MUBI

Having seen this film at various times over the years, I just don’t understand the wild praise the film continues to get. BLIMP, made in 1943, is the story of uber-Brit soldier Clive Candy (the great Roger Livesey) and his adventures in the years between 1902 and 1943. His assorted romantic relationships are gone into, and his deep friendship with the German officer Theodor von Kretchmar-Schuldorff (the great Anton Walbrook) is really the core of the film. There’s a lot about German British relations in the film, understandably, and some rather solid home truths are spoken on both sides, pro-British and anti-British as well as pro-German and anti-German. Apparently Winston Churchill tried to have the film stopped because of the positive depiction of a German officer.

COL. BLIMP is clearly aiming at being about England and the English the way that MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON is about America and Americans. There’s no doubt in my mind as to which is the superior film (MR. SMITH wins by many many light years) but it could just be one of those weird nationalistic things: maybe I’m just too American to understand COL. BLIMP. And that’s a shame, because I don’t think that’s what they had in mind. COL. BLIMP is not an easy film, by any means, there are a lot of complicated ideas floating around in it, most especially and currently relevantly about the proper way to deal with a war: how does a country that prides itself on fair play and a particular brand of decency deal with the very real threat of an enemy that just keeps refusing to co-operate? How dirty can a nation fight without compromising itself? The film never really gets around to answering these questions, as far as I can tell.

There’s an uncharacteristic technical clumsiness to the film, which I really find unbelievable in a Powell/Pressburger production. At least two transitional moments in the film are handled what was probably intended to be an interesting and cinematic manner, and you can see what they’re wanting to do, but it doesn’t come off at all well. The most disturbing is the first flashback transition from from 1943 to 1902 (there’s a framing device whereby the film opens in 1943 and goes back to 1902 to start Clive’s story at the beginning). I won’t bother describing it, but you’ll know what I mean when you see it. It is the clumsiest bit of bad filmmaking a fine director ever put into a film, and I just can’t believe they left it in — surely they could have done another take or two or nine.

I’d be ready to forgive it a lot more if I didn’t consistently find myself thinking that the film could be a lot tighter, that 20 minutes were being taken to establish what really could have been set up in less than 5. An extended sequence set during WWI just goes on and on, and even winds up with one of the lamest cliches ever put on film: two characters notice that the guns have stopped on Armistice Day, and the sudden silence is actually augmented with birdsong and the clouds actually lift a bit allowing some sunshine. No, really, that’s what happens. Maybe I need to do some more reading on the film. Maybe I’m just missing something.

There are good things, in the film, of course. Roger Livesey’s performance as Clive is most impressive, and Deborah Kerr, in her film debut, is admirable in her three roles. But the film comes most incredibly alive whenever the great Anton Walbrook graces the screen. There’s none of the mad intensity of his work in THE RED SHOES or THE QUEEN OF SPADES in BLIMP; he’s very quiet and restrained, for the most part, particularly in an extended single-shot monologue that is simply the most moving scene in Powell/Pressburger’s filmography. If I continue to see the film time after time, banging my head against the wall trying to get a handle on it rather than dismissing it as a failure, it is because of Walbrook. I’d watch and listen to him read the goddamn phone book.

Colonel Blimp was a pompous, irascible and stereotypically English satirical political cartoon character from the 1930’s. The character was meant to be a comment on conservative British politics. The film making team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger got their hands on Colonel Blimp and came up with the strangest propaganda film I’ve ever seen.

The movie was made in 1943 – the height of World War II and begins clearly as a critique of post-Victorian jingoism. But the Colonel Blimp character is also humanised. He gives shit to the representatives of other countries, but its in a playful manner. For example, he pays off an orchestra with beer so they will play the the only song a German prisoner of war heard while held by the British.

The dialogue is cleaver and the acting is fine. Deborah Kerr gives a trio of performances as the women that Candy falls in love with, but can never have.

This film started out as a propaganda film along the lines of 49th Parallel and One of Our Aircraft Is Missing(in fact, this film was inspired by a cut scene from the latter) but The Archers took the premise and went to town with it creating a work of beguiling complexity that needs repeated viewings to fully assimilate all the while being a simple story of friendship between a British Career Soldier(Roger Livesey in a performance of a lifetime) and his German counterpart(Anton Walbrook) that survives a world war and hopes to survive another. And it’s about three women(all played by Deborah Kerr) in three different generations and societies.

Underneath that is a romantic story of adventure, honour and fading glory. The idea that wars can’t be won without something being lost in the bargain was a very brave thing to say at the time when London was being bombed by Nazi planes. In many ways, the only film that dealt with the end of the British Empire was THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP.

There is lots to say about the film itself but I want to focus on the sound of Roger Livesey’s voice. I think he has the most distinctive voice of any film actor or actress ever. It’s husky but it’s not overbearing or intimidating. It’s very warm. Listen to him in I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING or THE ENTERTAINER and he brings you closer. It has a rhythm too, an emphasis that brings truth to a line. He should be better known.