Submitted by:
Roger Mellor
'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp' reconsidered.
By James Chapman
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (The Archers/General Film Distributors,
1943; dir. Michael Powell) is notorious in the history of the British cinema
of the Second World War as the film that Winston Churchill wanted to ban.
The discovery of documents relating to the film in the Public Record Office,
and their subsequent publication in the journal Sight and Sound in 1978,
confirmed what had long been an open secret: that Churchill had objected
to the film and had tried to have it suppressed [1].
However, the circumstances of the film's production has been subject to
a number of different interpretations, with the result that there is no
general consensus as to the implications of the attempt to suppress it.
Nor is there a completely satisfactory answer to one of the most puzzling
questions which arises from the incident: why was Churchill, Britain's all-powerful
war leader, unable to stop the film's production when it is clear that he
wanted to do so? Furthermore, the emphasis by historians on the attempt
to suppress the film has overshadowed other important considerations, particularly
the question of how it was received by contemporary critics and audiences.
The aim of this article, therefore, is to reconsider The Life and Death
of Colonel Blimp from a revisionist perspective. It will provide a critical
survey of the historiography of the film, examine the question of why the
attempt to suppress it failed, and discuss the film's critical and popular
reception both in Britain and the United States by drawing on a range of
contemporary sources.
Synopsis
It is first necessary, however, to provide a brief synopsis of the film.
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is a Technicolor epic which chronicles
the military career of Major-General Clive Wynne-Candy (Roger Livesey) from
the turn of the century to World War II. The film begins in the 'present'
(1943) with a military exercise in which the Home Guard is supposed to be
defending London against the regular army. Lieutenant 'Spud' Wilson (James
McKechnie) of the Second Battalion, the Loamshires, is instructed to "make
it like the real thing". Acting on his own initiative, he decides to attack
at six o'clock, rather than at midnight, when the exercise is supposed to
start, and therefore striking before 'war' is declared - "just like Pearl
Harbour!" Having found out from his girlfriend 'Johnny' Cannon (Deborah
Kerr) where 'Sugar' Candy, commanding the Home Guard, will be at that time
- she is the General's driver - Spud and a group of his toughest men arrive
at the Royal Bathers' Club and take prisoner Candy and the other elderly
officers. Candy is surprised by the pre-emptive strike, which goes against
what was agreed beforehand ("But you damned young idiot, war starts at midnight!").
A confrontation occurs between Candy and Spud ("Ah yes, you say war starts
at midnight. How do you know the enemy says so too?") in which Spud makes
insulting remarks about Candy's age. Candy feels insulted by Spud's impudence
and fights with him, whereupon both men fall into the Turkish bath.
A long flashback then narrates Clive Candy's military career, starting in
the same Turkish bath in 1902 where the young Lieutenant Candy, recently
returned from the Boer War with a Victoria Cross, is seen upsetting an elderly
officer through his youthful exuberance. Responding to a letter from a Miss
Edith Hunter (Deborah Kerr), an English governess in Berlin, live goes there,
on his own initiative and against the orders of the War Office, to correct
the anti-British propaganda being put about. His rash actions almost cause
a diplomatic incident, and after insulting the Imperial German Army he is
obliged to fight a sabre duel with Lieutenant Theodore Kretschmar-Schuldorff
(Anton Walbrook). Recovering from minor wounds in a nursing home, Clive
and Theo become friends. Theo marries Edith, with whom Clive is secretly
in love.
Clive's military career continues, and by the end of World War I he is an
acting Brigadier-General on the Western Front. At the Armistice of 1918
he expresses his faith in the British way of warfare ("Clean fighting, honest
soldiering have won the day"), but this is contrasted with the brutal pragmatism
of a South African officer whose methods of interrogation are rather more
successful than Clive's own. After the war, Clive meets up again with Theo,
a prisoner since 1916, but finds him bitter about the ruin of his country
and contemptuous of the British attitude of 'forgive and forget'. Clive
marries a young nurse, Barbara Wynne (Deborah Kerr), who is the spitting
image of his first love Edith, but he is widowed after seven years of marriage.
Retired in 1935, Clive is again pressed into service as a Major-General
upon the outbreak of war in 1939. At the same time Theo arrives in England
as a refugee from Nazism: Edith has died and their sons have become Nazis.
