grantss
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.
Turfseer
'Colonel Blimp' is a difficult film to explain. First of all, 'Blimp' has little to do with its protagonist who's named Major General Clive Wynne-Candy. Colonel Blimp is actually a comic strip by David Low which was popular when the film was made in 1943. The comic features a stereotypical Englishman, known for his pomposity and was written by Low to satirize what he perceived as the reactionary views of certain politicians of the time (including Winston Churchill). Director Michael Powell indicated that the film is really a tribute to those who maintain their dignity, in their old age.The film begins awkwardly in the present time of 1943. Wynne-Candy is now the leader of the Home Front, staffed with civilian volunteers and retired military men such as the General himself. Wynne-Candy is about to get his comeuppance at the hands of 'Spud' Wilson, the young lieutenant who also happens to be the boyfriend of Wynne-Candy's driver, 'Johnny' Cannon (role #3 played by Deborah Kerr). Spud breaks the rules by using Johnny as an unwitting spy, gathering intelligence on the General's plans during war games between the General's group and his. We then flashback to the time of the Boer War in 1902, where Wynne-Candy is on leave and receives a letter from Edith Hunter (Role #1 played by Kerr), a friend of a friend, who is now working as an English teacher in Berlin.Edith complains to Wynne-Candy in the letter that a German, Kaunitz, is spreading lies about the conduct of the British Army in the Boer War. Against orders to intervene in a diplomatic matter, Wynne-Candy confronts Kaunitz in a café, who slaps him, and then Wynne-Candy manages to insult the entire Imperial German Army Corps. He ends up in a duel with a German officer, Theodor Kretschmar-Schuldorff, played by an excellent Anton Walbrook, and they both end up hospitalized. An unlikely friendship develops between the two men at the hospital, despite Theo's limited grasp of the English language (the running joke is Theo's response of 'very much' to almost every comment he responds to). At the end, Edith falls for Theo and we never see her again. All this would be mildly interesting (and/or entertaining) except for the fact that the scenes are drawn out for way too long and is done in the style of the typical drawing room comedies of the time.Now a Brigadier General in the First World War, Wynne-Candy ends up meeting a young nurse, Barbara, (Role #2 played by Deborah Kerr) who he eventually marries. There's an interesting scene where Wynne-Candy finds out that Theo is now interned in a British prisoner of war camp following the Armistice. Theo refuses to speak to him presumably because he doesn't want to appear as a collaborator in front of his fellow prisoners. But later, about to depart for Germany, Theo calls the General, who brings him out to meet his various cronies, all a bunch of stuffed shirts. This group collectively personifies the title character. They all act as if the war never happened and want to be immediate friends with Theo, who after leaving the party, speaks of the group contemptuously, indicating that the British are 'weak'. Wynne-Candy is no different from his colleagues in their naive belief that the enmity between the two nations will soon be forgotten!In perhaps the weakest part of the film, time passes in a series of montages. In one instant, a newspaper clipping from 1926 notes the passing of Wynne-Candy's wife. When Theo re-appears at an immigration hearing in 1939 in England, he reveals that Edith too is dead. So Powell manages to ensure that we learn virtually nothing about each of these female characters. Meanwhile, Theo, who looked like he was fast becoming a hardened Nazi when he gets on the boat back to Germany in 1919, now is a virulent anti-Fascist, after presumably softening up, following the death of his wife. Unfortunately, all of this plays out off-screen. Had the duel machinations perhaps been a bit shorter, there could have been some scenes, effectively depicting Theo's transformation.Following Britian's entry into World War II, Wynne-Candy's dark moment comes when his BBC speech is canceled. Acting like the pompous Blimp, Wynne-Candy wants to employ 'nice guy' tactics against the Nazis and argues that the British shouldn't stoop to their level, when fighting them. The 'gentleman warrior' is deemed irrelevant and is forced to retire from active service. Theo also lectures Wynne-Candy on the necessity of pulling out 'all the stops', in the war against the Nazis.We're now back to the present time, in the middle of those War Games between Wynne-Candy's Home Front and the regular army. Wynne-Candy is literally caught with his pants down, while he enjoys himself in a Turkish bath. While at first, he's humiliated by the young lieutenant's 'below the belt' tactics, and plans on punishing him, he recalls his own youth, when he disobeyed orders and confronted the wretched Kaunitz in the café. Realizing the error of his ways, he decides to invite the lieutenant to dinner. The older codger is not so bad after all, finally realizing his error in not adapting to the new times.Deborah Kerr was a beautiful woman who sadly here has little to do in her three roles. Roger Livesey is saddled by the weak character of Wynne-Candy, who is both noble as the principled soldier and buffoonish, in his desire to ingratiate himself with just about everyone he meets. Only Walbrook as Kretschmar-Schuldorff, steals the show, with his nuanced performance as the bad guy/good guy Teuton.'Colonel Blimp' will keep your interest more as a period piece than a great work of art. In the earlier scenes it needed to be more compact and at the mid-point, more detailed. At the end, its message is spot on, but comes off as agitprop, rather than compelling drama.
bkoganbing
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.
hylinski
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.
