The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Directed by: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger - 2 hours, 43 minutes - 1943 - UK - Color - Blu-ray - 1.37:1
Starring: Roger Livesey, Anton Walbrook, Deborah Kerr, John Laurie, Roland Culver

“But what, exactly, is Colonel Blimp? An epic, certainly, but a war epic or a comedy? A story of cross-cultural male bonding, with Roger Livesey’s General Clive Candy and Anton Walbrook’s Prussian officer, Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff, mirroring the collaboration between Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger? Or a triangular love story in which two men’s pursuit of a single woman (Deborah Kerr, multiplied by three) pays gallant homage to the theme of the eternal feminine, transcending time and place? Or is it, finally, a dirge for the loss of traditional English values and the idea of fair play, or a resigned repudiation of those values for the sake of winning a dirty war? The astonishing and confounding answer is that it’s all of these things, incorporating imperceptible shifts in tone whereby dreams and magic, philosophy and satire coexist seamlessly. Nothing feels abrupt, out of place, “difficult” - not even an intricate puzzle of a flashback structure that gives even greater pleasure on repeated viewings. Yet just how the filmmakers do this is as mystifying as what the movie is.” - Molly Haskell

Colonel Blimp traces the friendship of two soldiers across 40 years and two wars, as the world grows more unfamiliar around them and the values they hold seem to be disappearing along with the empire that sustained them. Blimp was a comic character popular in Britain in the ‘30s, a buffoonish and pompous officer blustering about old English values (and with more than a passing resemblance to Churchill). The movie introduces him in the person of Clive Candy as a caricature and turns him into a character, as we see through flashbacks how he came to be the man out of touch with his time and ridiculed by younger troops. Churchill condemned the film and tried to block its release, enraged at a wartime film that dared discuss the ethics of fighting a dishonorable enemy, and having a sympathetic German character, no less. A character likely based on the Hungarian-born Pressburger, who was still considered an “enemy alien” even after several successful British propaganda films he and Powell had made previous to Blimp.

Trailer (re-release)
IMDB page
Roger Ebert - Great Movies review (4/4 stars) - “an uncommonly civilized film about war and soldiers - and rarer still, a film that defends the old against the young.”
Molly Haskell essay - “Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s adroit masterpiece is war film, dark comedy, historical drama, poignant romance, and a portrait of the modern woman.”