Theo meets Candy's driver 'Johnny', who bears a strong resemblance to Edith.
In the aftermath of Dunkirk, Clive is due to give a BBC 'Postscript' radio
broadcast, but it is cancelled at the last moment and he is replaced by
J.B. Priestley. The script for Clive's talk was thought defeatist: his old-fashioned
view, that it is better to fight honourably and lose than to fight by dirty
means and win, is seen as an outmoded philosophy in the age of total warfare.
Clive is retired again, but finds a new lease of life commanding the Home
Guard. He appears several times on the cover of Picture Post between 1940
and 1942, lecturing the Home Guard on the art of soldiering.
Back in the Turkish bath in the 'present', Spud Wilson voices the new way
of thinking in warfare, in contrast to the traditional view, when he tells
the old generation of officers: "We agree it's very fine to win the last
battle, but we much prefer to win the first". At the end of the film, seeing
in Spud a reflection of his own impetuous youth, Clive makes sure that the
young officer will not be disciplined for his unauthorised action and decides
to ask him to dinner. The film ends with Clive saluting the march-past of
the Loamshires while a military band plays 'The British Grenadiers'.
The Origins of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
The film was the brain-child of the film-making team of Michael Powell and
Emeric Pressburger, who had made a number of films together which had achieved
a good degree of both critical and popular success: The Spy in Black (1939),
Contraband (1940), 49th Parallel (1941) and One of Our Aircraft is Missing
(1942). The case of 49th Parallel is particularly significant, given the
later official objections to Colonel Blimp, since it was partly financed
by the Ministry of Information, the government department responsible for,
amongst other things, propaganda. It was supported by Duff Cooper, then
Minister of Information, and the MOI had provided a sum of £60,000
- half the final budget - towards its production [2].
By 1942, Powell and Pressburger had set up their own production company,
calling themselves The Archers, and were working under the benevolent patronage
of J. Arthur Rank, who was by this time the most powerful and dominant figure
in the British film industry. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp was to
be the first film which Powell and Pressburger made for Rank.
According to Michael Powell's memoirs, the idea for the film originated
with a scene from One of Our Aircraft is Missing "which depicted the conflict
between intolerant youth and experienced age." There was to have been a
clash between two members of the bomber crew stranded behind enemy lines
- young pilot John Haggard (Hugh Burden) and the older baronet-turned air-gunner
Sir George Corbett (Godfrey Tearle):
The old man goes on to tell him that they are very much alike. They are
two editions of the same man. Sir George was just like this young idealist
when he was in his twenties, and John will be an old Blimp like him when
he is in his fifties. David Lean [the film's editor] persuaded us to drop
the scene from the final cut, arguing: "It's got nothing to do with the
plot. It's the sort of idea you could make a whole film about." So we did.
[3]
The theme of youth versus age is explored in the clash between Clive Candy
and Spud Wilson at the beginning of Colonel Blimp: "How do you know what
sort of a fellow I was when I was as young as you are, forty years ago?"
Clive asks the young officer as he shoves him into the Turkish bath.
Powell and Pressburger decided to explore their theme by putting on the
screen the fictional story of 'Colonel Blimp'. Powell later explained that
decision thus: "It was probably because the whole idea seemed to chime together
and the thought of dramatising the life of Colonel Blimp appealed enormously,
because at that time Blimp was a household word" [4].
