Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Life and Death of Colonel Blimp |
| Original title | The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp |
| Country of production | United Kingdom |
| original language |
English German French |
| Publishing year | 1943 |
| length | 163 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Michael Powell , Emeric Pressburger |
| script | Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger |
| production | Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger |
| music | Allan Gray |
| camera | Georges Périnal |
| occupation | |
1902
First World War
Second World War
| |
Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Original title: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp ) is a British film epic in Technicolor by the British filmmaker duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger from 1943. Roger Livesey , Adolf Wohlbrück and Deborah Kerr play the leading roles .
The film title picks up on the satirical comic figure Colonel Blimp by David Low , although no character by that name appears. Instead, the film is about the varied life of British officer Clive Candy, who rose through the ranks of the British military between the Boer War in 1902 and World War II. When it was made, the film caused controversy because it contained satirical swipes at the military and painted a nuanced picture of the Germans. It is now widely regarded as a masterpiece in film history.
action
England during the Second World War : British soldiers are supposed to simulate the attack of the Germans on London in an exercise. The leader of the attackers is Lieutenant "Spud" Wilson, who - contrary to the agreement that the exercise should start at midnight - starts the attack early at six o'clock. Spud justified this breach of the rule with the fact that the enemies of Great Britain would no longer keep to agreements and one had to be better prepared for them. The attack by the young soldiers hits the older officers unprepared in a Turkish bath . The senior officers are in command of Major General Clive Wynne-Candy, who protests angrily that the war should not start until midnight. When Lieutenant Spud makes a comment about Wynne-Candy's waistline and age, the old general throws him into the pool and fights him. In the following, the life story of Clive Wynne-Candy is told in a flashback.
1902 : The young Lieutenant Clive Candy, who has just been honored for his brave work, receives a leave of absence from the Boer War in Great Britain. His vacation is interrupted when he learns by letter from an English teacher working in Germany that a man named Kaunitz is doing anti-English propaganda there. Contrary to the instructions of his superior, Candy travels to Berlin to curb this propaganda and to get back at his old friend Kaunitz. There he meets Edith Hunter, the English teacher. Candy eagerly rushes to his reconnaissance task, but he is clumsy and insults the corps unit to which Kaunitz belongs. After this insult he is challenged by the corps club to a fencing duel with the Prussian officer Theodor Kretschmar-Schuldorff, who is actually not involved in the dispute . The duel ends with the two of them being taken to a clinic, where they become good friends while playing cards. Edith visits Candy regularly in the hospital and falls in love with Theodor. He and Edith become a couple and become engaged, which Candy greets happily. Only on the return trip to England does Candy notice that he, too, loved Edith, who stayed with Theo in Berlin . The lonely man throws himself into big game hunting in Africa for the next few years .
1918 : Europe lies in ruins at the end of the First World War . The British army is on the winning side, which Candy - meanwhile in middle age and a brigadier general - attributes to the fact that the party that acts according to justice and decency will always win ( "right is might" ). In France, the evening before the end of the war, he met the British nurse Barbara Wynne, who was exactly the same as his former love, Edith. Back in England, Candy visits the much younger Barbara and they soon get married. Meanwhile, Theo is a British prisoner of war and mourns the defeat of Germany. Candy visits his friend and acts like nothing has happened, but the embittered Theo treats him dismissively. Shortly before Theo returns to Germany, he apologizes to Wynne-Candy for the rejection and accepts his invitation to a dinner party. At the dinner party, Theo is treated well by Candy's British friends, but theo remains skeptical as to whether his country is being treated fairly in view of the harsh conditions in the Versailles Treaty .
