Film: The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp
Director: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Country: UK
Released: June 1943
Runtime: 163 minutes
Genre: Drama
Studio: Rank Organisation
Influenced: Scorsese, David Mamet, Kevin MacDonald, Laura Waddington
Hungarian refugee Emeric Pressburger and British filmmaker Michael Powell came together while working for Alexander Korda's London Films in the late 1930s, and subsequently developed one of the greatest collaborations in cinema history. Pressburger had worked as a scriptwriter in Germany and Austria, while Powell was a successful product of the "quota quickies", a scheme by the UK government to encourage British cinemas to show a quota of homegrown films. In 1942, the pair established their own production company, The Archers, and together directed on an outstanding run of films from The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) to The Tales of Hoffmann (1951).
The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp has had a chequered history and has been re-evaluated much more positively since its successful re-release in the 1980s. Churchill apparently wanted the movie banned; although the film is generally pro-British, it's also a subtle satire on the British Army's upper class leadership. It's possible Churchill may have mistaken it as a parody of himself (like the film's main "Colonel Blimp" character, Clive Wynne-Candy, he himself had served in the Boer War and WWI), but it's unlikely he had the time to watch it, so the real reason remains a mystery. In any case, the film was cut mercilessly to make it shorter and more linear, getting rid of the flashbacks.
Now it's been restored to its nearly 3-hour 4K glory – in part thanks to the advocacy of Martin Scorsese – it feels like much more than one film, such is its epic sweep. Powell & Pressburger partly based the dazzling Technicolor movie on David Low's newspaper cartoons of the time, in which Blimp is a know-it-all Victorian denizen of the Turkish baths, but the film is really about how old people were once young, and how young people are in the process of becoming old and seeing their idealism fade. It's also about rituals, what it means to be English and how a war should be fought – during WWII, Britain faced the option of following traditional notions of honourable warfare or "fighting dirty" against the Nazis.
From the outset, there’s a dreamy unreality to the bathhouse scene that seems out of step with the realism of most British films at that time, and there are so many innovative elements, like the brilliantly clever use of sound for the 40 years ago flashback. The script and acting are top notch too, with Roger Livesey (as Candy), Anton Walbrook (as Theo) and Deborah Kerr (as multiple women) all magnificent. Roland Culver, who plays Colonel Betteridge, is so entertaining too and the scene of him and Candy talking about Conan Doyle and reading the Sherlock stories is very funny.
We see in the beer hall scene how P&P choreograph the camera movement with the music, almost like a mini ballet. The setting is 1902 in Berlin and we see the rise of semi-military youth associations loyal to the Kaiser. Candy gets himself in trouble by challenging the Imperial German Army officers and is challenged to a duel. Instead of going straight to the duel as an action movie might, P&P show us the elaborate negotiations between the German and English upper class military officers regarding the rules of engagement (no breakfast!). "Is this fight really necessary?" asks one English officer, a subtle criticism of the idiotic sense of pride shown by the aristocrats on both sides in the lead-up to WWI.
The duel is choreographed like a mini ballet too, but instead of seeing the fight develop, we zoom out to a view of the hall where the fight is taking place, and zoom back in through the snowy night to the carriage where Edith is waiting nervously. The way that Deborah Kerr plays multiple characters (Edith, Barbara and Angela) in the film gives her presence a transcendent feel, and is also reminiscent of screwball comedies like Trouble In Paradise and The Lady Eve. After the fight, there's a lovely scene of the injured duellists, Candy and Theo, becoming friends while convalescing in the hospital.
Then we zoom forward nearly two decades to WWI France, where John Laurie of Dad's Army fame makes an appearance as Murdoch, serving together with now Brigadier General Candy on the front line. "Might is right", "clean fighting, honest soldiering has won", according to the blustering Candy. To mark the end of the war, there's lovely use of colour by P&P to show the threads of cotton at the clothing factory, pointing to a promising new future away from the dark & drab war.
Candy marries his new love Barbara and promises her that he will "never change" until his house is flooded and "this is a lake". At the POW camp in 1919, where Candy is trying to regain contact with Theo, Barbara muses on "how odd, how queer" the Germans were in the run-up to WWI, "for years & years, they're writing and dreaming beautiful music and beautiful poetry, then all of a sudden they start a war".
Candy and Theo reconcile, and there's a scene of various British officials of Empire sat around the table asking questions of a dejected Theo. We then jump forward 20 years and Theo is being interview by a UK immigration official, having lost his wife and having seen his sons become Nazis, and now wishing to return to the home of his wife and best friend. It's an incredibly moving speech about England, telling the truth and what it means to be human.
The two widowers reunite at Candy's large country home. Seeing the aged versions of Theo and Candy makes the film feel like a British version of Citizen Kane, and this masterpiece is worthy of the comparison. Theo issues a stark warning to Candy about WWII, "this is not a gentleman's war, this time you are fighting for your very existence against the most devilish idea ever created by a human brain, Nazism".
In the film's final chapter, Candy has joined the Home Guard and we've looped back to the start of the film in terms of its timeline. Candy is now old and has been outflanked and surpassed by younger soldiers. His home is now a water tank, and in a very poignant passage about the passing of time, Candy says "here is the lake and I still haven't changed." In that moment, Colonel Blimp dies and Candy comes alive.
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