England,
1943, 153 min
Shown in 1986
CREDITS
- dir
-
Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
- prod
-
Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
- scr
-
Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
- cam
-
Georges Périnal
- cast
-
Roger Livesey, Deborah Kerr, Anton Wallbrook, Roland Culver
- source
-
BFI Distribution Library, London
- premiere
-
U.S. Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Special Programs: Treasures from the National Film Archive (London); Michael Powell in person.
OTHER
“Outrageously original—and a heartfelt statement against wartime stress on realism and obedience,” writes David Thomson in the Boston Phoenix. Called "defeatist" by its critics, pronounced “disgraceful” by Winston Churchill (who tried to terminate production, attended the film’s premiere, and then issued multiple memoranda attempting to halt its export), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp provides a sardonic course in British military history. Its dubious hero, Clive Candy (played by Roger Livesey) is based on a jingoist cartoon character, Colonel Blimp. In a brilliant color trip through one man’s fantasy of history, Candy describes in flashback how the years have mellowed him from the hothead he likes to think he was at the time of the Boer Wars to the lukewarm, harmless bumbler he in fact is in 1942. Deborah Kerr plays the love interest of three separate periods in Clive’s life, and Anton Walbrook is excellent as the Prussian officer who becomes a refugee from Nazi Germany—an interesting creation of cowriter and director Emeric Pressburger, himself an “enemy alien” in England.
—Pacific Film Archive
FACTOID #99
Philadelphia-born, British-raised director Richard Lester, who shot the trippy Petulia in San Francisco during the 1967 Summer of Love, directed our Opening Night film and attended the Festival two years in a row, accompanying 1966’s A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to the Forum and 1967’s How I Won the War.