At the beginning of the Second World War . Theo applies for British asylum and tells the story of his life: He was released from the German army after the war due to the reduction in troop strength enforced in the peace treaty after the First World War; his wife Edith died in 1933, shortly before they wanted to emigrate to their old home in England before the Nazis; In contrast to him, his two children have become staunch Nazis, and Theo no longer has any contact with them. And now Theo and Candy meet again, who is still in the military and is campaigning for his old friend to be granted asylum. Wynne-Candy's wife Barbara has also passed away. A new young woman enters the lives of the two widowers: Angela is the chauffeur of Wynne-Candy, who has meanwhile risen to Major General, and resembles both Edith and Barbara. On the occasion of Operation Dynamo , Wynne-Candy is scheduled to give a speech on the BBC radio in which he wants to say that he would rather lose decently than win with the enemy's evil methods. However, the planned speech is canceled without further ado and Wynne-Candy is retired. Theo reminds his old friend that in order to win the fight against Nazi Germany he would have to use methods tougher than those of a gentleman , because the consequences of defeat would be even more terrible. Following encouragement from Theo and Angela, Wynne-Candy is now fully committed to running the British Home Guard , which brings new recognition to the old general. His home is destroyed during an air raid and he has to move to the officers' club.
The flashback ends here and catches up with the present at the beginning of the film: old Candy leads the British Home Guard's exercise, in which Lieutenant "Spud" Wilson - Angela's friend, it turns out - disregards the guidelines and earlier attacks, surprising Wynne-Candy in the Turkish bath. The old rules of fairness in war, which have always been his maxim until now, no longer exist. Angela had tried in vain to warn the general of her friend's "attack". The day after the exercise, Angela and Theo find the general in front of the place where his house had stood before it was destroyed. Wynne-Candy invites Angela and her friend Spud to a reconciliation dinner, recalling how he was once invited to dinner by an old supervisor in 1902 after he broke up the diplomatic incident in Berlin.
Years earlier, Wynne-Candy had jokingly and lovingly promised his wife that he would not change until his house was flooded and it became a lake. When he sees that a cistern has been made out of his property , he notices that the lake is now here and that it has still not changed. Finally, Wynne-Candy salutes the passing guard of young men.
background
Pre-production
According to directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the idea for the film came from a scene from their previous film, One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942). In this war film, an older soldier speaks to a younger soldier in a scene that was ultimately cut from the finished film: "You don't know what it's like to be old." (“You don't know what it's like to be old”). According to an interview with Michael Powell, the film editor of One of Our Aircroft's Missing , who later became star director David Lean , gave her the idea of the film by noting when cutting out the scene that the premise of this entertainment was a film of its own worth it.
Finally, the popular comic book character "Colonel Blimp" by David Low , who had appeared in the Evening Standard since the 1930s and had gained a large fan base, was taken as further inspiration and finally also mentioned in the film title The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp . In his comics, Low caricatured a self-important and obstinate military man of advanced age who holds outdated beliefs and regularly embarrasses himself. The film rolls up the life story of old Wynne-Candy, who at first appears reactionary and irascible, like the comic figure of Colonel Blimp, and looks like him outwardly. In the flashback, however, you get to know Wynne-Candy better and he becomes a popular figure, so that the initial image of him is revised. Contrary to the film title, Candy, who in a way stands for blimp, does not die. Rather, he has to bury his old, "blimp-like" virtues of honor and fairness in the course of the Second World War in order to continue to be useful to his country.
Crew and cast
Michael Powell was a British native and grew up in Kent , while Emeric Pressburger was a Hungarian Jew. In the early 1930s, Pressburger was employed by the UFA in Berlin until he fled to England when the Nazis came to power in 1936 through a stay in Paris. It was only after the war that he found out that his mother and many relatives had died in Auschwitz. Pressburger's grandson Kevin Macdonald wrote in 2015 that his grandfather later reproached himself for not having brought his mother to Great Britain. In old age, with the onset of senility, he was plagued by the thought that the Nazis would still persecute him. Nevertheless, Pressburger had an affection for German culture, which is particularly evident in his scripts for British propaganda films such as "Colonel Blimp", which despite their intention do not equate Germans with Nazis and usually offer nuanced characterizations, such as the figure of Theo.
In addition to Powell and Pressburger, the rest of the cast and film crew of "Colonel Blimp" were international: a German-Jewish composer ( Allan Gray ), a Czech costume designer ( Joseph Bato ), a German production designer ( Alfred Junge ), a French cameraman ( Georges Périnal ) and leading actors from Scotland ( Deborah Kerr ), Wales ( Roger Livesey ) and Austria ( Adolf Wohlbrück ). Powell and Pressburger often argued, but also critics, that this international perspective would make their films more interesting. For example, Adolf Wohlbrück (in exile in England his stage name was Anton Walbrook ), who plays Theodor, was a successful star at Ufa. Since he hated National Socialism, according to whose ideas he was “half-Jewish” and also homosexual, he emigrated to England in the mid-1930s and became the only emigrated actor with star fame in the British film industry alongside Conrad Veidt . Wohlbrück had already played the leader of a group of German Canadians in the Powell & Pressburger film 49th Parallel in 1941 , who rejects National Socialism with an eloquent speech. As early as 49th Parallel , Powell and Pressburger had created controversy for designing the main character, a German submarine officer, to be dangerously intelligent.
Controversy with Churchill
Also, Life and Death of Colonel Blimp brought the filmmaker duo anger one: The British Ministry of Information was of the opinion that the film was not a convincing propaganda and "On complication of ideas" is dangerous. The war bureau found that the Germans didn't seem mean enough in the film. Even in the early stages of work on the film, Winston Churchill, despite his duties as Prime Minister , occupied himself with the film, which he wanted to prevent as much as possible. In a memorandum to his co-workers, he wrote:
"(...) suggest the necessary measures to stop this stupid production before it continues. I am not ready to allow propaganda that is detrimental to the morale of the army and I am sure the cabinet will take all necessary measures. Who are the people behind it? "( Pray propose to me the measures necessary to stop this foolish production before it gets any further. I am not prepared to allow propaganda detrimental to the morale of the Army, and I am sure the Cabinet will take all necessary action. Who are the people behind it? )
When the Information Department wrote that it did not have the necessary authority to stop the film, Churchill wrote in a memorandum that he would approve "any special permission you might need." It has also been speculated by Ian Christie, among others, that Churchill's rejection of the film was intensified by the fact that he saw himself parodied in the character of Clive Candy. In his 1994 book The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp , the British film historian Christie suspects that Churchill saw the character of Wynne-Candy as a parody of himself and cites some similarities between Churchill and the fictional character of Wynne-Candy. Both came from the same generation and served in the Boer War and World War I. David Chapman lets Christie's thesis stand, but also notes that Churchill, in contrast to the figure of Wynne-Candy, recognized the dangers of National Socialism and World War II, so he was not necessarily a "blimp" figure.
Another reason could have been that the film exuded a certain sadness about old times and traditions, as embodied by the conservative Wynne-Candy. Although this also wants to change at the end of the film and face the German enemy with tougher methods, the viewer also gets the feeling that one also has to leave positive things behind in order to win the war. Olaf Möller writes: “And that was what Churchill was afraid of: the portrayal of the greatness of this loss. England would be a different one, and no better. ”So the life and death of Colonel Blimp resembled in a way the planned radio address by Wynne-Candy in the film, which is prevented because he insists on the old rules of fair play with the enemy want.
The film was ultimately released after viewing by the War and Information Ministry. Information Minister Brendan Bracken feared a controversy over the artistic freedom of British filmmakers and the related allegations that they would be approaching the strictly controlled propaganda of Germany.
A few obstacles were put in the way of the film: Powell and Pressburgers' preferred candidate for the role of Clive was actually Britain's most famous actor Laurence Olivier , who was currently serving in the Navy and with whom Powell had previously made two films. Olivier was denied the release for the film, so Powell had to switch to the lesser-known Roger Livesey in the cast. A star of the caliber of Olivier shouldn't take part in a film that was perceived as so critical. For Livesey, who otherwise mostly appeared as a supporting actor, this was the high point of his film career.
After the premiere in June 1943, there was also a ban on exporting the film abroad, which continued until the end of the year, which then also affected British soldiers fighting abroad. However, the great success in England forced Churchill to lift the ban, and in 1945 the film was finally able to appear in theaters in the United States. In 1983 and 2011, the Technicolor film was restored in full length after it was common practice in the first decades after the war to shorten the film for cinema or television broadcasts.
synchronization
The German synchronization was created in 1980 for a television broadcast on ZDF . Although well-known dubbing actors were involved in it, the German dubbing version is very incomplete. While the original version is 163 minutes long, the German version has been shortened to 93 minutes.
Awards
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp was voted one of the top ten films of 1945 by the US National Board of Review (in the US the film was only released in 1945). Furthermore, the film was at the New York Film Critics Circle in the categories of Best Film and Best Actress nomination (Deborah Kerr). The British Film Institute chose Colonel Blimp in 1999 at number 45 of the 100 best British films of the 20th century. A survey by the British film magazine Sight & Sound among international film critics selected the work in 2012 as number 93 of the best films of all time.
reception
In the UK, the film was also controversial in the press. From the left and from the New Statesman there was criticism that the film had no satirical sharpness and that David Low's character in the "Technicolor Sugar" was unrecognizable as a sentimental old fool. The conservative Daily Mail disagreed and thought the film was going too far in its satire: "Portraying British officers as stupid, complacent, complacent and silly may be legitimate comedy in peacetime, but it is disastrously bad propaganda in wartime".
The harshest criticism came from the right-wing sociologist couple EW and MM Robson, who described the film as the "most shameful production" by a British film studio. The film is the first step in the direction of a Third World War, as it portrays the naturally aggressive Germans in a sympathetic manner. The Robsons contrasted the main characters with each other and explained that "if one character is called 'Sugar' Candy and the other Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff", their relationship is clear from the outset: Clive as a "big, fat lollipop" is the cliché of a " walrus, mustache-bearded Englishman ”, while Theo is shown as a“ noble, handsome, venerable, capable and wise German ”. Despite the criticism, the film became a hit with the public, thanks in part to its humor and advertisements like "see the banned film", which deliberately alluded to the controversy.
Bosley Crowther wrote for the New York Times on March 30, 1945 that the life and death of Colonel Blimp was "as unmistakably a British product as Yorkshire pudding " and, like the latter, a "delicious, very unique treat". Roger Livesey is an "ideal cast" for the title role, Adolf Wohlbrück offers an "absolutely winning portrayal" and Deborah Kerr turns out to be a "beautiful and talented actress". The film would sometimes have a few lengths, which is no wonder given two and a half hours, but many of Powell and Pressburger's “distinguished individual scenes” would remain in the audience's memory for a long time.
The US film critic Roger Ebert took Life and Death of Colonel Blimp in 2002 to its list of the best films. One of the “many wonders” of the film is how it transforms the inflated caricature of a colonel into one of the “most lovable of all film characters”. It is an "unusually civilized film about war and soldiers - and even more unusual, a film that defends the old against the young." Seldom does a film show such a nuanced view of the entire life span of a man's life. “It is said that the child is the father of the man. Colonel Blimp makes poetry out of what the elderly know but the young cannot imagine: the man contains both the father and the child. "
In Germany, the life and death of Colonel Blimp was officially shown for the first time on December 2, 1980 on ZDF in the shortened German dubbed version. In Germany, however, the attention for the film seems to have increased in the 2010s, as shown for example by the presentation at the Berlinale 2012 and the publications on Blu-Ray and DVD at Koch Media . The film service had a positive review of the film in 2013 on the occasion of the new DVD release; it is a “large-scale, deeply humanistic cinematic novel”, which inspires above all with an “overabundance of narrative finesse”.
Web links
- The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Product to film on screen Online (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michael Powell's comment on the Criterion Collection DVD
- ↑ Less, Kay: The film's large personal dictionary. The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 6, Berlin 2001, p. 333.
- ^ Pressburger, Emeric: The Glass Perls . London, 2015, foreword by Kevin Macdonald, retrieved from Google Books. (As of July 22, 2019)
- ↑ Patterson, John: Why the most English of movies often benefit from an outsider's perspective (as of July 22, 2019)
- ↑ Less, Kay: The film's large personal dictionary. The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 8, Berlin 2001, p. 442.
