The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
1943's THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, as they say. Another minted classic from writer/directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressurger. A film that has great respect for the countrymen of England, and the men who defended it in the Boer and World Wars. Its origins are of a buffoonish caricature drenched in satire. With their film, Powell and Pressburger create a loving, witty, luminous, and even powerfully emotional experience. Its epic sprawl across forty years allows us to watch not only the evolution of warfare in Britain and Germany, but also the humans who fight it.
In the midst of battle planning and Allie loyalty, men and women fall in love. Lieutenant Clive Wynne-Candy (Roger Livesey) journeys to Berlin to investigate Germans who are spreading anti-British sentiment. After some humiliation in a restaurant, German officers mandate that Candy engage in a duel of swords with one of their own, Theo Kretschmar-Schludorff (Anton Walbrook). The scene cuts away before we see the injuries that land both men infirmed for quite some time. During this, the men become friends. Edith (Elizabeth Kerr) is the British correspondent who seems to be fond of Candy but is proposed to by Kretschmar. The former gives his blessing, but later realizes he in fact loves her. It will haunt him thereafter.
But later, during WWI, Candy will observe a nurse in a convent who appears as if to be Edith's twin. Her name is Barbara is also played by Kerr. The two marry and start a new life.
Life goes on between wars. The men will be reunited a few times under various peaceful and hostile political climates. During WWII, a woman's transport driver named Angela (Kerr again) will strike both men with her resemblance to their now deceased spouses. The battle of Dunkirk looms. Candy is to give a speech on BBC Radio. He plans to voice his disdain for barbaric war methodology, the kind the Germans are now using.
I've given too much plot away. It is only the skeleton upon which the filmmakers create this most cinematic of '40s gems. Call it propaganda, call it spoofing, call it melodrama, it's all so damned inspiring and charming. Even if Winston Churchill's charges again the project are in fact valid. You want to cheer the heart and minds of these men, who in their twilight wince at but reconcile with a changing military. The device of beginning the story near its conclusion and then rejoining it at the end is something you've doubtless seen several times but how it is pulled off here is just amazing. What a command of the medium, all in that gorgeous Technicolor. And so literate and heartfelt, but never off the chart, never not so verrry British.
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