160. The Life and Death Of Colonel Blimp (1943)

Directed By Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

Synopsis

The story of the life of Clive "suggie" Candy, a career officer and a lovely man.

Review

It would be tempting to classify this film as a propaganda film. It would be tempting but also wrong. This film is so much more than that, of course there is an element of propaganda here, after all it is a war film directed in the UK in 1943, it would be unthinkable if it wasn't. But it is also a touching story about growing old and about life and general. It really transcends the idea of propaganda in so many ways that I think we are safe putting that aside.

This is actually one of the best films I've seen on this list. Firstly it is beautiful, it has the best use of Technicolor up until now, it isn't as gaudy as Wizard of Oz but it does make the film look all the more realistic. Then it is brilliantly directed, it almost looks like a film from the 60's in its image quality and use of colour. Then you have the plot, following the life of Candy in flashback and creating though the 2 hours and a half of it one of the most loveable characters in cinema.

I am really flabbergasted with this, I can't believe I hadn't seen it before and wasn't particularly excited about seeing it. Everything is perfect, the acting, the makeup, Deborah Kerr as the archetypal ideal woman of Candy, playing three different characters which we see through his eyes. Then you have the details, the passage of time through the stuffed animals he mounts up on his wall or the passage of leafs on a scrapbook that stops being added to when his wife dies. Those empty pages are truly touching. The film just has such a lightness of touch together with humour and a deep humanity that it becomes something truly incredible.

This humanity of the film stretches even to the Germans, Theo is the obligatory "good German" but there is more than that, there is no attempt to justify German actions but there is an attempt to understand Germany, to understand the hardships of the time between the wars and not to taint all Germans with the same brush. Gods I'm gushing here... you owe yourself to watch it.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

"What is it really about?" – C. A. Lejeune, The Observer, 1943.

"Colonel Blimp is as unmistakably a British product as Yorkshire pudding and, like the latter, it has a delectable savor all its own." – New York Times March 30, 1945.

"It addresses something I've always been profoundly interested in – what it means to be English... it is about bigger things than the war. It takes a longer view of history which was an extraordinarily brave thing for someone to do in 1943, at a time when history seemed to have disintegrated into its most helpless, impossible and unforgivable state." – Stephen Fry, interviewed by the Daily Telegraph, 2003.

The film provoked an extremist (and unintentionally funny) pamphlet The Shame and Disgrace of Colonel Blimp by "right-wing sociologists E. W. and M. M. Robson," members of the obscure Sidneyan Society:

"[A] highly elaborate, flashy, flabby and costly film, the most disgraceful production that has ever emanated from a British film studio."

In recent years, particularly after the highly successful re-release of the film, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp has been re-evaluated critically and is today regarded as a masterpiece of British cinema. The film is praised for its dazzling technicolor cinematography (which with later films like The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus would become The Archers' greatest legacy), the performances by the lead actors as well as for transforming in Roger Ebert's words; 'a blustering, pigheaded caricature into one of the most loved of all movie characters'.

Theo the German gets all the best lines, here's when Candy gets demoted: