The war began at 6 rather than midnight—but midnight was the agreed-upon time! War has no agreements. Clive Wayne-Candy, standing in for the whole English image of Colonel Blimp the jolly yet choleric blowhard, must learn that the hard way, with a brash young man in his face. Just as he was a brash young man disregarding his elders 40 years previously. Youth has no respect and age lacks flexibility.
Obligatory Gilbert & Sullivan quote: “That youth at us must have its fling is hard on us; To our prerogative we cling so pardon us….” (Pooh-Bah, very Colonel Blimp already, in The Mikado)
Powell and Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp gives that lack of flexibility a backstory, teaching the lesson while still offering compassion. The movie is framed with scenes in the present, which play very differently after seeing all that passed in the past. None of which changes the problem of being blindly stuck doing things the old way. But it does give age some of the respect and consideration that it has earned.
The film is rooted in the Eastern European operetta tradition. Rosy-glassed romance with lightly satirical humor. The scenes in 1902 Berlin are pure Lehar. Soldiers in absurd fancy uniforms, ladies with plumed hats (one features a whole bird!), a duel fought according to strict rules, a stage band playing kitsch, and jolly boys warbling “Je suis Titania” (which gets weaponized at a Biergarten!). Truly a romanticized past.
Powell and Pressburger’s famed vivid color palette is only partially in evidence here. The peacetime scenes feature beautiful costumes and backgrounds but much of the movie takes place in sepia and khaki wartime.
Young Clive is a perfect product of his society. Totally disconnected from his feelings. So thoroughly that he falls in love with no idea of what he had done and only notices it when the object of his affections is claimed by another. He spends the rest of his life searching for an ideal female who matches the lady he lost. He lucks into seeing such a person and manages to marry her, using a subterfuge of great and manipulative resourcefulness. And later he similarly selects from 700 candidates a driver who most exactly resembles his love. All three played by the same actress! The three loves concept harks back to The Tales of Hoffmann, another link to that romantic operetta (and opera) world. (A tale that Powell and Pressburger would visit a few years later.) On top of that his love is given to an idealization of English maidenhood that has existed for centuries, from “The Nut-Brown Maid” to Lady Di. And each lady is the age he was when he first fell in love—reflecting his young self back to him. That reflection is the person he believes in.
The film is full of tiny details that yield more than double results when they are revisited. Time passes, shown by a montage of animal heads mounted on the wall. Later the room full of decapitated heads is joined, rather unsettlingly, by a portrait of his by-then dead wife!
Clive seems to handle friendship more naturally than romantic love. His life-long connection to the man sent to duel him—who leaves him with a scar on his upper lip which he covers with the Colonel Blimp walrus mustache—brings out all the best moments of kindness he has to show. The movie does not touch on the homosexuality so common in English upper class education, which was expected to be repressed at adulthood and replaced with traditional family life, but that might explain Clive’s discomfort dealing with women, all of whom seem to be on pedestals before him. That might also explain the fondness that ideal females 2 and 3 express for him.
That German friend also serves to show that people should not be judged tribally. German but not Nazi. Indeed, sadly shunned by his Nazi children and widowed of his English wife—Clive’s great love.
Another set-up is the moment Clive brings his wife into the house inherited from his aunt. He vows not to change until the house is a lake. It is bombed in the blitz and becomes a cistern. And he remembers. There are moments in this movie that really hurt for some of us over a certain age, who have suffered losses.
When Clive was young and brash he did what he thought was right rather than follow protocol. Dressed down by a superior he then refused a dinner invitation. Forty years later, after being bested by a different young whipper-snapper he decides to invite the boy to dinner. He finally understands. Whether the young man accepts we don’t find out—and that isn’t the point.
The main message of the movie is that romantic belief in things working the way they used to won’t win the next—or the current—war. And it is a cold hard warning to the current political campaign.