The shooting script for the film held in the Reference Library of the British
Film Institute and dated June 1942 bears the title The Life and Death of
Sugar Candy, after the nickname of the central character [5]. However, it appears that from the outset their intention
was to make a film about 'Colonel Blimp'. 'Colonel Blimp' was a bombastic
cartoon character created in 1934 by David Low, a left-wing New Zealand-born
political cartoonist, who paradoxically worked for the Evening Standard,
which was owned by the Tory newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook. The character
was invented in order to satirise the British 'Establishment' and the political
outlook of the ruling elite. According to Low's autobiography: "I decided
to invent a 'character' typifying the current disposition of mixed-up thinking,
to have it both ways, to dogmatic doubleness, to paradox and plain self-contradiction"
[6]. Low also said that he dreamed the character up
while observing the obese incumbents of a Turkish bath, and made him a colonel
because he had just read a letter in a newspaper from an old cavalry officer
saying that mechanised troops should continue to wear spurs. 'Colonel Blimp',
instantly identifiable by his rotund figure and walrus moustache, and always
wearing only a towel around his waist, was a symbol of political reaction
and military incompetence. The very name of 'Blimp' passed into folklore,
and it came to be identified with any establishment figure who was perceived
as a reactionary or die-hard. Low used the character to ridicule the Conservative
Party in particular; and significantly, given Winston Churchill's later
objection to the film, 'Blimp' had sometimes appeared in the same cartoons
as Churchill himself, for example in satirising his opposition to the India
Bill of 1935 [7]. The established character of 'Colonel
Blimp' was perfectly in line with the intention of Powell and Pressburger's
film, which was to show "that Colonel Blimp was a symbol of British procrastination
and British regard for tradition and all the things which we knew and which
were losing the war" [8]. The film was to urge commitment
to the philosophy of total war, rather than playing it "by the National
Sporting Club rules" (to use Spud Wilson's phrase). A dedication in the
shooting script (though not in the finished film) makes its intentions clear:
This film is dedicated to the New Army of Britain, to the new spirit in
warfare, to the new toughness in battle, and to the men and women who know
what they are fighting for and are fighting this war to win it. [9]
Powell and Pressburger approached David Low, who agreed they could use the
name of his character subject to certain conditions. In Low's own words:
When Michael Powell proposed to make a film epic about him, and Emeric Pressburger,
his script-writer partner, spun his tale of The Life and Death of Colonel
Blimp into my fascinated ear, I was too dazed with admiration of Emeric's
phenomenal power of story-telling to find any reason for not agreeing. I
woke up in time, however, to make two stipulations: that Blimp had to be
proved a fool in the end, and that they, Powell and Pressburger, took all
the responsibility ... Amazing chaps, both blending social ideas with entertainment
in their own medium for their own public. A different blend, a different
medium and a different public from mine. I did not interfere. [10]
Thus having acquired Low's support and his permission to use 'Colonel Blimp',
Powell and Pressburger were able to proceed with the production of their
film. Its three main stars were Anton Walbrook, Deborah Kerr and Roger Livesey.
Walbrook, who received top billing, was an Austrian emigre who had come
to Britain in 1937 and had become a major star through his role as Prince
Albert in the two Herbert Wilcox-Anna Neagle biopics of Queen Victoria,
Victoria the Great (1937) and Sixty Glorious Years (1938). During the war,
he starred in the hugely popular romance Dangerous Moonlight (RKO, 1941;
dir. Brian Desmond Hurst), and had played the leader of the Germanic Huttite
community in Powell and Pressburger's 49th Parallel. His star persona as
a cultured foreigner was perfect for the role of Theo: "The part of Theo
was written by us for Anton Walbrook," Powell said in his memoirs [11]. Deborah Kerr, then a rising young actress of 22
who had recently received critical plaudits for her role as Sally Hardcastle
in Love on the Dole (British National, 1941; dir. John Baxter), was given
the triple female role of Edith/Barbara/Johnny after the original choice,
Wendy Hiller, had to withdraw due to pregnancy. For the all-important role
of the 'Blimp' character, Clive Candy, Powell had originally wanted Laurence
Olivier, but when he was refused release from the Fleet Air Arm to act in
the film, the part went instead to Roger Livesey. Livesey was a husky-voiced
character actor who had appeared mainly on stage, but who had also played
supporting roles in some of Alexander Korda's films during the 1930s, such
as Rembrandt (1936) and The Drum (1938); he later appeared in two other
Powell-Pressburger films, I Know Where I'm Going (1945) and A Matter of
Life and Death (1946). Powell was of the opinion that the substitution of
Livesey for Olivier would alter the tone of the film considerably: "The
only change was that instead of having a vicious, slashing, cruel, merciless
Colonel Blimp we had a dear old bumbler and of course everybody loved that"
[12]. Perhaps mindful of the remarks made by critics
upon the film's release, he added: "It blunted the message a good deal".
The production designer was the German Alfred Junge and the cinematographer
was the Frenchman (Georges Perinal). The film went into production at the
Rank-owned Denham Studios in the summer of 1942. By this time, however,
the project had run into opposition from the Government, which objected
to the film and tried to stop it from being made.
