What was Churchill's complaint?

There is info on it at:

http://www.turnerclassicmovies.com/ThisMonth/Article/0,,102777,00.html

and:

http://www.turnerclassicmovies.com/MovieNews/Index/0,,14363,00.html

Colonel Blimp was suppressed because ——

(1) Two key scenes occurred at the War Office which showed its members in quite an unflattering light. Consider that Colonel Blimp was brought to Churchill's attention by the War Office. The War Office was afraid the audience would begin to wonder, "Who's running this show?" Though we consider the government to be fair game in normal times, during wartime, promoting morale and confidence has higher priority than art or polemic.

(2) Churchill couldn't discern a good movie if it hit him over the head (and this movie certainly did). Consider that Churchill's taste in film ran from banal to atrocious. It is part of Churchill lore that for his circle one of the ordeals of being with him was having to endure the treacly melodrama and jingoistic action, which Churchill was constantly commenting on while watching. So, we have to consider the source. Anyway, Churchill was not disposed to consider the fine points raised by the movie; he had a war to run.

"The only thing I can guess is that he, like the War Office in the film, didn't like General Candy's message about the necessity for the British to remain decent human beings even in wartime, and even against the Nazis."

I think you might be right... I don't understand those comments on here that suggest the character of Candy was supposed to be uncomfortably similar to Churchill in outlook, and that churchhill was therefore being portrayed as stuffy traditionalist/moralist (which I don't think Candy is anyway). Churchill was all for ruthless expediency - http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/archive/1695/sw169518.htm

There was afew things seen to be distasteful about the film, by churchill:

1. A german had a psychological advantage over the British Hero - Theo was clearer sighted & had actually won the girl.
2. British officers had actually been called 'blimpish' in parliament a short while before & this was not what they wanted to keep hearing.
3. The above was seen to be particularly bad as it made britain look weak to her allies - hence the reason why Churchill witheld its export license to the U.S. for some months
4. Blimp was actually a Cartoon strip character created by David Low used to deride Aristocratic right wingers of the 1930s. Churchill (prior to coming back to power) had been derided in a number of such strips by Low in the 1930s. So had no love for blimp.
5. To make it worse there were too many similarities between Candy and Churchill himself: both served in the Boer, India & were brigade commanders on the western front.

Also: There is 1 conspiracy theory - as in the end it painted quite a good light some have concluded (incorrectly in my opinion) they hype was to encourage people to go see it.

+ there's more, 'Screen' has a number of articles on it as do other articles on the films makers, should you care to look it up.

I've been thinking today about this movie.

Blimp's Victorian gentleman amateur values were a paradigm of the entire British ruling class. Blimp WAS the honorable schoolboy and a perfect example of why British military, political, and economic leadership was so unequal to the challenges of the Twentieth Century.

Aside from O'Connor's offensive in Libya in 1941 British army leadership had been pretty second rate. Nowhere did Britain produce a Rommel or a Guderian, a hard driving tanker who commands from the front and makes things happen. Narvik, Dunkirk, Crete, Tobruk, Singapore. One British disaster after the other and under officers who weren't much different from Blimp. This movie hints at something which British historians of the 60s like Corelli Barnett drove home. That the British public school mentality (the mentality in which its entire male ruling class was brought up) was honest, brave, self disciplined, sober, and decent but so loyal to the rules that it was incapable of learning anything or thinking outside the box. So polite and restrained that it had no hustle, ambition, or unflinching committment to excellence. Similarly, the aristocratic Flytes of "Brideshead Revisited" (written at the same time) are charming, lovely, but rather spineless people.

Churchill I think sensed this critique of the culture of his class. The truth of it frightened him for what it meant for the future of the British Empire.

I just listened to Leonard Lopate's fine radio interview with Michael Powell from 1987. In it Powell goes out of his way to praise Churchill, saying he made it possible for English film makers to make first-rate films during the war. He contrasts Churchill with Hitler: Hitler, he says, thought he was an artist and wanted to kill everybody who didn't share his view of art. Churchill, on the other hand, was an artist, and allowed British film makers to develop important themes in the ways they saw fit. Or so Powell says. Which makes me wish Powell had gone into the matter of the censorship of Blimp.
The interview, which is a pleasure throughout, is at
http://wnyc.org/shows/lopate/episodes/02042005
I highly recommend it.

First of all, Churchill did not "censor" the film. It was shown throughout England during the war and in fact broke box office records. The war office did refuse permission to use military facilities in its filming, and it did refuse to allow Laurence Olivier to take time off from military service to star in the title role. This is hardly censorship, however.

It is true that Churchill reportedly disliked the film and tried to discourage its distribution. Indeed, he temporarily prohibited the use of aircraft (which were all under governmental control during the war, for obvious reasons) to transport the film outside of Britain. Even this embargo, however, only lasted a few months.

If you want to learn what true censorship is, read about Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia (or present-day Cuba, Iran or China).

While watching the film I was struck constantly by the unusually even-handed portrayal of the Germans, crediting them with virtues as well as evils.

Throughout even my childhood in the 50's and 60's Britain, this was a rare thing indeed, and I don't think the view presented in this film was caught up with in mainstream British war films till maybe the 70's, if then in general. Until then Germans may sometimes have been shown as charismatic, diabolically talented individuals, but almost always with the rider that their trained automaton soldiery was no match for the plucky, flexible Tommy - rubbish in general, obviously, but we British seemed to be afraid to give them any real credit. Even today, the tabloid press tries to perpetuate the old view of the Germans.

So my reaction was that propagation of this film's view of the Germans simply wouldn't have been acceptable to British wartime leaders. Soldiers are, after all, trained to hate their enemies - it makes killing them easier; to see them as human beings like themselves would surely have been a hindrance to soldiers and those supporting them.