The Bottom Line
I love this complex film's style and wit, its vibrant use of Technicolor, and Roger Livesey's tour-de-force performance.
Pros
- Unforgettable portrait of a man's life and times
- Excellent Technicolor cinematography
- Roger Livesey's tour-de-force performance
Cons
- Requires thought on part of viewer (also a pro)
- Requires perspective on historical context
- Dialogue-intensive and has little action
Description
- Criterion Collection DVD containing movie "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" (1943)
- Film written, directed, and produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
- DVD contains feature-length commentary by Michael Powell and Martin Scorsese
- Excellent Technicolor picture quality
- Good sound quality
Guide Review - "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" Criterion Collection DVD
This Powell and Pressburger masterpiece chronicles the life of a British career soldier from 1902 to 1942, and in doing so captures the heyday and demise of the way of life and code of conduct of the British old guard that took place during those years. I love this film's style and wit, its vibrant use of Technicolor, and Roger Livesey’s tour-de-force performance. I really like the complexity of "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp." At one level it's about an aging man failing to come to grips with a changing world, but it's also an elegy to a code of conduct whose time has passed, an unlikely friendship that spans 40 years, and a man’s search for his ideal woman.