- ^ Webster, Wendy: Mixing It: Diversity in World War Two Britain . Oxford, 2018 (as of July 22, 2019)
- ^ Murphy, Robert: Good and Bad Germans, in: Manuel Bragança, Peter Tame (eds.): The Long Aftermath: Cultural Legacies of Europe at War, 1936–2016, p. 100.
- ^ Puckett, Kent. "The Life and Death and Death of Colonel Blimp." Critical Inquiry, Volume 35, No. 1, 2008, pp. 90-114. Pp. 92-93.
- ↑ Christie, Ian: Arrows of Desire - The Films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. London, 1994, p. 46.
- ^ Chapman, James: The British at War - Cinema, State and Propaganda, 1939-1945, London, 2000, p. 84.
- ↑ Chapman, David: 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp' (1943) Reconsidered, in: Historical Journal Of Film Radio and Television Radio and Television, March 1995, pp. 19-54. Retrieved from: http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Reviews/43_Blimp/Blimp02.html (as of July 23, 2019)
- ^ Ian Christie, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (1994). The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Faber & Faber. ISBN 0-571-14355-5 .
- ↑ Chapman, David: 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp' (1943) Reconsidered, in: Historical Journal Of Film Radio and Television Radio and Television, March 1995, pp. 19-54. Retrieved from: http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Reviews/43_Blimp/Blimp02.html (as of July 23, 2019)
- ↑ DVD booklet
- ^ Chapman, James: The British at War - Cinema, State and Propaganda, 1939-1945, London, 2000, pp. 84-85.
- ^ Edwards, Paul M .: World War I on Film: English Language Releases through 2014, McFarland, 2016. Retrieved from Google Books (as of July 23, 2019)
- ↑ Cinema - The Great World of Films and Stars, Bassermann, 1995
- ^ Molly Haskell: The Life and Death and Life of Colonel Blimp at Criterion Collection
- ↑ "Colonel Blimp" in the synchronized files
- ↑ Life and Death of Colonel Blimp at Two Thousand and One
- ^ Awards of the Life and Death of Colonel Blimp "at IMDb
- ↑ Survey at the BFI
- ↑ Chapman, David: 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp' (1943) Reconsidered, in: Historical Journal Of Film Radio and Television Radio and Television, March 1995, pp. 19-54. Retrieved from: http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Reviews/43_Blimp/Blimp02.html (as of July 23, 2019)
- ↑ Chapman, David: 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp' (1943) Reconsidered, in: Historical Journal Of Film Radio and Television Radio and Television, March 1995, pp. 19-54. Retrieved from: http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Reviews/43_Blimp/Blimp02.html (as of July 23, 2019), translated from: “To depict British officers as stupid, complacent, self-satisfied and ridiculous may be legitimate comedy in peace-times, but it is disastrously bad propaganda in times of war "
- ↑ Chapman, David: 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp' (1943) Reconsidered, in: Historical Journal Of Film Radio and Television Radio and Television, March 1995, pp. 19-54. Retrieved from: http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Reviews/43_Blimp/Blimp02.html (as of July 23, 2019)
- ^ Murphy, Robert: Good and Bad Germans, in: Manuel Bragança, Peter Tame (eds.): The Long Aftermath: Cultural Legacies of Europe at War, 1936–2016, p. 100.
- ↑ Chapman, David: 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp' (1943) Reconsidered, in: Historical Journal Of Film Radio and Television Radio and Television, March 1995, pp. 19-54. Retrieved from: http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Reviews/43_Blimp/Blimp02.html (as of July 23, 2019)
- ^ Life and Death of Colonel Blimp , The New York Times
- ↑ The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp with Roger Ebert
- ↑ Cf. release info for "Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" at the Internet Movie Database (as of July 22, 2019)
- ↑ Berlinale: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (as of July 22, 2019)
- ↑ Film-dienst 20/2013, page 26