The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is a 1943 romantic drama war film written, produced and directed by the British film making team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It stars Roger Livesey, Deborah Kerr and Anton Walbrook. The title derives…
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is a 1943 romantic drama war film written, produced and directed by the British film making team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It stars Roger Livesey, Deborah Kerr and Anton Walbrook. The title derives from the satirical Colonel Blimp comic strip by David Low, but the story itself is original. The film is renowned for its Technicolor cinematography.
Although the film is strongly pro-British, it is a satire on the British Army, especially its leadership. It suggests that Britain faced the option of following traditional notions of honourable warfare or to "fight dirty" in the face of such an evil enemy as Nazi Germany. There is also a certain similarity between Candy and Churchill and some historians have suggested that Churchill may have wanted the production stopped because he had mistaken the film for a parody of himself (he had himself served in the Boer War and the First World War). Churchill's exact reasons remain unclear, but he was acting only on a description of the planned film from his staff, not on a viewing of the film itself.
Since the highly successful re-release of the film in the 1980s, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp has been re-evaluated. The film is praised for its dazzling Technicolor cinematography (which, with later films such as The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus, would become The Archers' greatest legacy), the performances by the lead actors as well as for transforming, in Roger Ebert's words; "a blustering, pigheaded caricature into one of the most loved of all movie characters". David Mamet has written: "My idea of perfection is Roger Livesey (my favorite actor) in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (my favorite film) about to fight Anton Walbrook (my other favorite actor)." Stephen Fry saw the film as addressing "what it means to be English", and praised it for the bravery of taking a "longer view of history" in 1943. Anthony Lane of the New Yorker said in 1995 that the film "may be the greatest English film ever made, not least because it looks so closely at the incurable condition of being English".
The film appears in Empire's list of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time at number 80.
This channel is dedicated to preserving and making available to the widest public the very best of classic documentaries and historical films which would otherwise fade into obscurity if not worse. The emphasis is on historical subjects, but is not limited to them. Broaden your horizons by seeing the world through the lens of generations which preceded us.
If you wish to support this channel and the effort put into selecting, finding and uploading these valuable historical works, you may do so either directly through paypal or by downloading and using the revolutionary Brave browser via this referral link https://brave.com/ele794
Crypto donations:
bitcoin: 1FXkq3WfwJgsCse9xbsZdrqY37eEXNZwW8
ethereum: 0x03d5593CD950333aA4eC14cd15ed9F7a9Ba09b88
litecoin: Lar3AsEwk4B53JPwnZspwY6ySjn6p1fwhJ
BAT: 0x03d5593CD950333aA4eC14cd15ed9F7a9Ba09b88
