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IMDbPro

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

  • 19431943
  • Not RatedNot Rated
  • 2h 43m
IMDb RATING
8.0/10
15K
YOUR RATING
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
From the Boer War through World War II, a soldier rises through the ranks in the British military.
Play trailer3:01
1 Video
99+ Photos
  • Drama
  • Romance
  • War
From the Boer War through World War II, a soldier rises through the ranks in the British military.From the Boer War through World War II, a soldier rises through the ranks in the British military.From the Boer War through World War II, a soldier rises through the ranks in the British military.
IMDb RATING
8.0/10
15K
YOUR RATING
  • Directors
    • Michael Powell
    • Emeric Pressburger
  • Writers
    • Michael Powell
    • Emeric Pressburger
  • Stars
    • Roger Livesey
    • Deborah Kerr
    • Anton Walbrook
Top credits
  • Directors
    • Michael Powell
    • Emeric Pressburger
  • Writers
    • Michael Powell
    • Emeric Pressburger
  • Stars
    • Roger Livesey
    • Deborah Kerr
    • Anton Walbrook
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 115User reviews
    • 88Critic reviews
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 1 win & 2 nominations

    Videos1

    Official Trailer
    Trailer 3:01
    Official Trailer

    Photos117

    The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
    The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
    The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
    Deborah Kerr in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
    Roger Livesey and Anton Walbrook in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
    Deborah Kerr in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
    Deborah Kerr in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
    Deborah Kerr and James McKechnie in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
    The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
    Roger Livesey in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
    Roger Livesey and Anton Walbrook in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
    Deborah Kerr in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Roger Livesey
    Roger Livesey
    • Clive Candyas Clive Candy
    Deborah Kerr
    Deborah Kerr
    • Edith Hunteras Edith Hunter…
    Anton Walbrook
    Anton Walbrook
    • Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorffas Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff
    James McKechnie
    James McKechnie
    • Spud Wilsonas Spud Wilson
    Neville Mapp
    Neville Mapp
    • Stuffy Gravesas Stuffy Graves
    Vincent Holman
    • Club Porter (1942)as Club Porter (1942)
    David Hutcheson
    • Hoppyas Hoppy
    Spencer Trevor
    Spencer Trevor
    • Period Blimpas Period Blimp
    Roland Culver
    Roland Culver
    • Colonel Betteridgeas Colonel Betteridge
    James Knight
    • Club Porter (1902)as Club Porter (1902)
    Dennis Arundell
    Dennis Arundell
    • Café Orchestra Leaderas Café Orchestra Leader
    David Ward
    David Ward
    • Kaunitzas Kaunitz
    Jan Van Loewen
    • Indignant Citizenas Indignant Citizen
    Valentine Dyall
    Valentine Dyall
    • von Schönbornas von Schönborn
    Carl Jaffe
    Carl Jaffe
    • von Reumannas von Reumann
    • (as Carl Jaffé)
    Albert Lieven
    Albert Lieven
    • von Ritteras von Ritter
    Eric Maturin
    • Colonel Goodheadas Colonel Goodhead
    Frith Banbury
    • Baby-Face Fitzroyas Baby-Face Fitzroy
    • Directors
      • Michael Powell
      • Emeric Pressburger
    • Writers
      • Michael Powell
      • Emeric Pressburger
    • All cast & crew
    • See more cast details at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Winston Churchill hated the film and wanted it banned. Failing that (for legal reasons), he tried to keep it from being exported because he thought it was a threat to wartime morale, and he also failed at that.
    • Goofs
      Clive Candy goes to confront Kaunitz in Berlin, which is in Prussia, but Kaunitz's Stammtisch (regular table for meeting of friends) are drinking from Hofbräuhaus krugs (steins), noted by the 'HB' insignia. The Hofbräuhaus is in Munich, which is the capital of Bavaria, 360 miles away.
    • Quotes

      Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: You know that, after the war, we had very bad years in Germany. We got poorer and poorer. Every day retired officers or schoolteachers were caught shoplifting. Money lost its value, the price of everything rose except of human beings. We read in the newspapers that the after-war years were bad everywhere, that crime was increasing and that honest citizens were having a hard job to put the gangsters in jail. Well in Germany, the gangsters finally succeeded in putting the honest citizens in jail.

    • Crazy credits
      Deborah Kerr's characters are listed separately, in order of appearance, so her name appears three times in the movie credits.
    • Alternate versions
      The original version (the one restored to Criterion Collection DVD and laserdisc) runs 163 minutes. When Winston Churchill expressed his vehement dislike for the film, the British distributor, Rank Films, cut it to 140 minutes. The film was chopped to pieces when it was imported to the United States in 1945, running around 120 minutes (in which the film's vital flashback structure is eliminated and the story is told from beginning to end). The film was further cut to 90 minutes and ran on public television often in the 1970s; for years, it was thought that this was the only extant version. In 1983, with the cooperation of the Archers, the film was restored to the full 163-minute length. The restored film retains the original flashback structure and many World War I scenes, including the appearance of a black soldier.
    • Connections
      Featured in Arena: A Pretty British Affair (1981)
    • Soundtracks
      Je suis Titania
      (uncredited)

      from "Mignon"

      Music by Ambroise Thomas

    User reviews115

    Review
    Top review
    Powell's Masterpiece
    In his autobiography, "A Life in Movies" (published 1987), director Michael Powell recalled that he and screenwriter Emeric Pressburger sharply disagreed as to their best collaborative film work. The former argued in favor of their satirical vision of Heaven, the phantasmagoric "A Matter of Life and Death" (1946). The latter preferred the romantic world of international ballet as presented in the opulent backstage musical/dance-athon, "The Red Shoes" (1948). In my opinion, both were mistaken.

