The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

This is an outstanding movie about… the energy of youth and the wisdom of age. Brilliant!

A wondrous triumph of a film that surpassed my expectations completely. The film manages to touch on so much of the endless list of thoughts, emotions, and experiences that plague a life, in a remarkably natural way. One of my new favourites.

A deeply complex epic that avoids the often cheep romanticizing you get from similar films made during WWII. Certain sequences (i.e. the duel) are way ahead of anything else being made at this time.

There are two types of character who often appear as a villain in the conventional World War 2 movie. These are the German officer, and the out-of-touch senior official on our side who has no understanding of what war is really like. The former features in the more gung-ho flag-wavers, and the latter in the cynical anti-war film. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp has both these characters in it, only here they are the movie's heroes. If this was a revisionist war movie made many years later, we could understand this challenging of stereotypes, but Colonel Blimp was made in the middle of the war. It is hardly surprising that these two decisions led to some criticism of the film. While Michael Powell was an unashamed patriot, and Colonel Blimp is a celebration of Britishness, Powell was broad-minded enough to not feel a sense of jingoistic nationalism. He took pride in the fact that the film crew for Colonel Blimp included a mixture of nationalities. There are prejudiced remarks by characters in his films, but there are also many sympathetic portrayals of other nations – Americans, Canadians, Dutch people, Scottish people, Greeks, and, yes, even Germans. What made Colonel Blimp different is that it is about a British officer who seems to be out of step with his country, making the addition of a ‘good' German seem all the more outrageous. There are many qualities about Candy that we may not like. His patriotism is blind, and his sense of honour causes him to view the world through blinkers. He is gentlemanly to the ladies, but seems to think that their place is in the home. He hunts wild game, and his walls are festooned with the heads of all the wild animals that he has killed. Nonetheless there is much to admire and love in Candy. He is brave, honourable, courteous and respectful. When he gets angry, he is quick to apologise and forgive. His patriotism is tempered with an open mind. His best friend is a German officer who caused him a serious injury in a duel. He is also romantic, and a part of him stays youthful, even into old age. Michael Powell manages the difficult task of making a movie that is both pro-British and critical of the British army. He also accomplishes the even harder undertaking of creating a hero who is both admirable and wrong. The film ends with Candy staring sadly at a leaf in water, and remembering his wife. However as the army marches past, he forgets his self-pity. He turns to face the soldiers, stands to attention and salutes. The film's final impression is that while Clive may be wrong-headed, we have lost something loyal, noble and brave in the passing of such officers. I wrote a longer appreciation of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp on my blog page if you would like to read more: https://themoviescreenscene.wordpress.com/2018/04/06/the-life-and-death-of-colonel-blimp-1943/

Absolute rubbish. Don't know why everyone is saying it's the greatest film ever made. Must be a joke.

If I could have understood anything in the first 15 minutes of this film I would have ranked it a bit higher. I love all the work of Powell and Pressburger, but this one I will happily ignore.

Often considered one of the greatest British films of all time, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp tells the story of Clive Candy over the course of four decades. The film captures numerous British sensibilities and traditions as well as a look into the country's past and it's citizens during wartime. The film is a deep and complex character study and one that while slowly paced tells a nuanced and moving story.

Simultaneously a satire on traditional British sensibilities in the face of a dynamic, entirely uncompromising, and comprehensively evil enemy, and a touching character study in its slightly misguided, but largely moral and wholesome protagonist. Livesey's Candy gradually transforms from lively idealist, to refined intellectual (albeit one tainted with naivete), and finally to a jaded, resolute pragmatist. The film provides a poignant take on generational parallels while still recognizing the role of change in the world that must be accounted for. At once, a celebration of British culture and a satire of its shortcomings, particularly its overreliance on tradition and formality. For the period, exceptionally vivid color certainly adds to the spectacle. I do feel that the triple role of Kerr as a unifying figure between the British and German home lives of yesteryear and the more modern world that Candy ultimately finds himself in is somewhat hokey, though. (4/5)

While I found parts of this film worth watching, the first 45 minutes seemed rather foolish, and very slow moving, while the frequent use of mounted heads of the myriad poor defenseless animals that the main character used to prove he had a penis I found downright revolting, and definitely part of the reason why we have lost 2/3 of all wildlife since 1970 and most of our chance of saving the balance of nature by biodiversity. The movie was way too long and just not interesting enough to sustain 2 hours and 45 minutes. There are so many war movies of the same period that are just so much better!

Wow. Epic and intimate at the same time, with an outstanding performance by Roger Livesey. The emotion of it sneaks up on you throughout the running time, but leads to a wonderfully poignant ending. I just wish the main character hadn’t been a trophy hunter. I know why that was included but it meant I really struggled to sympathise with him afterwards.