The Historiography of the Colonel Blimp Affair
The historiography of the attempt to suppress The Life and Death of Colonel
Blimp falls neatly into two parts: before and after the publication of 'The
Colonel Blimp File' in 1978. Before the documentation from the Public Record
Office (PRO) was discovered, the only accounts of the government intervention
came in the form of memoirs and personal reminiscences, principally from
Powell himself, though filmmakers, like politicians, are prone to lapses
of memory, or re-cast past events with the benefit of hindsight. Powell
recounted the circumstances surrounding Colonel Blimp on several occasions,
but each time there are slight discrepancies in what he had to say, particularly
with regard to where precisely the objections to the film originated. For
example, when interviewed by Kevin Gough-Yates in 1970, Powell said that
the opposition to the film came from the Ministry of Information:
Then we ran into trouble with the M of I who read the script and said they
thought it was defeatist - they never did appreciate the fact that as an
artist or storyteller you have to show what's bad before you can show what's
good. You can't go out saying we're bound to be alright because we're British.
You've got to show the bad bits first. Propagandists never do. They said:
"We don't think you should make this film". [We said]: "Go and fuck yourself!"
They said: "All right. But you can't have Laurence Olivier". "You're going
to stop us making it? "Oh no, we're not going to stop you, after all this
is a democracy. But we advise you not to make it and you can't have Laurence
Olivier because he's in the Fleet Air Arm and we're not going to release
him to play your Colonel Blimp". So we came out of the M of I and Emeric
said to me "What shall we do?" and I said: "We'll play Roger Livesey".
[13]
This anecdote is interesting for the way in which it suggests the MOI attempted
an informal censorship of the film by "advising" Powell and Pressburger
not to make it. However, Powell does not go so far as to name the people
at the MOI with whom he and Pressburger had this conversation, though in
the light of a similar account he was to give later, the most likely candidates
would appear to be the Minister himself, Brendan Bracken, Churchill's close
friend and colleague, and Jack Beddington, the Director of the Films Division
of the MOI.
Powell's next version of events came in an interview with David Badder in
the same issue of Sight and Sound which saw the publication of 'The Colonel
Blimp File'. He still suggests that the main opposition to the film came
from the MOI, particularly from Jack Beddington, the former publicity officer
for the Shell petroleum company who was now responsible for the Government's
film propaganda policy. However, he also implies that the MOI were acting
more at the behest of other departments:
I'm sure it was with Jack that we had most of the rows about Colonel Blimp.
They weren't really rows, simply that we were determined to make the film
and they were equally determined that we shouldn't. Beddington and Brendan
Bracken were probably laughing like hell in their offices, but they had
to do what they were told and follow the policy of the War Office and the
Cabinet. [14]
The subtle differences in Powell's different accounts of the episode thus
indicate a shifting perspective in his own recollections. First (in 1970)
he said that the opposition came from the MOI and does not mention the War
Office at all. But then (in 1978) he suggested that opposition did come
from the War Office but that it was channelled through the MOI. This distinction
may not seem important per se, but it was to have a bearing on the later
interpretation of the Colonel Blimp affair by the historians Nicholas Pronay
and Jeremy Croft.
Powell's memoirs, published in 1986, mark a further shift in his recollection
of events. In this version the MOI at first raised no objection to the film;
instead, the main stumbling block was the War Office:
Approved by the Ministry of Information, the script went up to Sir James
Grigg, the Minister of War, who had to approve our borrowing of Army material:
uniforms, guns, transport, etc. I don't know whether he himself actually
read the script, but he must have had a scathing report from touchy underlings.
He turned our request down point blank, and sent a memo to Churchill and
Brendan Bracken, the Minister of Information, telling them what he thought
of it. The fat was in the fire. [15]
It was only due to Grigg's opposition that the Ministry of Information then
became obstructive:
The Ministry were a little startled at Grigg's choleric memo, which smacked
rather too much of one of the scenes in the film. They sent for us and told
us Grigg's reaction, and said that if we couldn't get War Office support
then we couldn't have Laurence Olivier in the film. This was a facer, but
I had feared as much and was prepared for it.
"Do you forbid us to make the film?" I asked the Minister and Jack Beddington.
