The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp (Restoration Edition) [Blu-ray] [1943]

Fantastic film - wonderful quality throughout. Amazing evocation of pre-war and wartime Britain - both First and Second World wars. Social attitudes and the class system to the fore throughout.

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Great quality, rapid delivery and just a brilliant film.For continuity lovers watch out for the dogs peeing all over the banisters in the homecoming scene.

The past is a foreign country, as they say, and this is an interesting trip. It portrays the ideals of a professional soldier - patriotism, chivalry, uniformed men under arms facing other men under arms in an honorable fight, being a good loser or a magnanimous winner - and shows how these ideals are challenged by the demands of an all-out defensive war (World War I). The central relationship is between the British officer, Wynne-Candy, played by Roger Livesey, and his German opposite number.It's stagey and sometimes tub-thumpingly patriotic (it was made during World War II), but it's warm-hearted and engaging, and the performances are convincing. Livesey has to age considerably in the course of the film, and the make-up is very good.However, there is a much better film with a similar theme, La Grande Illusion.

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP *****(1943, UK, 157 min, colour, English subtitles, Aspect ratio: 4:3, Audio: Mono)EXTRA: Documentary incl. interviews with Jack Cardiff & Stephen Fry (25 min)Few films resonate stronger with me than Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s eye-popping first out and out masterpiece The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. It’s difficult to explain why for I don’t regard myself as a sentimentalist, but every viewing floors me – the experience quite literally moves me to tears. True, it’s a film I have lived and breathed since I was a teenager, seeing it numerous times at regular intervals from the 1980s onwards and I feel emotionally attached to it in a way which disarms objective criticism. Luckily I was born late enough to escape the various bastardized versions that were circulating before 1983. I have never seen it in b/w (Hallelujah!) and mercifully escaped the American release which hacked off over 40 minutes including the whole flashback structure (what DID United Artists think they had on their hands – Linoleum? United Idiots more like…) which means I have grown up with Powell/Pressburger’s remarkable vision intact from the first, as they would have wanted it.Casting aside my rose-tinted glasses, I have no hesitation in hailing Blimp as one of the great films and certainly one of the top two or three British films ever made. Its genius lies in the deceptive simplicity, a clear easy to follow story containing within it multiple layers of meaning which communicate all at once in an extraordinary Technicolor dazzle which blasts us with the most amazing cinematic clarity. What communicates so simply on screen only seems complicated when laid out on paper for analysis. The film is first of all the moving fictional biopic of a career soldier in the British army who we follow through three 20th century wars. Within that is one of cinema’s great love stories, the story of a man who lost his love before he even realized he had found it and who spends his whole life searching for the same and regretting his myopia. Also within that is the story of a remarkable friendship between two men which endures despite one stealing the other’s love and being on opposing sides of first a duel and then a war. It is undoubtedly these human elements which most affect me, but aside from a moving meditation on how the old and the young see each other what really charges the sentimentality with poise and aching poignancy to make magic out of potential mush are all the things these characters and their story represent – a lament for (and a critique of) the passing of late Victorian/Edwardian gentlemanly social values and ‘civilization’ as it once was before World War One blew it away forever; a satire on the lingering remnants of this ‘civilization’ which become reactionary, ‘Blimpish’ and ultimately disposable if not downright dangerous; a trenchant commentary on the relationship between Britain and Germany running in tandem with the film’s central friendship; and a propaganda call to all Englishmen in 1943 to wake up and get realistic in the fight against Nazism wherein one should counter dirty fighting with the same and jettison outmoded notions of chivalry and the gentleman’s code in recognition of the increasingly desperate fight for survival against tyranny. Taken collectively all of this adds up to a meditation on England and what it means to be English in the tumultuous fast-changing years of the first half of the 20th century. The film addresses the paradox of the English gentleman on one hand chivalrous, honorable and deeply decent, but on the other hand reactionary, old fashioned, stiff and unbending with dark pulsating romanticism surging under a very thick layer of traditional English reserve. Powell/Pressburger’s articulate script manages to convey all the nuances clearly and precisely, with extraordinary wit and delirious fantasy which is matched throughout by the wonderful audio-visual treatment – Allan Gray’s stunning music score accompanying Alfred Junge’s amazing production designs and Georges Périnal’s sumptuously textured Technicolor cinematography. On this last quality the film is something of a legend in the industry. It was certainly the best film made in the medium up till 1943, and I can’t think of many films made since which come anywhere near equaling let alone surpassing it. A tonic for the brain and a feast for the senses – one can’t ask more from a film. What follows contains spoilers.The key to understanding Powell/Pressburger’s greatest films is to grasp the dichotomy that exists between realism and fantasy. In later films (especially A Matter of Life and Death [1946] and Black Narcissus [1947]) this is rendered visual very obviously through the construction of clearly fantastical alternative realities which intertwine with reality to the extent that we can’t distinguish one from the other. In A Matter of Life and Death ‘heaven’ is shot in b/w and is shown to have many real qualities while ‘earth’ is shot in colour and is shown to have many fantastical qualities. Like Peter Carter the audience is suspended midway between two worlds and unsure which is which. The dichotomy also exists in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Although fantasy is visualized very clearly through artificial sets, a fairy tale recreation of pre-World War One Europe, the heroine (Deborah Kerr) cast as three separate characters and elaborate montage sequences to take us from one war to the next, it is most apparent for being personalized in the character of Clive Candy, aka the eponymous Colonel Blimp of the film’s title. Blimp was a cartoon caricature created by David Low who embodied everything that was reactionary and old fashioned about the British establishment in the years running up to World War Two. Blimpishness was said to still exist (indeed the reason why Churchill objected was probably the fact that he was a Blimp himself and took the film as a personal affront) and Powell/Pressburger decided to make it the subject of their film. Clive Candy is a gentleman raised and educated in Victorian Britain who believes that in peace and war life is a game of cricket with clearly defined rules and regulations which must never be defiled. It is a value system which seemed antiquated even in Candy's youth (in 1902), but which is blown away completely by World War One. ‘Dear old Clive’ still can’t grasp the new reality or the new necessities of the inter-war years and continues to preach the gentleman’s code which is increasingly revealed as nothing but pure fantasy. Low’s Blimp was a ridiculous buffoon, a figure of fun, and so is Powell/Pressburger’s Candy from start to finish, a walking fantastical anachronism suspended between two worlds just like Peter Carter, but with a crucial difference – he just doesn’t get it and will never get it because of his breeding and a consequent total inability to adapt.Where Powell/Pressburger part company with Low is in the fleshing out of their caricature from fantastical buffoon to warm, real and thoroughly lovable human being, and no character in British cinema is more lovable than Clive Candy. The dichotomy between reality and fantasy is right there before our eyes throughout in a wonderful sensitive performance by Roger Livesey. Powell/Pressburger make their reinvention of Low’s caricature very apparent with the opening and closing sequences which bookend the film’s central elongated flashback narrative. The film opens with the reality of 1943 England where army units are planning a mock attack on London with the Home Guard providing the defense. One bright young officer named Spud (James McKechnie) uses information gleaned from his girlfriend Angela (Kerr) who is Candy’s driver. Candy is in command of the Home Guard and Spud figures to ignore the directive (“War starts at midnight”) and attack early “Pearl Harbor-style.” When we first meet Candy there is a comic droop on a trombone as we see him laid out in all his glory asleep in the sauna of his Turkish bath – bald pate, bay window stomach and handlebar mustache protruding, clad only in a towel. It is exactly how Low draws Blimp in his cartoons and his red-faced protestations confirm that here is a crusty old buffer, a man totally out of step with the times. Taking offense at Spud’s personal remarks, a fistfight ensues with the pair falling into the bath. When Candy rises from the water we find we have flashed back to 1902 when he has just returned from the Boer War with the Victory Cross. The main body of the film is separated into three time periods, (1902 Berlin/London, 1918 Flanders, 1943 London) and through it we learn about this man and grow to love him so that when the film comes full circle and we arrive back in 1943 in the aftermath of his humiliation at the hands of Spud, there is a tremendous sense of pathos as he refuses to press charges to bring the upstart soldier to count and even announces his intention to invite him to dinner. His gentleman’s code persists to the very last as he ruminates over the flooded remains of his house and his promise to his deceased wife Barbara (Kerr again) to stay the same “until the floods come.” He stares into the water and at the leaf afloat on it and says, “Now here is the lake, and I still haven’t changed.” Here is a man