The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1945)

Awesome Movie

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

It is World War 2 and Major General Clive Wynn-Candy is a senior officer in the Home Guard. He seems the stereotypical English General - old-fashioned, play by the rules, and drastically out of touch. Through flashbacks we see his Army career, from its early days onwards, and it wasn't always so. Wonderful, interesting, moving movie. The life of a military officer, his loves, regrets, how the times change around him, and how he adapts to them, or not. The movie starts rather frenetically, which was off-putting, but once it settles down it is a wonderful movie. Roger Livesey is great in the lead role, but it is the amazingly beautiful Deborah Kerr (in three roles) who steals the show.

Although the days of Colonel Blimp are but a memory in the United Kingdom, The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp is a film that might be misinterpreted and misunderstood on this side of the Atlantic. I'm betting that most younger filmgoers would not be familiar with David Low's famous cartoon caricature of the British reactionary in the Twenties and Thirties. As we see him in later life, Colonel Blimp is fleshed out and given the name of Clive Wynne-Candy retired brigadier general of the British army who saw service in the Boer War, World War I, and God knows how many other posts in the Empire on which the sun never set. When you see Roger Livesey in old age that was the perfect image of Low's creation.In the newspapers Low's caricature has a bit more acid thrown at him, he's a figure of derision. In the film Livesey is a well meaning fathead who thinks those maxims about fair play and good sportsmanship have a place in a country that is at war with a totally ruthless enemy. It's how the British see themselves and the film as propaganda was designed to knock those illusions out.Livesey delivers a marvelous performance and kudos have to go to the makeup department that producers Powell-Pressburger used in showing the aging of Livesey's character from a young lieutenant who while in Berlin gets into a duel with Anton Walbrook who becomes his lifelong friend despite the different sides their countries are on.Walbrook for me however gives the best performance in the film. His character also grows and changes with age and his scene with British officials circa 1935 as he's an old and broken man just wanting asylum in the country that he fought against from 1914 to 1918, but where his best friend in the world is located is just brilliant.Deborah Kerr plays three different roles and in those three parts she shows three generations of British womanhood, first as the woman that Walbrook won from Livesey in 1903, then as a nurse on the western front who Livesey eventually marries, and finally as his young driver during World War II. In the Citadel Film series book on the British cinema, Kerr said that this was her greatest acting challenge up to that point and the way she dealt with it was to pretend she was in three different films in essaying each character.The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp is a fine piece of work and is still enjoyable, but to really appreciate it you would have to know about cartoonist David Low and his creation.

This is a very remarkable movie. After the first 30 minutes I felt I had had more pleasure than usual from a film. This was an odd feeling considering how old-fashioned and simple the direction seemed. After an hour I was amazed at how engrossed I was in the story and the characters. I paused the movie several times to reflect on it. The cinematography is minimalist compared to current styles; the direction is out of sight and unobvious; the story is very simple, based on progress through time, but covering in its scope all the important questions of life, death, honesty, honor, and that most difficult to define quality – compassion. It provides a viewpoint on love, friendship, war, peace, victory, defeat, courage, understanding and the human spirit. Quite an amazing tour de force. I understand why Churchhill wanted this banned – it was not the mood he needed to bolster his own position and rally the population, yet it is more honest than any of his speeches, and more human than he ever succeeded in being. War is a horrible thing. Life is a glorious thing: I think that is the message of this movie.

This film is pure magic. It fully deserves to be in any list of the Top films of all time. That it was made during the second world war yet treats its topic with objectivity, humour and humanity places it in the category of true art. The story is engrossing, the characters so real that I find that no time at all seems to have passed between the beginning and the end titles. Roger Livesay characterises the many faces of Colonel Wynn-Candy with immense panache and an authenticity which amazes me. The cast provides the perfect backdrop for "Blimp" to realise that his time has passed, and the rules he considered ran the world are no longer valid. He is one of the iconic characters in cinema history, in the same class as Rick Blaine, Inspector Clouseau and Charles Foster Kane. It is pleasing to see that no-one has had the effrontery to try and re-make this classic. Watch this film.