Talk:The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Background

"Gentlemen, war starts at midnight!"

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.

It's a long movie (over 2 1/2 hours) that tells a big story encapsulating 45 years of English history. Like any epic worthy of the name, there's pathos, humor, lofty ideas and memorable characters. It may be lacking a bit in respect to action-adventure and picturesque scenery, but that deficit can be forgiven easily enough. Keep in mind that the film was produced when the Blitzkrieg on London was at its peak and British filmmakers were necessarily hemmed in a bit, constrained from travel overseas to film exotic location shots and other such diversions. As it was, the film was a big budget production that aimed to strengthen the resolve of its audience, even while leveling satirical barbs at segments of the populace that still conducted themselves strictly in accordance with the bygone mores of a fading golden age of English global dominion.

The title's reference to a character named Colonel Blimp would be pretty confusing to most audiences just watching the film without any background information, so I'm glad I have the benefit of the Criterion edition with its usual quality supplemental features and liner notes. The central figure in the film goes by the name of Clive Candy, and we trace his career as he climbs the military ranks from Lieutenant up to Major-General (and then back down again, in a sense.) So who is this Blimp fellow anyway?He was a familiar figure to English audiences of the 1930s and 40s, through newspaper cartoons drawn by illustrator and satirist David Low. Colonel Blimp was typically shown as an bald, rotund old man with a walrus mustache dressed only in a towel, sitting in a steam room mouthing absurd platitudes that mocked the reactionary sentiments of old guard apologists for Great Britain's former and fading glories - a holdover from the 19th century in which he was raised and intellectually, emotionally, traditionally rooted. Blimp's opinions typically gravitated toward the conclusion that a gentlemanly negotiation with Hitler and the Fascist tide sweeping the Continent was most in keeping with English customs and a proper understanding of patriotism. Apparently his pompous outbursts in the comics pages struck a nerve with the public, who heard similar sentiments from older members of the UK establishment all too frequently in the years leading up to the war, and both the cartoons and this film capture the exasperation of a younger generation who longed to take more direct action based on lessons they had drawn from their experience of seeing the Nazi monster arise from the ashes of German defeat in the First World War.