who can’t change even if he wants to. At the film’s beginning he is Low’s fantastical buffoon pure and simple, a ridiculous figure of fun. At the end he is Powell/Pressburger’s ‘grand old man’ who we have come to understand and love, his buffoonery contextualized within a much wider ennobling sense of reality.Throughout the main body of the narrative Powell/Pressburger’s examination of Blimpishness proves to be immensely subtle and reverberates on all the film’s various levels. The first example comes soon after Candy leaves the Turkish bath and flies off to Berlin in chivalrous response to a lady’s request to go there to deal with a certain Kaunitz (David Ward) who has been spreading anti-British propaganda about the Boer War. In direct defiance of his superiors Candy meddles in ‘embassy matters’ and causes a diplomatic crisis in a café cum beer cellar when he punches Kaunitz saying, “The German Imperial army ought to be ashamed of themselves [for dealing with him].” This is a classic example of the amateurism of the English gentleman which leads to a duel which need never have been fought between two people who don’t even know each other – Candy and Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook), the German officer drawn by lot to defend his army’s impuned honor. In the run-up to Kaunitz’s arrival in the café there is an important conversation between Edith (Kerr) and Candy in which the lady reveals herself to be a feminist, a suffragette and a very forward thinker. She talks about the Boer War saying, “Good manners cost us Magerfontein, Stomberg and Colenso, 6,000 men killed and 20,000 wounded and two years of war when with a little common sense and bad manners there would have been no war at all.” This connects forward immediately to Candy’s own diplomatic faux pas (he punches Kaunitz for spitting at him) and also on to the cause of World War One with Powell/Pressburger here saying that observation of good manners and the gentleman’s code on all sides was a root cause of international problems involving England and her fellow Imperial powers with Blimpishness proving to be equally pervasive within Prussian society as the insistence on dueling makes very clear. With Edith’s insistence on woman’s rights to a life outside the home she rocks poor Candy who has never given the matter any thought until now, but unbeknown to him he is attracted by it. This is his chance to change, to keep hold of the changing times and renounce Blimpery. As Edith awaits the outcome of the duel in her carriage we sense she has feelings for him and when she has to take care of him in the nursing home (pretending to be his fiancée) he has every chance to move on his intuition, but he doesn’t. Candy being slow on the uptake, it’s only when Theo beats him to it and he is on the way back to London that he realizes what he has lost. Theo has taken the chance to seize the future through Edith, to advance beyond outmoded values and to live for the day while poor Candy is destined to remain a Blimp. Of course this dynamic comments also on how Germany progressed while England regressed with the friendship that emerges between Candy and Theo always stressing how much Candy (England) dwells in the past while Theo (Germany) stays very much alive to the present and what will happen in the future.By World War One Candy is already verging on crusty old bufferdom and his clinging on to the gentleman’s code proves completely useless in getting a group of German prisoners to talk. It is left to a South African officer to apply ‘enemy methods’ which Candy would never countenance to get the needed information. Candy cuts a ridiculous figure in front of American soldiers especially when he values finding a meal over news that the war is soon to finish (!) and is escorted to a convent in the flooded-out sidecar of a motorbike. Then as if to prove his old fashioned values are correct he greets the news of the armistice with “It means that right is might. After all [the bad things German soldiers have done] clean fighting [and] honest soldiering have won.” This shows he is completely out of touch with the real situation. Germany lost the war because the home front caved in. The soldiers fighting on the front to a man never thought they had lost. Instead they felt betrayed by the acts of cowards back home. This was ‘the stab in the back’ that Hitler later used to whip up support for his Nazi party. When Candy finds Theo in the POW camp he can’t understand why he is snubbed, but the moving shot (to Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave Overture) of the German soldiers all moving away from him en-masse shows Powell/Pressburger certainly do. One of the most interesting scenes comes when Candy brings an apologetic Theo to a dinner at his home where he is entertaining representatives of the entire British establishment and every man (except for the noticeably silent army officer who had run Theo’s POW camp) rallies around Theo with a deluge of Blimpery. To a man they all encourage him saying the war is over and Germany will be supported to get back on her feet, that a strong Germany is important for future trade, and that Germany has nothing to fear – “We all want to be friends,” they say. Theo of course is much more realistic about the dysfunction that runs within his own country and dismisses