NR | 2h 43m | Drama, Romance, War | 1943
“The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” arrives like a memory already in progress; it’s as if someone left the projector running, and you stepped in halfway through a life. The first impression carries a bit of mischief, even a raised eyebrow, since the title promises something grand and final.
However, the film has other plans. It stretches, circles back, and keeps finding new corners of the same man, refusing to let him settle into a single idea.
This movie comes from a satirical comic strip character created by David Low, published in the Evening Standard. In the strip, Blimp is a blustering, old-school British officer with a big mustache and big opinions, who’s always talking about honor while the world shifts under his boots.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger take that cartoon and bring it to life. It continues until the joke turns into something almost disarming.
The film breathes in long stretches. Time passes in a way that feels closer to recollection than storytelling. Faces return in altered forms, love reappears under different names, and friendships refuse to stay confined to borders or uniforms.
There’s a sense that history is slipping through one’s fingers even as these characters try to hold onto codes and habits that once gave them purpose.
There’s a hearty dollop of humor throughout the runtime, though it usually leans toward that dry British variety where no one admits the joke. A formal duel gets arranged like it’s a social appointment; there are rules and manners, even while everyone knows it could end quite badly. There are long dinners where people talk past each other, clinging to ideas that sound proper on the surface but start to feel more out of place the longer they go on.
Old Guard, New War
Maj. Gen. Clive Wynne-Candy (Roger Livesey) runs Home Guard drills during World War II. He gets caught off guard in a training exercise by Lt. Spud Wilson (James McKechnie). The story is set in motion when Spud ignores the agreed upon start time and launches the faux attack early; this catches Wynne-Candy in a Turkish bath, which leads to a scuffle between them.
The film then jumps back to 1902, when the young Wynne-Candy is fresh from the Second Boer War with a Victoria Cross. He carries himself as though he’s abiding by a war code.
He heads to Berlin after Edith Hunter (Deborah Kerr) raises concerns about anti-British talk. This stirs up the room and ends in a duel with Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook), an officer in the Imperial German Army.
Both men end up wounded, then they spend weeks recovering side by side. They develop a bond that keeps resurfacing throughout World War I and into the next war, complicated by the fact that they both care for Edith. She ends up choosing Kretschmar-Schuldorff, leaving Wynne-Candy to realize his feelings too late.
Clive climbs through the ranks, marries a nurse who reminds him of Edith (also played by Kerr), and keeps acting like the old rules still count, long after everyone else has moved on. By the time he’s back in uniform during WWII, he’s been pushed to the margins and given commands that feel more ceremonial than essential.
Against the Odds
There’s a wild bit of history behind this daring piece of cinema. Winston Churchill actually pushed against the film during production; he worried that it made the British officer class look outdated at a time when morale seriously mattered.
Powell and Pressburger kept going anyway, and that pushback lingers over the film. You can feel it in how the older generation is treated. They’re neither mocked nor glorified, just laid out there, stubborn and proud, holding on to their way of thinking no matter what anyone else says.
The film was shot at Denham Film Studios during wartime shortages, which meant they had limited access to troops, equipment, and extras. Instead of building large battle scenes, Powell and Pressburger kept the focus on controlled interiors, using staging and composition to carry each moment. Viewers can notice this in scenes like the duel. The wide set, precise spacing, and deliberate positioning give it a formal, almost ceremonial feel.
The acting is solid all around. Livesey carries the film without trying to win you over. He starts out confident, even a little inflated, then ages into someone who keeps speaking with the same certainty, even as fewer people are willing to hear it. He never pushes for sympathy, which makes the character easier to sit with.
Kerr takes on three roles and makes each one distinct without turning them into some sort of gimmick. There’s a connection, but she adjusts her voice, posture, and presence just enough each time that it feels intentional instead of repetitive. It turns into a pattern that follows Clive throughout his life, as if he keeps circling back to the same idea of a certain person without ever quite catching the real deal.
There’s also something funny about how “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” builds a full life out of what started as a cartoon. After all, this was supposed to be a joke character, the kind you laugh at in a newspaper. Instead, the character gets handed a full career on film, with a love life and years to dig himself in deeper.
The film gives him enough room to speak for himself and then leaves it there, trusting the audience to decide what to make of him.
“The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” is available on Plex, Amazon, and Tubi TV.
‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’
Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Starring: Roger Livesey, Deborah Kerr, Anton Walbrook
Not Rated
Running time: 2 hours, 43 minutes
Release Date: July 26, 1943
Rated: 4 1/2 stars out of 5
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