The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Colonel Blimp is originally a British cartoon character. The cartoonist David Low first drew Colonel Blimp for Lord Beaverbrook's London Evening Standard in the 1930s: pompous, irascible, jingoistic and stereotypically British. Low developed the character after overhearing two military men in a Turkish bath declare that cavalry officers should be entitled to wear their spurs inside tanks. The Blimp character in the movie is a far more loveable character. One Clive Wynne-Candy, played by Roger Livesey, he embodies all the virtues of the English soldier and gentleman. In fact, the movie is an ode to Englishness. Made at the height of the Nazi threat to England in 1942 it’s a convincing demonstration that the allies had a lot worth fighting for. Deborah Kerr plays three roles, that of the girl who marries Clive’s German dueling partner and later friend Theo, that of Clive’s own, younger wife, and later his WREN driver when he heads up the Home Guard during the Second World War. Her characters remain young while all those around her age. It’s quite a surprising film to make in the midst of war. It encountered strong resistance when first released from no less than Winston Churchill. When Churchill questioned the Austrian actor Anton Walbrook about the film he famously replied “'No people in the world other than the English would have had the courage, in the midst of war, to tell the people such unvarnished truth”. It’s a cracker of a film. Entertaining and at times quite moving. “The war starts at midnight!”