these assurances for the Blimpery they express - “They are children – boys playing cricket…This childlike stupidity is a raft for us in a sea of despair.” These words spoken in contempt to other German officers on the train going back to his country contain the origins of the birth of Nazism. Although Theo himself does not go down this root, his children and thousands of others do and it is England’s failure (together with the other allies) to properly deal with Germany in 1919 at Versailles that meant German militarism was set to return on a huge wave of public disenchantment with the failure of democracy in the doomed Weimar republic. The “childish stupidity” of the gentleman’s code fed into the willful blindness that was appeasement and the débâcle of Munich 1938. In the immigration bureau in 1939 Theo is admonished for not recognizing the danger of Hitler until 1934, a full year after the dictator came to power to which he replies, “Excuse me, but it took [England] five years” to wake up to the threat.The anachronism of dear old Clive’s value system is most rudely exposed by World War Two when the BBC axe a radio broadcast he was to make in 1940 titled, ‘Dunkirk Before and After’ and he arrives home to find the army have retired him. He is deeply wounded and it’s left to his best friend Theo to explain. This long speech is crucial for the film on all its various levels and is worth quoting at length. Candy bemoans losing the chance to impart his own special knowledge to which Theo replies:“It’s a different knowledge they need now. The enemy’s different so you have to be different too…You said [in your speech] you despised the Nazis, that you would be ashamed to fight on their side and you’d sooner accept defeat than victory if it could only be won by those methods…If you let yourself be defeated by them just because you are too fair to hit back the same way they hit at you, there won’t be any methods but Nazi methods. If you preach the rules of the game while they use every foul and filthy trick against you, they’ll laugh at you. They’ll think you are weak, decadent. I thought so myself in 1919…I don’t think you won [WWI]. We lost it, but you lost something too. You forgot to learn the moral. Because victory was yours, you failed to learn your lesson 20 years ago. And now you have to pay the school fees again. Some of you will learn quicker than others. Some will never learn it. Because you’ve been educated to be a gentleman and sportsman in peace and in war, but Clive, dear Clive, this is not a gentleman’s war. This time you are fighting for your very existence against the most devilish idea ever created by a human brain – Nazism. And if you lose there won’t be a return match next year. Perhaps not for 100 years...Who can describe hydrophobia better than one who’s been bitten and is now immune?”The words spell out very clearly Blimpishness taking its toll on friendships both between people (Theo and Candy) and countries (Germany and England). Clearest of all is the propaganda call to renounce the chivalry of the gentleman’s code and fight Nazism with Nazi methods if necessary. Such a call should have pleased Churchill, but the problem is the call comes from the lips of a German character with the implication that the English are a nation of Blimps who need advice from ‘the enemy’ to find the right way to go forward. Failing to distinguish (as Powell/Pressburger very carefully do) between Nazis and Germans, Churchill was incensed by the film, but fortunately for us all J. Arthur Rank stood firm, sent the bureaucrats packing and ensured the film received the widest possible release in his cinemas. It was tremendously bold of Powell/Pressburger to feature a ‘good German’ on screen in 1943 and it continues a theme started in The Spy in Black (1939) and finished by Ill Met By Moonlight (1947). Most subtle of all in Theo’s words is the concluding reference to ‘hydrophobia’ which refers back to the Fingal’s Cave episode at the POW camp and the “sea of despair” he mentions on the train in 1919. Like Theo forced out of the army in 1920 to take up a new profession (as a military chemist) in which old social codes have lost their relevance, Candy is also cast asea to find his own solution to the hydrophobia that now grips him. Pointedly Angela says that Candy has to start over like many others have had to do in the war – “It’s better than drowning,” she says. It is Angela who suggests the Home Guard and this does absorb his energies, but of course his new career is not so different from his old one and he ends up with egg on his face yet again, a fantastical Blimp who has to rely on the reality checking of ‘an enemy alien’ to the very end.The film is a biting critique of the old fogeyist British establishment and Candy is an object for ridicule throughout just as Low intended his caricature to be, but Powell/Pressburger go much further than that. They attack their target mercilessly for sure, but they also celebrate him, and in doing so they get at the paradox that lies at the very center of Englishness. The keynote of this celebration is struck by the opening credits presented over a tapestry meant to recall the Bayeaux Tapestry which presents the whole film as a kind of historical legend or pageant. Of the film’s three time frames, the 1902 sequence in London and Berlin is by far the longest, taking up almost half of the film’s total length and it’s notable for the bright and breezy presentation of the lithe young British soldier Candy flying off to Berlin to aid his damsel in distress. The portrayal of high society is garish to the point of caricature especially in the café scene replete with grand chandeliers and orchestra playing Viennese waltzes. Costumes are all vividly coloured especially the army uniforms – reds for the British and blues for the Prussians with even the orchestra members done up extravagantly like enlarged toy soldiers. The ladies also receive extraordinary frocks which seem to drown the poor creatures in ridiculous drapery – most eye-catching is the dead crow pinned to Edith’s hat. The way characters shout at each other in manic fashion, the scuffle that causes the duel, the duel itself and the extended high spirits of the nursing home where Candy and Theo cement their friendship sends up the ridiculous customs of the time attacking the archaic codes of honour that lie behind them, but it also evinces a rapture held by the filmmakers for everything we see, the evocation of a glorious milieu about to slide into oblivion perfectly captured. Most telling of all is the way the duel is handled with great attention paid to the build up, but when Candy and Theo face off and get down to it the camera is uninterested. Instead it soars up, dissolves through the roof to reveal snow falling on a deliberately fake Berlin skyline. The camera then swoops down and through the window of Edith’s waiting carriage. Here Candy and Theo are completely unimportant beside the fairy tale presentation of an old world, an old civilization with its old rules where reckless dueling is the height of honor and every soldier worthy of the name dashes off to foreign places to protect a lady’s honor. The film criticizes this world to be sure, but it celebrates it with a swaggering sense of nostalgic love for something that is now long gone.Powell/Pressburger keep the witty up-tempo alive with the hilarious montage depiction of time passing between 1902 and 1918 in which the stuffed heads of animals shot on Candy’s hunting expeditions explode onto the blank spaces of his home. Frightfully un-pc now, the sequence remains the funniest and the most outrageous in any Powell/Pressburger film. In Flanders we meet Candy’s aide and future butler Murdoch (John Laurie) whose running commentary with Candy keeps things light and witty, but the celebration of old English values is taken up again most movingly of all in the long and highly important speech Theo makes to the immigration bureau in 1939. In a scene which is developed somewhat from a similar scene in 49th Parallel (1941) which has Anton Walbrook quietly defending democracy in a long unbroken take, Theo (Walbrook again of course) gives us the truth for why he is now seeking asylum in England – that he is homesick for his wife’s home country and we hear his sad history, of how Hitler took away his two children, how his wife Edith died just as he was about to leave Germany for England and how he stumbled on the very same nursing home in Berlin where he met his best friend and his future wife back in 1902. In his words he also talks about the dinner in 1919 in Candy’s home where it seemed to him that everyone was behaving like children, but which now he accepts as the genuine gestures of good will from a group of people who were thinking wholly of his interests. Therein lies the paradox of the gentleman’s code, the fact that in one sense it is stifling, reactionary or ‘Blimpish’, but in another sense it is charming, warm and thoroughly decent. This decency is what Theo is returning to from a country where “the gangsters have put the innocent people in jail,” and it marks out Candy who personifies the paradox exactly.Also part of the paradox is a certain buttoned-down romanticism which distinguishes an Englishman from other Europeans. This is shown early on by Candy’s decision to hide his scar with a mustache where a Prussian would flaunt it in public. This sense of English reserve gets greatest expression by the way Candy’s love for Edith is treated. He knows he has missed the chance to capture ‘his ideal’ and spends the rest of his life searching for that same beauty in other women, the point being that he may find other women who resemble Edith almost exactly, but they will never actually be Edith and so his search implies a sense of futility. Powell/Pressburger were inspired in their decision to cast Deborah Kerr in three roles as ‘the eternal feminine’ and the three scenes where love is sensed most strongly are among the most exquisite moments of the film. The first has Candy kissing Edith in congratulations on her engagement to Theo. In Livesey’s startled look we sense the beginning of love, and also Kerr’s paralysed expression tells us she is not unaware of it either. Then in 1918 there’s the moment in the convent when Candy sees Barbara for the first time and his breath is literally taken away to the point that in England he organizes a ball in Yorkshire to find her. She is a ‘trophy wife’ and knows it as shown by insisting he put her portrait on the wall of his den among the other heads he has ‘won.’ Most moving of all for me is that moment in the car when Theo recognizes Candy’s love (and his own deceased wife!) in the face of the driver Angela. Her name derives from the word ‘angel’ and here we have the romantic notion of the spirit of Edith returning in Angela’s form. Theo’s recognition is heartbreaking at this point. There’s a touching scene preceding this where Candy tells Theo he has never gotten over his love for Edith which prompts Theo to say, “I never thought it possible an Englishman could be so romantic.” The same could be said for both Powell and Pressburger of course. Both men poured much that was personal into this film. Powell and Kerr fell in love behind the scenes and his own cocker spaniels make their usual appearance. For Pressburger however this film always remained his favorite and we can be sure that Theo sitting in the immigration bureau speaks the very same words he himself said or would have liked to have said when he came to England as a refugee from Nazi Germany, and it’s no coincidence that ‘Angela’ is also the name of his very own daughter. This film is intensely romantic in a way perhaps no English film had ever been before it and the films that followed (especially A Canterbury Tale [1944], ‘I Know Where I’m Going!’ [1945] and The Red Shoes [1948]) would be imbued with the same wild romanticism buttoned down (and often exploding out of) that traditional English reserve. Powell often joked about the number of foreigners behind the making of this quintessentially English film. As an Englishman living in Japan I can appreciate that perhaps it needed an outsider’s perspective to really get to the core of the paradox of the English condition. There is no finer film on the subject.

Amazing blu ray transfer of one of those films that give sense to the invention of blu ray technology itself. NOrmally HD are associated to state of the art films like Avatar of Avengers, but instead I think that real hd potential can be achieved with old restored movies like this and all the main ones from Powell and Pressburger (please also but Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, a Matter of life and death and Peeping Tom). Reviving colors here is not just a matter of enjoying the wonderful and unique photography of this film, but to enter a magic world made of memories, old time and old fashion settings, and the vivid imagination of such a modern and artistic personality as Powell, whose distinctive visual and directing style has never been only a matter of aesthetic showing off, but a way to make you enter in a suspended world halfway between fantastic and reality, where human dramas, feelings, virtues and weakness mix in an uncommon and unconventional way. His world, as here, for example, recall and regret the old times gone and values, but his point of view also stands up for unpopular way of thinking, like forgiveness and compassion for foreigners and potential enemies during war times (the beautiful monologue of the german character, all in long shot) and for sentimental fights, almost menage a trois relationships (sealed by a superior sense of deep friendship). And even when it seems to just talk about romanticism, artistic obsession and love affairs it does it like nobody else, with a classy and elegant touch and a almost primal energy that explodes in the multicolor photography of all his films. Don't watch it as just an old movie, but let yourself be amazed and led into this world, with no prejudices. It is not a popcorn movie or a corny melodrama, it is a work of art and a powerful, deep example of human expression

La mejor edición de esta película que se pueda encontrar en Europa, restaurada en 4K. La única pega es que sólo tiene subtítulos en Francés.

This review is for The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] ASIN: B00AQ6J5CC.If you have seen this previously in North America you've probably seen a chopped up tidbit of the full thing.This film would be boring for pre-teens, but I highly recommend it for every else.A magnificent film, often rated in the top 50 films of all time made anywhere. It is hard to believe it was made in the middle of WWII when technicolor was so new. In fact, the film is renowned for its Technicolor cinematography.This restoration is absolutely magnificent.This is a really excellent film.The plot and character development are fantastic, creating a really good film you can just sit there and enjoy.The main theme is the life of a man who follows the rules of life religiously and the impact that has on his love live can career.(I'm an IT guy, but for the English majors out there, among the sub-themes I picked-up are the of life of an upper-middle class "enemy alien" refugee, the life of the lower class and the traps of cross-cultural honour.)This film was Deborah Kerr's big break, she played 3 roles in the film.To me, extras are the most important reason to bother purchasing a DVD or Blu-Ray.This version has lots of extras including introduction and discussion by Martin Scorsese, commentary by Michale Powell, and additional discussion by others who worked on the film including the cameramanIt stars Roger Livesey, Deborah Kerr and Anton Walbrook. The title comes from the satirical Colonel Blimp editorial cartoon by David Low, but the story itself is totally original.And once you've watched this, the next Powell and Pressburger films to get are "Stairway to Heaven", "Black Narcisus" and "The Red Shoes".

Sur le film : une émouvante biographie fictionnelle d'un militaire depuis les guerres de la fin du 19ème siècle jusqu'au beau milieu de la seconde guerre mondiale, traité à la manière d'une sorte de conte de fée réaliste. C'est tout public et c'est un must, idéal pour donner corps aux imbuvables programmes du collège et lycée, et ouvrant la porte à des discussions passionnantes sur de multiples sujets universels. Tout simplement un must.Image : Formidable, 4/3 couleur. Les détails fins sont visibles jusqu'aux cils. En fait l'écran HD devient comme une fenêtre ouverte sur l'histoire. Le documentaire joint sur la restauration explique plus ou moins qu'en y mettant le prix, tous les films de cette période dont les négatifs ont été conservés peuvent atteindre ce degré de qualité de transfert.Son : Très bon, original anglais sous-titré français mono DTS HD Master Audio. Malgré le mono, le rendu des voix est remarquable et les acteurs principaux sont plus que convaincants.Bonus : total une heure très intéressante - 5 minutes pour la restauration avec le détail des dégâts et le détail des technologies appliquées pour les réparer ; 24 minutes sur la production du film et sa censure par Churchill et compagnie, 29 minutes des souvenirs et points de vue de la veuve de Powell (co-réalisateur).Colonel Blimp est une référence en matière de restauration. Techniquement c'est formidable, et le film est un must si vous aimez les bonnes histoires historiquement pertinentes, riches en idées, très bien racontées, très bien jouées, pour tout public. Je rêve de voir d'autres classiques de cet époque restaurés avec un tel talent.

What makes a film a masterpiece? It has to be an original story brought to life with first class acting, direction and production values. Most of all, it must have that magical quality which causes it to linger in the memory long after viewing. "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" is such a film.This Criterion DVD contains a lovingly restored complete version of the almost 3 hour epic, produced in 1942 at the height of the war, exquisitely photographed in technicolour and containing 2 of the greatest performances in British film. The film is divided into 3 acts tracing the life of professional soldier Clive Candy through incidents starting at the aftermath of the Boer War to World War 2. Roger Livesey plays Candy and ages 40 years with complete conviction. The makeup is outstanding. Anton Walbrook plays the German who Candy befriends. Walbrook was a superb Austrian actor and his monologue when he enters Britain as a refugee in 1939 is overwhelming. A very young Deborah Kerr plays 3 women who punctuate Candy's life and Kerr proves that really talented actresses have inate abilities which simply mature as they progress. She has many loving close ups and it is not surprising to learn that the director, Michael Powell, fell in love with her.This is a Criterion package so the extras are outstanding. The film has a memorable commentary by Powell himself, punctuated by Martin Scorcese. Powell was elderly when he made the tape and his voice is hushed and sometimes hard to hear but his memory is sharp and he has recorded details which would be lost otherwise.Also, there is a documentary which highlights many of the film's great features. Finally, there is some excellent information about the cartoon character Colonel Blimp and its orginator, the celebrated cartoonist David Low. Blimp was a blustery, pompous ass whose political and social comments caused great amusement to the general public for many years. It was an inspired idea to take this character as the basis for a film about the life of a soldier from youth and urgency to irrelevancy in old age. The film's author, Emeric Pressburger, has toned down the less likeable characteristics of Blimp to help sustain audience interest. The film was controversial at the time of its production because it depicted, among other things, a sympathetic German. Winston Churchill tried to block its release. It was not the propaganda he wanted.If at times, the film seems to drag and lose direction, hang in there because it is rare that characters are so carefully developed. These are completely 3 dimensional people. In 1942, the film was recording a lost era with its gentle satire of the slightly absurd Blimp. In the 21st Century, the film is a fascinating record of a different time and different codes of behaviour.

I like the Powell-Pressburger films, but had never seen this one. When i heard Martin Scorsese praising it, and read other laudatory reviews, i gave it try. It's a little slow at first, but engaging, beautiful, skillfully acted, and quite fascinating. I have already watched it three times, and will watch it frequently as time goes by. Roger Livesy is wonderful, as usual, and a very young Deborah Kerr is beautiful; she sharply differentiates the three separate characters she plays. The film has been carefully restored to its original length and beauty.