger generation's brash, rebellious attitude towards their elders; and then examines how that attitude becomes more restrained, more conservative with the passage of time - until, as that generation ages, they become so "traditional" that, in the end, when their notions of honor and ethics have become obsolete in relation to the dominant society, they abstain from collaborating with community and, in a sense, they cease to really exist at all. And in the end, Death is all there is.

In keeping with Pressburger's theme, the film is structured in circular fashion, beginning in 1943, flashing back to 1903 and progressing all the way up to 1943 again, where it ends: Life as a universal loop, so to speak. Pictorially, the movie begins with an image of speed - British military messengers motorcycling across the English highways to their respective units with orders regarding war-game maneuvers. But the film ends with a sharply contrasting image - a yellowish-brown leaf floating down a small waterway, its slowness of passage suggesting a funeral dirge and procession.

The story's main concern is of the deep friendship and camaraderie between the film's hero, Major John Candy, V. C. (Roger Livesey), and German Lieutenant Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook), who meet one another as participants in a duel that has been arranged for the two in order to solve a peacetime diplomatic dispute. Afterwards, while nursing their wounds in a hospital, they become close friends - so much so that when it is discovered that they are unacknowledged suitors to the same girl, an English governess (one of three women played by Deborah Kerr), there is no dispute whatsoever: a coy suggestion by the filmmakers that two individuals can often solve disputes more efficiently than two nations. There is a temporary row between Candy and Theo at the end of the First World War, as indeed there can be little other than animosity between two uneasy nation/signatories of a peace treaty. But 20 years later, when Theo flees Nazi Germany and begs political asylum in England, it is Candy (now a general) who gladly uses his enormous influence to save Theo from either internment or deportation. This last episode is particularly affecting: Theo recites for British immigration officials a long, sad story of his life from 1919 on, relating the death of his wife and the indoctrination of his sons into the Hitler Youth.

From there, the film completes its flashback "loop" to 1943, where we witness Candy's old-fashioned Victorian adherence to "good sportsmanship" - his single failing as a military tactician and leader - that costs his Home Guard unit a war-games competition. David Low sought to satirize the Blimp character as a ridiculous facsimile of grandiose pomposity; Powell and Pressburger, however, seek to humanize him by tracing the process that finally made "Colonel Blimp" what he was, at least externally. Roger Livesey's performance is an outstanding, sympathetic tour-de-force - he was one of the most transparently gifted film actors of his generation. And Deborah Kerr's triple-performance confirmed her stardom for decades to come.

Powell references one of his favorite films "The Wizard of Oz" (1939) throughout - even down to the naming of Candy's aunt as the Lady Margaret Hamilton. Candy is referred to as "the Wizard" by his driver's fiancée, even while humming and dancing to the tune "We're Off to See the Wizard." (Three years later, Powell would use "Oz's" technique of alternating between monochrome and Technicolor for his fantasy, "A Matter of Life and Death.")

Forget what another reviewer said here about being "shallow and lacking in emotional content" and full of "stock characters", as nothing could be further from the truth. This is one of the finest British films ever made.

It may mock the old reactionary Blimp (who pretty much is Churchill) but it does so with deep sympathy for his passing age of fair play. And its message that Britain must fight a realistic war was a great bit of intelligent and patriotic propaganda. By opposing it Churchill underestimated the intelligence of the British people.

Roger Livesey's and Anton Walbrook's performances are both fantastic, and the film contains two drop-dead emotional moments: Walbrook's single shot speech about leaving Germany, and Livesey's final lines as the film ends.

And any film which has a character called Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff MUST be good.