A favorite among fans of The Archers—British filmmaking duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger—The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp occasionally demonstrates the charm, flair, and flourish of pictures like The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death, and Black Narcissus, yet there is a talkiness to the proceedings here, as well as a convoluted structured, that occasionally deflates this particular Technicolor balloon.
The conceit is a bold one: the film begins in the midst of World War II, where we’re introduced to retired British general Clive Wynne-Candy (Roger Livesey), now head of England’s Home Guard. Via a protracted and (purposefully?) confusing setup, a flashback sends us 40 years earlier, to Candy’s burgeoning career in the military. We then follow him through various conflicts and relationships, all the way back to his waning days in World War II and the movie’s opening sequence. (The film’s title is taken from a satirical comic strip of the time about a cartoonishly stodgy British military man.)
Livesey is pleasant enough, bringing additional layers to a character who begins as a buffoon. Yet his Candy can’t quite overcome the strange structure of the screenplay. Long stretches are devoted to lengthy dialogue scenes, sometimes with random characters, while other, more seemingly crucial moments from Candy’s life are left unexplored. This mostly affects Deborah Kerr, who plays three roles: a governess whom Candy befriends in 1902 Berlin; a battlefield nurse he meets during World War I and eventually marries; and a military chauffeur who becomes his right-hand woman back in London during World War II. As the first two women, Kerr isn’t given all that much to do before the characters are unceremoniously abandoned by the film. She has significantly more spunk as the cocky driver, yet even so, I can’t recall another instance of someone having three parts in a movie and still feeling underserved.
The other major figure in Candy’s life—besides this recurring feminine paragon—is Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook), a German whom Candy duels with in 1902, befriends while they both recover in the hospital, and then continues a geopolitical conversation with through the following two world wars. (Kretschmar-Schuldorff fights against England in the first conflict but flees Germany when the Nazis come to power.) Their relationship, teased out in many of the aforementioned long conversations, are the locus for much of the movie’s meditations on the ethics of war.
It’s hard to shake the genius of 1937’s Grand Illusion from one’s memory during these scenes. Directed by Jean Renoir and featuring an aristocratic German commander who treats his French prisoners like honored guests, Grand Illusion managed a universality that The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp—so stuffed with British history and tradition, however much it might be brightly lampooned—can’t quite manage. Your Anglophile mileage may vary.
And yet, this is still The Archers, ambitiously embarking on the decade that would define them. There are clear reasons why some might consider The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp their definitive film: its very Britishness, its doomed romanticism, its cheeky bits of humor, and moments like the crane shot during Candy and Kretschmar-Schuldorff’s duel. The camera rises above the two men towards the room’s cavernous ceiling, when suddenly snowflakes begin to mysteriously float down. Via a lovely dissolve, we’re outside, above the roof, rising higher into the winter storm, then down into a carriage where Kerr’s governess awaits for word of the duel’s outcome. Such silly, insignificant men, the shot seems to suggest. And yet The Archers give them this lavish movie.
(7/15/2024)