"Oh, my dear fellow, after all, we are a democracy, aren't we? You know
we can't forbid you to do anything, but don't make it, because everyone
will be really cross, and the Old Man will be very cross and you'll never
get a knighthood". [16]
In one respect this passage is similar to Powell's account of 1970, for
the way in which the men at the MOI (here identified as Bracken and Beddington)
attempted an informal censorship of the film. However, the statement in
his memoirs that the script was initially approved by the MOI flatly contradicts
his version of 1970 when he said the MOI objected to the script.
The discovery of a file on the film in Churchill's papers in the PRO was
the most important development in the historiography of the film, in that
it revealed for the first time the full extent of the Prime Minister's personal
involvement. As Powell himself wrote, the discovery of the file "caused
a mild sensation, both in England and in America, because it was quite obvious
that Churchill would have stopped the film if he could" [17]. The question of who 'discovered' the file itself
caused a minor controversy. In his introduction to 'The Colonel Blimp File'
in Sight and Sound in 1978, the film historian Ian Christie claimed to have
come across it while researching in the PRO with his colleague Laurence
Hayward [18]. However, as Anthony Aldgate subsequently
pointed out, documents from the file are quoted in Paul Addison's book The
Road to 1945: British Politics and the Second World War (1975), three years
before the publication of the full file [19]. The
material from the PRO has since been supplemented by extracts from Powell's
own papers, included by Ian Christie as background material for the published
screenplay of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, which came out in 1994
[20]. The Powell Papers have been donated to the
British Film Institute by his widow Thelma Schoonmaker-Powell, but are not
yet available for consultation by researchers. 'The Blimp Files', as Christie
calls them, are an important new source of evidence which reveal that Powell
had been in contact with both the War Office and the MOI for some months
before Churchill became involved in the affair.
The first thing to emerge from 'The Blimp Files' is that the filmmakers
had meetings with both Bracken and Beddington (along with other men in official
positions) while they were still deciding their film subject [21]. In view of all the accounts of official opposition
to the film, it is surprising to discover that some men in official circles
were favourably inclined towards the project when they saw the first story
treatment in May 1942. "I think the idea is excellent", said Lord Vansittart,
a friend of Churchill [22]; and Vincent Massey, High
Commissioner for Canada and brother of the actor Raymond Massey, wrote:
I read the scheme of 'Colonel Blimp' with much interest and I like it. I
am writing to Sir James Grigg at the War Office and telling him that he
will receive from you in due course a copy of the scheme and that after
that you would like to see him. I am sure you will find him sympathetic
to the ideas you have in mind. [23]
However, Massey's prediction that Grigg would be sympathetic proved false.
On 22 May, Grigg wrote to Powell:
I have now had an opportunity of reading the narrative of 'The Life and
Death of Colonel Blimp' and I have been considering very carefully whether
it is the sort of film to which the War Office could give its support.
I am bound to say that I don't think it is. Its chief weakness seems to
me that it revolves around a character that is more fictitious than real
... I cannot help thinking that at a time when public confidence in the
Army and its leaders is justifiably increasing, it would be a pity to divert
attention to a caricature. And after all Colonel Blimp is only a caricature.
[24]
It was Sir James Grigg, therefore, who first objected to the proposed film,
on the grounds that it gave an inaccurate picture of army officers. "We
respect and understand your views about 'Colonel Blimp' and we shall change
the title", Powell replied [25]. This explains why
the shooting script, written in June 1942, was entitled The Life and Death
of Sugar Candy. But this cosmetic change did not satisfy Grigg, who told
Powell that "I find myself in complete disagreement with the basic idea
underlying 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp' [sic] ", adding that he
disliked the way in which the film story was critical of the British military
establishment:
To be quite frank I am getting rather tired of the theory that we can best
enhance our reputation in the eyes either of our own people or the rest
of the world by drawing attention to the faults which the critics attribute
us, especially when, as in the present case, the criticism no longer has
any substance. [26]
While the War Office was strongly opposed to the film, it seems that the
MOI was at first quite equivocal. A report on the screenplay for The Life
and Death of Sugar Candy, made by an S. G. Gates of the MOI early in June
1942, adopts a fence-sitting posture:
The film script raises a great many points some of which are controversial.