    "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" (1943) is their masterpiece. It was the film in which Powell finally fulfilled the promise that he had shown sporadically in his earlier films – in scenes such as Conrad Veidt's darkly comic encounter with a mountain-goat while trailing a bicycle up a cliff in "The Spy in Black" (1939); the opening shot of "Thief of Bagdad" (1940) as the camera tracks closer to Jaffar's ship and reveals a painted eye on the boat's prow; or in the eerie opening sequence of "One of Our Aircraft Is Missing" (1942), where, without a crew to guide it, a Wellington bomber, flying over the southern coast of Britain, suddenly smashes into a power line and implodes in a blazing white ball of flame. Here, in "Colonel Blimp," based on the stuffy, elitist character created by David Low, director Powell found a unifying style that encompassed the other-worldly vision that is sustained throughout the film's lengthy running time (2 hours, 43 minutes) – a style that is, at once, austere yet elegant; moody but curiously euphoric; hard at its core but sentimental around the edges.

    As evidenced by the film's title, Pressburger's script does deal in a very generalized way with issues of Life and Death, but he carries his vision into the realm of the abstract, and he does so in circular fashion. More specifically, he explores a younger generation's brash, rebellious attitude towards their elders; and then examines how that attitude becomes more restrained, more conservative with the passage of time – until, as that generation ages, they become so "traditional" that, in the end, when their notions of honor and ethics have become obsolete in relation to the dominant society, they abstain from collaborating with community and, in a sense, they cease to really exist at all. And in the end, Death is all there is.

    In keeping with Pressburger's theme, the film is structured in circular fashion, beginning in 1943, flashing back to 1903 and progressing all the way up to 1943 again, where it ends: Life as a universal loop, so to speak. Pictorially, the movie begins with an image of speed – British military messengers motorcycling across the English highways to their respective units with orders regarding war-game maneuvers. But the film ends with a sharply contrasting image – a yellowish-brown leaf floating down a small waterway, its slowness of passage suggesting a funeral dirge and procession.

    The story's main concern is of the deep friendship and camaraderie between the film's hero, Major John Candy, V.C. (Roger Livesey), and German Lieutenant Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook), who meet one another as participants in a duel that has been arranged for the two in order to solve a peacetime diplomatic dispute. Afterwards, while nursing their wounds in a hospital, they become close friends – so much so that when it is discovered that they are unacknowledged suitors to the same girl, an English governess (one of three women played by Deborah Kerr), there is no dispute whatsoever: a coy suggestion by the filmmakers that two individuals can often solve disputes more efficiently than two nations. There is a temporary row between Candy and Theo at the end of the First World War, as indeed there can be little other than animosity between two uneasy nation/signatories of a peace treaty. But 20 years later, when Theo flees Nazi Germany and begs political asylum in England, it is Candy (now a general) who gladly uses his enormous influence to save Theo from either internment or deportation. This last episode is particularly affecting: Theo recites for British immigration officials a long, sad story of his life from 1919 on, relating the death of his wife and the indoctrination of his sons into the Hitler Youth.

    From there, the film completes its flashback "loop" to 1943, where we witness Candy's old-fashioned Victorian adherence to "good sportsmanship" – his single failing as a military tactician and leader – that costs his Home Guard unit a war-games competition. David Low sought to satirize the Blimp character as a ridiculous facsimile of grandiose pomposity; Powell and Pressburger, however, seek to humanize him by tracing the process that finally made "Colonel Blimp" what he was, at least externally. Roger Livesey's performance is an outstanding, sympathetic tour-de-force – he was one of the most transparently gifted film actors of his generation. And Deborah Kerr's triple-performance confirmed her stardom for decades to come.

    Powell references one of his favorite films "The Wizard of Oz" (1939) throughout – even down to the naming of Candy's aunt as the Lady Margaret Hamilton. Candy is referred to as "the Wizard" by his driver's fiancée, even while humming and dancing to the tune "We're Off to See the Wizard." (Three years later, Powell would use "Oz's" technique of alternating between monochrome and Technicolor for his fantasy, "A Matter of Life and Death.")
    helpful•141
    9
    • nk_gillen
    • Jun 21, 2004

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • July 26, 1943 (United Kingdom)
    • Country of origin
      • United Kingdom
    • Languages
      • English
      • French
      • German
    • Also known as
      • Colonel Blimp
    • Filming locations
      • 139 Park Lane, Mayfair, Westminster, Greater London, England, UK
    • Production companies
      • The Archers
      • Independent Producers
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • £188,812 (estimated)
    • Gross worldwide
      • $30,129
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      2 hours 43 minutes
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.37 : 1

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