{"id":19,"date":"2016-08-08T19:00:08","date_gmt":"2016-08-09T00:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/19"},"modified":"2016-09-20T16:38:02","modified_gmt":"2016-09-20T21:38:02","slug":"the-life-death-of-colonel-blimp-1943-powell-pressburger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/19","title":{"rendered":"The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp (1943, Powell & Pressburger)"},"content":{"rendered":"

A long, complicated movie – Criterion summary:<\/p>\n

The film follows the exploits of pristine British soldier Clive Candy as he battles to maintain his honor and proud gentlemanly conduct through romance, three wars, and a changing world. Vibrant and controversial, it is at once a romantic portrait of a career soldier and a pointed investigation into the nature of aging, friendship, and obsolescence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Blimp in WWI with John Laurie:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

I wrote in 2006: “Oops, I thought this was a comedy. I’d somehow convinced myself that Powell makes comedies and I’m never right.”<\/p>\n

At the beginning, the movie seems to be about fiery young soldier Spud, then he disappears for 2.5 hours while Candy goes into a “when I was your age” story. This threw me off the first time I saw the movie, as did Deborah Kerr’s various roles. Throwing me this time: Roger Livesey, handsome romantic lead of I Know Where I’m Going<\/a><\/em>, so convincing as a blowhard old man.<\/p>\n

Not covered by the summary above: Candy’s lifelong friendship with German soldier Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook). Candy provokes an international incident in the early 1900’s (during the Boer War) and gets himself into a duel with Theo, then they recover together, both in love with Deborah Kerr #1, who marries Theo. In WWI, Candy meets Deborah #2, a nurse, and marries her. And in WWII, Theo has moved to England and Deborah #3 is dating young Spud, is a favorite assistant of Candy’s for obvious reasons.<\/p>\n

Deborah Kerr thinks highly of me:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

No character in the film is named Col. Blimp – he was a political cartoon character, a blustery old officer who proclaims his dated ideas in a Turkish bath, the WWII version of Candy. The movie’s a bit long and rambling, but a total pleasure to watch, with color cinematography that is beyond excellent. One of my very favorites.<\/p>\n

Duelist Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Powell sounds soooo tired on the commentary.
\nOn Kerr: “I got enthusiastic about her hats.”<\/p>\n

Scorsese is more fun. I like when he appreciates the visual design while also saying that you don’t have to care about this stuff if you don’t want to:<\/p>\n

Look at the use of red in the menus … These are things I kind of enjoy. I don’t say that as you’re watching the film you should be pointing out where the red is. I think you should just look at the movie and enjoy it, hopefully, and probably you shouldn’t be even listening to this narration, you should be watching the film.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A long, complicated movie – Criterion summary: The film follows the exploits of pristine British soldier Clive Candy as he battles to maintain his honor and proud gentlemanly conduct through romance, three wars, and a changing world. Vibrant and controversial, it is at once a romantic portrait of a career soldier and a pointed investigation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[102,13,711,331,132,81,251,773,472],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-britain","tag-criterion","tag-deborah-kerr","tag-emeric-pressburger","tag-flashback","tag-michael-powell","tag-starts-at-the-end","tag-wwi","tag-wwii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11246,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions\/11246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}