Although this does not prevent the Ministry from supporting the film the
very fact that controversy is aroused suggests that the support is bound
to be more limited than if the film was cast iron for all markets and in
all circumstances. We should certainly hesitate to prevent the expression
of opinion even if this opinion appeared ambiguous to a minority, but we
must be very careful not to appear to stand behind and support a film which
can be taken in the wrong way by a fair proportion of people. [27]
By the end of June, however, the MOI had come around to the War Office's
line of thinking. Gates told Powell on 25 June:
Much as I regret having to say this, I am afraid that we cannot bring ourselves
to feel that the public interest would be served by the production of the
film as it stands, nor do we see how it could be rendered of positive value
from the point of view of national propaganda, by alterations in the dialogue
or in the treatment of individual sequences.
The Ministry cannot, therefore, see its way to recommend the temporary release
from the Fleet Air Arm of Laurence Olivier to enable him to play in the
film; nor would it be able to recommend the provision of Service facilities.
[28]
It seems that Powell then appealed directly to Brendan Bracken, who apparently
liked the idea personally but disapproved officially: "I have read enough
to know first that it would make an amusing and very entertaining film and
second that it would not make the sort of film which this Ministry could
properly support", the Minister wrote on 7 July [29]
.
The evidence of 'The Blimp Files' (the Powell Papers) therefore shows that
the main opposition to the film in its pre-production stage came from the
War Office, while the MOI was opposed to it but less hostile. By the time
that the story is taken up again some two months later in the PRO's 'Colonel
Blimp File', the film had started shooting. The first document in the file
is a letter from Grigg to Churchill, dated 8 September 1942, which begins
with a covering note: "I attach, as directed, a note on the Blimp film,
which is in the course of being produced and which I think it of the utmost
importance to get stopped" [30]. This opening remark
is illuminating in that it suggests that Churchill was already aware of
the film and wanted more information on it. Grigg's lengthy letter then
explains in detail why the War Office objected to the film. Again, his main
argument was that they thought it presented a negative and incorrect image
of senior officers in the British Army:
The War Office have refused to give their support to the film in any way
on the ground that it would give the Blimp conception of the Army officer
a new lease of life at a time when it is already dying from inanition. Whatever
the film makes of the spirit of the young soldier of today, the fact remains
that it focuses attention on an imaginary type of Army officer which has
become an object of ridicule to the general public. In the opening scene
Candy is shown as Blimp himself complete with towel and everything. Whatever
it may do elsewhere the film has made a character built up by twenty years
[sic] of brilliant cartooning into a figure of fun, and there is an inescapable
suggestion that such a man is a type or at any rate an example of those
who have risen to a high command in the Army in the period preceding this
war.
Therefore, the evidence from the PRO underscores the opposition of Grigg
and the War Office to the film. However, the incident took on a new colour
with the Prime Minister's own personal intervention. After receiving Grigg's
hostile letter, Churchill responded by dispatching one of his famous 'prayers'
to Brendan Bracken:
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? [31]
Thus it is evident that Churchill himself was also adamant that the film
should be stopped. This is perhaps the most remarkable thing to emerge from
'The Colonel Blimp File': the fact that the Prime Minister took such a close
interest in the film is testimony not only to his concern for the minutiae
of all aspects of wartime policy, but also to the importance which he attached
to the cinema as a means of influencing the people through propaganda. Indeed,
Churchill's hostility to the film ran so deep that in a later memorandum,
having been informed by Bracken that the MOI "has no power to suppress the
film", he suggested that the Minister of Information could be granted "any
special authority you may require" to stop the film from being made - an
indication of the extraordinary lengths to which Churchill was prepared
to go to get the film cancelled [32]. The War Cabinet
decided on 21 September 1942 to defer consideration of the question until
it was possible to see a rough cut of the film [33].
