1943 Directed by Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell
General Candy, who's overseeing an English squad in 1943, is a veteran leader who doesn't have the respect of the men he's training and is considered out-of-touch with what's needed to win the war. But it wasn't always this way. Flashing back to his early career in the Boer War and World War I, we see a dashing young officer whose life has been shaped by three different women, and by a lasting friendship with a German soldier.
Roger Livesey Deborah Kerr Adolf Wohlbrück Roland Culver James McKechnie Arthur Wontner David Hutcheson Ursula Jeans John Laurie Harry Welchman Robert Harris A.E. Matthews Theodore Zichy Jane Millican Neville Mapp Vincent Holman Spencer Trevor James Knight Dennis Arundell David Ward Jan Van Loewen Valentine Dyall Carl Jaffe Albert Lieven Eric Maturin Frith Banbury Phyllis Morris Muriel Aked Reginald Tate Show All…
The Adventures of Colonel Blimp, 코로넬 블림프의 삶과 죽음, Het Begon in Berlijn, Vida y muerte del coronel Blimp, 직업 군인 캔디씨 이야기, 블림프 대령의 삶과 죽음, Coronel Blimp, Leben und Sterben des Colonel Blimp, Vida y muerte del Coronel Blimp, Se alkoi Berliinissä, Colonel Blimp, חייו ומותו של קולונל בלימפ, Blimp ezredes élete és halála, Duello a Berlino, Życie i śmierć pułkownika Blimpa, Coronel Blimp - Vida e Morte, A Vida do Coronel Blimp, Жизнь и смерть полковника Блимпа, Det började i Berlin, Kahraman Subay, 百战将军
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The Archers really were that good, huh? I never expected this to be anything less than a masterpiece, but the sheer complexity of characterization on display here really floored me. I'm particularly taken with Anton Wolbrook's Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff and his longer section on the loss of family, home and children at the onset of the second world war. He shakes and quivers, but tries to maintain his composure when he utters sarcastically that his children are "good nazi's". He failed as a parent here, because he couldn't keep his children away from the seduction of Hitler's evil, but moreso than that he failed as a military officer because in his eyes world war II would have never happened if he…
Part of The Archers Season - 1942 to 1957
Since I joined Letterboxd, I've only had reason to hit the 5 star button for a viewing of a film during my lifetime here on six occasions, and three of those were for films I'd seen before. Out of all them, I probably hit it for The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp twice as quick as for any of the rest of them. What a wonderful, wonderful film.
I did a little bit of reading up about it beforehand as I really did not know anything about it all and I have to say that I was a little bit daunted by it before I started. Not because of its…
My opportunities for watching films are often quite limited, and often coincide with looking after my daughter and I have hundreds of films here to watch. So I tend to go for fairly short films and fit a few into my film watching days. Which means films like this, which I was always sure I would love, tend to sit unwatched for years at a time.
Which is a shame, as the long run time that makes me opt to instead watch two shorter films is probably this films hidden weapon. You experience the passage of time with the central character and you adjust as he adjusts, you learn to accept failings and look past them, you feel a wide…
one of the most sophisticated movies i've ever seen, both politically and aesthetically -- as a satire, i have a hard time thinking of an equal. a story which seems quintessentially english, but also subverts and challenges the notion of 'englishness' at every turn -- the mention of the british empire's boer concentration camps at the beginning is no accident, as candy's romanticism comes to clash with everything that the 'stately' notion of englishness carefully smooths over -- the techniques and evils of colonialism becomes the internalized logic of fascism, the hypocrisies of the english to criticize the germans when really they partake in the same disgusting philosophies -- but that's the states, not the individuals, the individual soldiers fighting…
The best thing about this film is still the central friendship between two men across a significant divide. Its overriding message is even more prominent the second time through, simply because, knowing it, you see it everywhere. That's fine, though. Even though it's an eloquent argument for total war, it's also a call to go against tradition and a distinct depiction of the Nazis as pure evil.
While we spend a lot of energy applauding the humanizing of the worst parts of humanity, I find it significant that the Nazis have maintained their presence as utterly beyond redemption in most media. This film doesn't touch on the darkest parts of Nazism--perhaps because it wasn't even fully understood when and as…
A film made right in the middle of the Second World War with a friendly, sympathetic German and the symbolic positioning of an out of touch Colonel representing the beginning of the end of an Empire. No wonder the forces that be were none too pleased with Powell and Pressburger.
On face value it may be easier to dismiss this ridiculous looking figure at the start, a blustering old man with his round cartoonish features, whose values seen out of touch. “War starts at midnight!” he bellows at the impetuous young sergeant. Then we are forced to take a step back, asked to see this man through the years, look beyond the crimson face, ridiculous moustache and stiff upper lip.…
“Colonel Blimp” is a film caught in the chaos of the outskirts of war.
It depicts confusion akin to a rain of bullets on a battlefield. Only in “Blimp,” there are no bullets. Rather, there’s a mangled chaos mixing up war with diplomacy, diplomacy with manners, and manners with decency.
Powell and Pressburger’s epic is not only one of the finest British films ever made, but also among the best war films; without ever showing a single battle.
Even so much as the threat of mild violence brought by an épée duel occurs offscreen; hidden by a veil of sparkling snow.
Powell and Pressburger have no interest in glorifying the temporal glory brought by war or the men who seek…
An elegy for the old British way of life that may just have all of life (and movies) in it. An epic sweep of minute observations, of pride in good form that necessitates a certain level of obliviousness, of the military man's need for war emphasized only through the trophy heads that materialize in his rarely occupied home during peacetime, of romance revealed only in rearview as belatedly understood love sends shades of a never-aging ideal back into an older and older man's life to comfort and taunt him. A battleground's painted skies contain only the sound of birds taking their first tentative chirps at the cessation of hostilities, and low-key lighting blends with aging makeup to give further voice…
Johnny Cannon (Deborah Kerr) contains multitudes, all wrapped up inside her MTC uniform. She's gloriously independent, brave, and remarkably adaptable, able to adjust herself with ease to any situation, and smart enough to improvise solutions to any obstacle placed in her way. Nearly unflappable, she does her job with enthusiasm and aplomb, and accepts nothing as impossible, whether it's making her way through London's streets during a blackout, or managing to find nights to spend with her enlisted boyfriend, stationed outside of the city.
She's unquestionably, resolutely her own person, a girl both very much of her time, and the kind of smart, resilient person one hopes will be around to shape the future.
But Johnny also carries Edith Hunter (Kerr…
no country for old men...
Still have quite a few of their films to get through, but every time I see this one, it gets better and better, and the more I become convinced that it's Powell & Pressburger's enduring masterpiece (or at the very least that it's shoulder to shoulder with THE RED SHOES). After consecutive propaganda films in 49TH PARALLEL and ONE OF OUR AIRCRAFT IS MISSING, it's fascinating to see P&P craft a narrative that reckons with and dares to challenge the actions and legacy of their country all while the war was still raging on, and it's entirely amusing to read that Winston Churchill actually objected to its release - odd since the film still obviously veers…
