The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp [Criterion Collection]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

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, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Number of Discs: 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
• Subtitle: English
• Features:
  • New high-definition transfer of the original full-length version of the film, restored by the british film institue
  • Audio commentary featuring director Michael Powell with Martin Scorses
  • The 24-minute video documentary, A profile of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
  • Selection of Sir David Low's Colonel Blimp cartoons
  • Rear behind-the-scenes and production still from the collection of Michael Powell
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
  • Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition

AWARDS

• National Board of Review

•     Nominated Best Picture - 1945

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Director:

  Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

• Producer:

  Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

• Screenwriter:

  Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

• Cinematographer:

  Georges Périnal

• Composer (Music Score):

  Allan Gray

• Editor:

  John Seabourne

• Production Designer:

  Alfred Junge

• Costume Designer:

  Joseph Bato

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  Desmond Dew, C.C. Stevens

• Makeup:

  George Blackler, Dorrie Hamilton

• Special Effects:

  W. Percy Day

• First Assistant Director:

  Tom Payne

• Consultant/advisor:

  Lt.Gen. Sir Douglas Browning

• Camera Operator:

  Jack Cardiff, Geoffrey Unsworth

• Production Manager:

  Sydney Streeter

REVIEW:

• By today's standards, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Life And Death of Colonel Blimp seems a brilliantly written and executed character study with period overtones -- "the British Citizen Kane," as one critic described it in recent years. But the 163-minute movie was one of the most controversial productions in England during the war, and the disputes over its content and distribution overshadowed the film's virtues for nearly 40 years. Powell and Pressburger, also known as "The Archers," had already courted controversy in 1941 with their propaganda movie 49th Parallel. Blimp seemed as if it was designed to engender displeasure from the government: Anton Walbrook, who was the leader of the anti-Nazi Germans in 49th Parallel, plays an even more sympathetic expatriate German in this movie; the title character, who represents the epitome of the British officer class of the First World War, is depicted as a well-meaning but doddering old buffoon, incapable of dealing with the Nazi threat; and the hero, Clive Candy (brilliantly played by Roger Livesey), makes his name on a civilian escapade during the Boer War, just as Prime Minister Winston Churchill had. The movie seemed certain to attract official censure, and it did. Powell and Pressburger were denied the use of military equipment or personnel while Blimp was in production, and the government voiced its further strenuous objections to the parties financing the movie. Once it was completed and released, the film was denied an export license to the United States until almost two years after the war, by which time it had been shorn of nearly an hour of material. It took 40 years for the uncut version to reach America in its original Technicolor splendor. After the wait, audiences found a movie that seized upon many of the structural elements found in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, with its back-to-front-to-back narrative path. The Archers took the class satire and social consciousness found in the best work of Noel Coward -- as well as in the original David Low cartoon whence the Colonel Blimp character originated -- and turned those elements into something uniquely theirs, a film very wry and dry in its tweaking of British sensibilities, universal in its observations on life, love and longevity in the middle of a world war. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi