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Roger Livesey and Anton Walbrook are friends who war cannot divide in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp |
Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Cast: Roger Livesey (Clive Candy), Deborah Kerr (Edith
Hunter/Barbara Wynne/Angela “Johnny” Cannon), Anton Walbrook (Theo
Kretschmar-Schuldorff), Ursula Jeans (Frau von Kalteneck), James McKechnie (Lt
“Spud” Wilson), David Hutcheson (Hoppy), Frith Banbury (David “Baby Face”
Fitzroy), Muriel Aked (Aunt Margaret), John Laurie (Murdoch), Roland Culver
(Colonel Betteridge)
Is there a film that has better captured the curious state
of being British than The Life and Death
of Colonel Blimp? Could any other film makers than Powell and Pressburger
take a doltish buffoon from newspaper comic strip, and turn him into a
tragi-comic figure worth of Hamlet? Could any other film make a wartime
propaganda film that features the most sympathetic depiction of the Germans
anyone would see for decades to come? Winston Churchill was so scathing of the
film that its US release was delayed for two years – and even then it was cut
to ribbons. But then, I guess we knew already the guy wasn’t right about
everything.
During the Blitz, Clive Candy (Roger Livesey) is a retired
Major-General and now a senior commander in the Home Guard. Ambushed in a
Turkish bath on the eve of a training exercise (by young officers keen to
follow the German example of effective pre-emptive strikes), Candy rages at
their dismissal of him as a relic from yesteryear. In flashback, we see Candy’s
entire life over the course of the rest of the film. The film charts his
military cross, from the Boer War to World War One and his life-long friendship
with German officer Theo Kretschar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook), after both men
are hospitalised after a 1902 duel over insults to the German military. Both
men fall in love with the same woman, Edith Hunter (Deborah Kerr) although
Clive realises it far too late – and their friendship ebbs and flows over the
next forty years.
Powell and Pressburger’s film is, of course, quite
beautifully made. The film has that distinctively radiant technicolour look of
their most successful works, but it works so well because Powell assembles the
whole so wonderfully. Powell knows when to hold a shot and when to look away
and his judgement is never wrong. In the duel where Clive and Theo meet (Theo
has been randomly selected to fight), the camera at first covers the detail of
the prep, then moves to an over-the-head shot as it begins, before pulling out
of the gymnasium and away, gliding into a long shot with Berlin sprinkled with
snow. Because after all, the actual fight is immaterial to the sense of this
being one event in the tapestry of life – and the moment of real importance
being the friendship that came from it.
Then, much later, Powell does the exact opposite, holding a
shot with powerful, emotional, simplicity. It’s 1939 and Theo is trying to
remain in England – his wife having passed away, his sons being lost to Nazism
and this adopted country being far closer to his old Prussian ideals of duty
and fairplay. In a heartbreakingly low-key, simple speech – just exquisitely
delivered by Anton Walbrook – Powell lets the entire speech play out in a
single take, giving the moment room to breathe and magnifying its impact
enormously – not least by the background extra who switches from shuffling his
papers to listening intently to this heartfelt appeal.
It’s this mastery of technique that makes the impact of the
film so wonderful – and helps it to masterfully capture the changing of an
entire nation. Other the film’s forty years the entire world changes utterly,
from one of simple truths where right is right and evils are punished, to the
morally complex world of World War Two, where bending the rules and playing
dirty might be just what is needed to defeat enemies with no principles.
Candy is a man of unshakeable morals and ideals, who does
not believe ends justify means and is determined that fighting honourably for
defeat is far better than victory at all costs. It’s an idea the film
affectionately praises, at the same time it sadly shakes its head and admits
that such ideals were for the last century not this one. These are ideas Theo
has captured far sooner than Candy – and Candy’s tragedy, among his many
virtues, is that he always fails until it is almost too late to understand the
truth of the world around him (be that politically or romantically).
It doesn’t matter really though, because we always know
Candy’s heart is in the right place. In a sublime performance by Roger Livesey,
this is a man with an upper-class bombast and a paternalistic regard for his
duty and for others. His country and the ideals of that country come first and
foremost – but it’s not about pushing those home. He will console honourable
foes – as he does with Theo after World War One – and when the battle is over
will be the first to say by-gones are by-gones. The film he is in a way a
somewhat ridiculously old-fashioned character – but he’s always well-meaning,
decent and honourable.
Candy also has the tragedy tinged sadness of not knowing
what he wants until it’s too late. He doesn’t realise his affections for Edith
Hunter, until she and Theo are telling him of their engagement (although we the
audience are already well aware that Edith had feelings for him), and the look
of realisation of a deep and lasting love that will last his whole life, is
fabulously conveyed by Livesey in a perfect reaction shot. Candy will
eventually marry Edith’s near doppelganger, but this unspoken love will last
his whole life – and form another bond between him and Theo. Which in itself is
what we like to think is a quality the British have at their best.
Along with that British fair-play that is so important to
him, it also settles in the friendship between Theo and Clive. A friendship
unaffected by tragedy or war (or at least not for long) and which, despite
years apart, Clive frequently returns to with all the warmth and openness they
first shared. These are bonds of loyalty forged on the playing fields, that
operate on unspoken feelings (for a portion of their friendship Theo can’t even
speak English).
These are also the ideas and principles that Clive keeps
alive in himself, even while the world becomes ever more bleak around him. He’s
a character that never loses his essential positivity and kindness. Deaths or
disappointed love are met with regret and then losing yourself in sport (whole
years are hilariously shown to pass by montages showing Clive’s hunting
trophies appear on walls). But always that British idea of (as Churchill put
it) “keep buggering on”, and not letting infinite sadnesses and disappointments
undermine or define you.
Powell and Pressburger use all this to make Candy not a joke
– as the Lieutenant in the film’s prologue sees him – but as a deeply sympathetic
and real man. It’s a film also about our disregard for the old, our failure to
ever imagine that they were young. The flashback structure fills in this story
beautifully. All this, and it’s not even to mention Deborah Kerr’s superb
performance as all three of the women in this story, each subtle commentaries
on the other and her return throughout somehow representing the perfect ideals
that Clive and Theo are living to. The
Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is about understanding how the “rules” of
British behaviour are underpinned by a deeper sadness it’s almost a duty to
hide – and it understands that better than almost any other film.
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