It was with fresh memories of a volume of Spike Milligan’s wartime memoirs and a few sketches of Monty Python’s Flying Circus that I first watched Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. The first ten minutes or so could have easily belonged to any of these two works of entertainment. One remembered Milligan’s hilarious exploits of barracks tomfoolery told in a deadpan style reminiscent of Evelyn Waugh’s Men At Arms (but without Waugh’s pitch-black satire) as the brightly khaki-clad troops of the Home Guard mount a devilish attack at their crotchety old seniors relaxing in the Turkish bath at Piccadilly. And in the plump-waisted, infuriated figure of Major General Clive Candy, one is reminded, not only of David Low’s caricature from Punch, but also of the moustached Colonel, played by Graham Chapman, who would walk into sketches when they were getting “too silly”.
Everything changes, however, with a seamlessly tailored match-cut (one imagines David Lean sitting and scribbling notes in the editing room) that, in little more than four seconds, takes us forty years ago. The Candy who plunges into the pool, draped in his towel, from one end, emerges from the other as a strapping young man. Freshly decorated as a hero of the Boer War, young Candy has hardly landed back in same old London when he is off again, in a private mission to Germany, like a Richard Hannay, inspired by a certain Conan Doyle, to defend his country’s honour from propaganda.
Egged on by the spirited and beautiful Edith Hunter, Candy eloquently but impudently insults the German military establishment, only to find himself in a diplomatic muddle and a duel of honour with a Ulan officer picked at random. Little does he know, however, that some scars and stitches later, this soft-spoken officer named Theo Kretschmar Schuldorff, would emerge to be his most lasting friends, as well as a kind of wise Sancho Panza, in his old age, to his Quixotic nature.
This unlikely friendship, tested not by the love for the same woman but more by the tumult of the First World War and then firmly reinforced by the Second, is what forms the unique story of the film, which also serves as a well-rounded portrait of Candy himself. We follow him from his cocksure youth to his heyday as a military commander and finally find him as an old man rendered futile, misunderstood for his righteous views on a war that cannot be won fairly. Powell and Pressburger examine this charmingly, if stubbornly, idealistic man critically but candidly, an effect further achieved by Roger Livesey’s infectiously articulate but utterly poignant performance. Candy loses in love, then finds a wife with a striking resemblance to the woman whom he loved and even as an old man, now growing a walrus moustache on a stiff upper lip once scarred by a friend, he keeps a plucky woman chauffeur who again bears the same identicality. Through these three performances, essayed by Deborah Kerr’s striking presence and angelic beauty, the makers are also able to chart the inevitable course of social and cultural transformation sweeping across Britain, even as its most recognisable figure, Candy himself, remains unchangeable.
It should be noted here that The Life and Death was made and released in 1943, a year when England and Europe were still in fear of the wave of Nazism sweeping through the continent. This would explain, if not justify, why this film, which features a kind and empathetic friendship between an Englishman and a German, albeit not a Nazi, was received a little coolly. The fear of fifth columnists and misinformation which could undermine the carefully cultivated spirit of patriotism at home was very real and perhaps even good old Winston Churchill must have mistaken Candy as a caricature of himself, something that would be published in Punch in the post-war years. This is still forgivable, for the passage of time has allowed us to admire not only the film’s sterling craftsmanship but also its genuinely warm and celebratory spirit of Britishness.
Powell would be renowned for his astonishing technical innovation: the ingenious special effects of A Matter of Life and Death, the stunning realism of painted backgrounds in Black Narcissus and the luridly erotic suspense of a voyeuristic camera in Peeping Tom. But The Life and Death, by contrast, has a simple but delightful sense of invention, the kind of creativity that one used to find in Chaplin’s comedies. Montages of trophy heads of many a beast from many a tropical jungle popping up on walls effectively bridge the different eras the film charts; when Schuldorff and Candy start fencing, the camera pulls out elegantly, letting our minds imagine the clash of steel and wills and the chirp of a bird announces the end of the Great War on a sordid battlefield.
The script is both elegantly understated and objective in its examination of patriotism. It is indeed brave for a film, in those years, to question the senselessness of the war being fought. In a stirring monologue, Schuldorff gently remonstrates his English friend for his irascible idealism, revealing to him how “might” is the new “right” and how his fair principles of fighting are both obsolete and outmoded. It is a painfully cathartic moment, not least for Candy, and Anton Wolbrook’s performance, as Schuldorff, is a fine specimen of gentlemanly dignity.
But in the end, The Life and Death is indeed a rousing and loving ode to Britishness, as exemplified by its sometimes naïve, mostly likable but always admirable protagonist. Till the end, Candy clings unshakably to his fine beliefs, to his own detriment and disgrace. But there is still something romantic and noble about his old-fashioned patriotism – a patriotic spirit that never deteriorates into jingoism – that we are willing to believe that it will continue to shine brightly as a beacon of hope when all other ideals have faded away.