The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp ***** (1943, Roger Livesey, Deborah Kerr, Anton Walbrook) – Classic Movie Review 599

Writer-producer-director Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s unique, warm-hearted 1943 epic drama The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is a master-crafted jewel in the crown of British cinema as one of the nation’s best ever films.

They use David Low’s newspaper cartoon strip as its starting point to paint a complex portrait of old British military campaigner General Clive Wynne-Candy, a blustering windbag who seems the epitome of stuffy, outdated values. Travelling back 40 years, it details Candy’s career, life and loves from the Boer War to the London Blitz, through a series of relationships with three women and his lifelong friendship with a German officer, Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff.

In a lovely, career-best performance, Roger Livesey turns the old duffer into a jovial, appealing character reaching out for affection and struggling to adapt his old-style sense of military honour to Forties  notions of total war.

An alluring Deborah Kerr (replacing an unavailable Wendy Hiller) stars in the three different roles as the women in Candy’s life, Edith Hunter, Barbara Wynne and Johnny Cannon. Anton Walbrook shocked wartime audiences (and the then Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, who tried unsuccessfully to suppress the film) by playing a good German in a British film.

Exquisitely photographed by ace cinematographer Georges Périnal and second-unit cameraman Jack Cardiff in glorious Technicolor, it is one of the loveliest looking of all British films. Powell gave Cardiff his first big break as the cinematographer on his next film, A Matter of Life and Death (1946).

Set designer Alfred Junge enjoys the unique distinction of having his Blimp sketch hung in the Royal Academy in London.

Powell and Pressburger wanted Laurence Olivier to play Clive Candy, but he was prevented from being given leave from the British Navy by Churchill as part of his attempt to stop the film being made. Olivier was however allowed out of the British Fleet Air Arm service to make their 1941 film The 49th Parallel and his own patriotic movie Henry V in 1944.

Powell and Pressburger were inspired to make The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp by a scene cut from their previous film, One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942), in which an elderly member of the plane crew tells a younger one: ‘You don’t know what it’s like to be old.’

Winston Churchill’s hatred for the film carried on after it was made. British distributor General Film Distributors [Rank Films] cut it from 163 minutes to 140 minutes after Churchill’s protests and when it was exported to the US in 1945 it was hacked to 120 minutes with the flashback structure eliminated. It was later slashed to 90 minutes on TV in the Seventies. But in 1983, the film was restored to 163 minutes (Criterion Collection DVD and laserdisc).

Powell died on February 19 1990, aged 84.

A very happy 95th birthday on September 19 2020 to Pete Murray, who made his film debut as an actor for a fee of £3 as an Extra in Crowd at BBC Bunker (uncredited) in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.

Patrick Macnee also appears as an Extra.

Also in the cast are Roland Culver, James McKechnie, Albert Lieven, Arthur Wontner, A E Matthews, David Hutcheson, Ursula Jeans, John Laurie, Harry Welchman, Neville Mapp, Wally Patch, George Woodbridge, Peter Noble, Norris Smith, Charles Mortimer, Ferdy Mayne, Joan Swinstead, Edward Cooper, Norman Pierce, Helen Debroy Summers, Felix Aylmer, Marjorie Gresley, Yvonne Andre, Thomas Palmer, W.H. Barrett, Reginald Tate, Muriel Aked, Phyllis Morris, Jane Millican, Theodore Zichy, Robert Harris, Frith Banbury, Eric Maturin, Carl Jaffe, Valentine Dyall, Jan Van Loewen, David Ward, Dennis Arundell, James Knight, Spencer Trevor, Vincent Holman, and Ian Fleming.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp [Colonel Blimp] is directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger runs 163 minutes, is made by The Archers and Independent Producers, is released by General Film Distributors (1943) (UK) and United Artists (1945) (US), Independent, is written by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, is shot in Technicolor by Georges Périnal, Jack Cardiff (Technicolor cameraman), Geoffrey Unsworth (Technicolor cameraman) and Harold Haysom (Technicolor cameraman) is produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, is scored by Allan Gray and is designed by Alfred Junge.

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© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 599

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