The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Plot summary

Clive Candy V.C. has fought in the Boer War and the first world war. He still believes he can win any fight with honour and maintaining "gentlemanly conduct". It takes an old German friend of his to point out how much the rules have been changed when fighting the Nazis. We follow this delightful gentleman through his life and the persuit of his (various) ideals. Written by Steve Crook {steve@brainstorm.co.uk}

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's first Technicolor masterpiece, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), transcends its narrow wartime propaganda to portray in warm-hearted detail the life and loves of one extraordinary man. The film's clever narrative structure first presents us with the imposingly rotund General Clive Wynne-Candy (Roger Livesey in his greatest screen performance), a blustering old duffer who seems the epitome of stuffy, outmoded values. But traveling backwards 40 years we see a different man altogether: the young and dashing officer "Sugar" Candy. Through a series of affecting relationships with three women (all played to perfection by Deborah Kerr) and his touching lifelong friendship with a German officer (Anton Wallbrook), we see Candy's life unfold and come to understand how difficult it is for him to adapt his sense of military honor to modern notions of "total war." Notoriously, this is the film that Winston Churchill tried to have banned, and indeed its sympathetic portrayal of a German officer was contentious in 1943, though one suspects that Churchill's own blimpishness was a factor too. Written by Anonymous

Cast of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

	James McKechnie	...	Spud Wilson
	Neville Mapp	...	Stuffy Graves
	Vincent Holman	...	Club porter (1942)
	Roger Livesey	...	Clive Candy
	David Hutcheson	...	Hoppy
	Spencer Trevor	...	Period Blimp
	Roland Culver	...	Colonel Betteridge
	James Knight	...	Club porter (1902)
	Deborah Kerr	...	Edith Hunter/Barbara Wynne/Johnny Cannon
	Dennis Arundell	...	Café orchestra leader
	David Ward	...	Kaunitz
	Jan Van Loewen	...	Indignant citizen
	Valentine Dyall	...	Von Schönborn
	Carl Jaffe	...	Von Reumann (as Carl Jaffé)
	Albert Lieven	...	Von Ritter