Genre:
Drama
Release Date: 10/22/2002
SubTitles: English
Sound: DD1
Run Time: 163 Minutes
Flags: Suitable for Children
Distributor/Studio: Criterion
Michael Powell and
Emeric Pressburger's much-lauded epic
Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, which satirizes British traditionalism, stirred up impassioned hostilities and indignations among the Brits when released in 1943. It so infuriated
Winston Churchill, in fact, that he refused to allow its exportation to other countries, particularly the U.S. When
Blimp finally
did premiere in the States in 1945, it screened in a drastically cut version. The sweeping story covers several decades. It begins at the tail end of the Boer War, when handsome young British officer
Clive Candy, recently back from the battlefront, is infuriated by his discovery that Deutschland papers have played up the British atrocities in South Africa, propagandistically. He grows so irate, in fact, that he travels to Germany to address the problem. Once there, he meets an attractive British educator,
Edith Hunter (
Deborah Kerr) who spends her days teaching English as a second language to German students. They grow close, but
Candy so aggravates the local indigenes that he winds up in a duel with a German officer,
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (
Anton Walbrook). The men wound each other and are sent to the same hospital, where they become friends.
Candy - who doesn't yet realize he's fallen in love with
Edith -- senses that
Theo and
Edith are attracted to one another, and encourages the couple's marital union.
Candy subsequently returns to England, then falls for and marries
Barbara (again played by
Kerr), a nurse who bears a strong resemblance to
Edith. She later dies, but
Candy meets a
third woman during WWII,
Johnny (
Kerr a third time), assigned to drive him from one locale to another during his campaigns. Meanwhile,
Theo - disgusted by Nazi atrocities -- absconds to England, where he reencounters his old friend, now a prattering old shuffler rapidly approaching the end of his career and raving continuously about Nazi conduct (or lack thereof) in battle.
Powell and
Pressberger adapted
Colonel Blimp from a comic strip; it became one of the hallmarks of their careers.
~ Sidney Jenkins, All Movie Guide
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