This Is The Most Overlooked / Underapprecited / Underrated Movie Ever

The cartoon character of Colonel Blimp was certainly known in the United States at the time of the film's release. I don't suppose I could really definitively confirm either the whys or wherefores of this, but it seems to be a demonstrable fact, given contemporary evidence.

For instance, one really look no further than the fact that the film's title was allowed to retain the reference to the Low character, rather than change it to something less esoteric. In a period when it seems as if, upon being released in the US, any British film whose title was just in the least bit ambiguous (49th Parallel, an earlier Powell and Pressburger film; in the US, renamed generically 'The Invaders') or poetic (Went The Day Well?, from John Maxwell Edmonds's 1919 epitaph; in the US, a considerably less imaginative '48 Hours') or unexciting (The Story Of Esther Costello; in the US, substituted with the reprehensible/nauseating 'Golden Virgin') was clearly extremely likely to have it changed by whichever American distributor got their hands on it, the fact that this film's title was merely shortened to 'Colonel Blimp' could almost be taken as a tacit stamp of approval that such an allusion would not only have been presumed recognisable to US audiences, but must even have been considered a point of marketability. (Although it makes one wonder just what sorts of retitling catastophes could've befallen it had they thought otherwise....)

Of further confirmation might be a contemporary cinema review, such as the one I have here appended, taken from The New Yorker at the time of the film's long-delayed 1945 US release. Besides its beginning with a rather clear indication of how much for granted it takes the general public's familiarity with its titular cartoon stand-in, it is also interesting for a number of 'hits and misses' vis-à-vis the film's later reputation and what many now consider its artistic triumphs (note, for example, the reviewer's nitpick that the three women in Candy's life are 'all, rather confusingly, portrayed by the same actress'—as if this might have been some sort of unfortunate oversight by Powell and Pressburger or a constraint placed upon them by wartime rationing!). Likewise, it reflects the destructive editing the film was subjected to, as it seems to indicate the film cutting out everything up to Clive and Edith's first meeting, if its statement that 'the picture...opens with young Candy on furlough in Berlin' is to be taken literally.

Also, perhaps its most amusing (if also depressing) point is the beginning of the final paragraph, which gives a pretty pithy summation of just how highly regarded in the States was the British cinema of 65 years past.... And, come to think of it, this alone appears to show that the character of Colonel Blimp would've been expected to be far better recognised than any of the long- and highly-accomplished actors (such as Roland Culver, A.E. Matthews, John Laurie or Muriel Aked), let alone the three rising stars, acting out 'his' story!

—Marc-David Jacobs


The Current Cinema
The Sun Never Sets
from The New Yorker, 1945
by 'W.G.'

The title of the new British film, 'Colonel Blimp', is, of course, taken from the celebrated series of cartoons by Low, and this may be unfortunate, since a good many people are apt to get the impression that the picture is only a sort of animated comic strip, akin in spirit to 'The Better 'Ole'. Actually, is it a rather touching and dramatic biography of a professional British soldier who has been serving his country since the Boer War. In a great many ways, Colonel Blimp—or Clive Candy, as he is called in the film—is as absurd and limited as any member of a purely military caste, but he is unquestionably a brave and honest man and there is considerable pathos in his growing recognition of himself as an anachronism.

The picture, made in Technicolour, opens with young Candy on furlough in Berlin. As the result of a series of somewhat elabourate circumstances, he finds himself involved in a duel with an uhlan officer (there is quite a fine satire in the scene on the Continental punctilio governing such matters), is wounded, but forms a lifelong friendship with his late opponent. Here, too, he falls in love with and loses the first of the three girls (all, rather confusingly, portrayed by the same actress) who play important parts in his life. He turns up next toward the end of the first World War, when he emerges definitely as Colonel Blimp, a standard product of the playing fields of Eton.

He acquires a young wife (it is a curious feature of this picture that nobody seems to age except the protagonist) and settles down for the twenty years of peace that his nation apparently accepted so trustingly. During this period, incidentally, he shoots a greater assortment of wild animals than anybody since the elder Theodore Roosevelt, and the gradual accumulation of their stuffed heads on the walls is one of the minor humourous triumphs of the screen. In the present war, when time and makeup suggest that he is a man of at least seventy, he is finally persuaded to join the Home Guard after it gets to be only too clear that he is not adapted to what has come to be called total warfare. It is a simple story, I guess, made important largely by the fact that it epitomises all the qualities that have made the Empire ridiculous and exasperating and great.

Since the names of English moving-picture actors are not likely to convey much to American readers, it probably isn't necessary to cover the cast in much detail. Roger Livesey, possibly a victim of rather too ingenious makeup towards the end, plays the hero with just the right mixture of nobility and stuffiness; Anton Walbrook looks like a German without that touch of von Stroheim caricature which is so apt to creep into such things; and Deborah Kerr, as three women, is always beautiful and energetic.