When the relevant officials saw the finished film, they apparently raised
no objections to it. The War Cabinet minutes of 10 May 1943 recorded:
The Secretary of State for War [Grigg] said that the film had now been seen
by representatives of the War Office and the Ministry of Information, who
took the view that it was unlikely to attract much attention or have any
undesirable consequences on the discipline of the Army. In the circumstances,
he had reached the conclusion that the right plan was to allow the film
to be shown. [34]
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp was premiered at the Odeon, Leicester
Square, on 10 June 1943 before going on general release [35]. Churchill saw the film at a special screening
the night before, along with Grigg and Bracken. Powell himself was not present
at the screening, but according to his memoirs, "We were told privately
by the MOI that there would be no official banning of the film, but that
pressure would be brought upon Rank to persuade him not to export the film"
[36]. In this case, Powell's memoirs are corroborated
by the official documentation, which shows that Churchill felt strongly
that the film should not be exported. "I think you should certainly stop
it going abroad as long as you possibly can," he instructed Bracken on 11
July 1943 [37]. This was done by refusing to allow
the normal air transport facilities, and as a consequence the film's overseas
distribution was delayed by several months in the summer of 1943. However,
Bracken was clearly very uncomfortable with what he described as both an
"unorthodox expedient" and an "illegal ban". He tried to mollify the Prime
Minister, telling him: "As the film is so boring I cannot believe it will
do any harm abroad to anyone except the company which made it" [38]. In the event, Churchill finally bowed to pressure
from Bracken and withdrew his obstruction. The final document in the file
is a note from B.C. Sendall, an official at the MOI, to Churchill's secretary
T. L. Rowan, dated 21 September 1943, which states that "the Prime Minister
finally authorised Mr Bracken to withdraw his ban on the export of the film"
[39].
Three Interpretations of the Colonel Blimp Affair
This discussion of the historical sources relating to the attempted suppression
of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is necessary because the evidence
of 'The Colonel Blimp File' has had a strong bearing on the post-1978 historiography
of the film. The incident has been analysed three times - by Ian Christie,
by Anthony Aldgate, and by Nicholas Pronay and Jeremy Croft - and on each
occasion a rather different interpretation of the events has been suggested.
1. Ian Christie
In addition to the publication of 'The Colonel Blimp File', Ian Christie
also provided his own discussion of the incident in his book Powell, Pressburger
and Others (1978). Although his reading of the film itself in terms of its
propaganda content is useful and analytical, his conclusions about the attempt
to suppress it are open to question. Christie suggests that the incident
"provides further evidence of Churchill's autocratic control over all aspects
of the war machinery" [40]. This is a curious conclusion,
for the fact is that Churchill was unable to suppress the film despite his
best efforts to do so. Rather than suggesting he had "autocratic control"
of the war machinery, the incident actually shows that even the Prime Minister's
powers during the war had practical limitations.
2. Anthony Aldgate
A more satisfactory account of the history of Colonel Blimp is provided
by Anthony Aldgate in his chapter on the film in the book, co-authored with
Jeffrey Richards, Best of British: Cinema and Society 1930-1970 (1983).
The approach to the film is empirical and contextual. Aldgate uses both
'The Colonel Blimp File' and the accounts given by Powell in the interviews
of 1970 and 1978 to reconstruct the attempt to suppress the film, and his
largely empiricist methodology keeps him from drawing wild conclusions.
The most useful element of his interpretation, however, is that he contextualises
the film in the debate about 'Blimpery' which existed at the time. Although
'Colonel Blimp' himself had made a temporary disappearance from the Evening
Standard in February 1942 (he did not reappear for some sixteen months),
accusations of 'Blimpery' in the running of the war effort remained and
indeed "reached a peak between the spring and autumn of 1942" [41]. Events such as the fall of Singapore and the infamous
'Channel Dash' of the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were
humiliating reverses for British military fortunes. And even closer to home,
questions about 'Blimpery' in the Army were raised in the House of Commons
by the Labour MP Mr. F. W. Pethick-Lawrence and caused some considerable
embarrassment for the Secretary of State for War, Sir James Grigg. Given
this political context, it is hardly surprising that Powell and Pressburger's
film should be viewed with suspicion and hostility by the Government. It
was the perceived existence of 'Blimpery' in a wider context, therefore,
that in Aldgate's opinion "helps to explain the nature of the official reaction
to the film of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and why the film came
to be construed as 'negative propaganda" [42].
Aldgate's contextual approach also enables him to explain why the War Office
withdrew their objection to the film in May 1943. By this time, the tide
of the war had turned in Britain's favour and there was much less talk of
'Blimpery' in the war effort. Aldgate therefore concludes that "in the final
analysis The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp was just another victim of
wartime circumstance" [43].
If there is any criticism to be levelled against Aldgate's account, however,
it is that he does not fully explain why the attempt to suppress the film
in 1942 failed. Furthermore, he emphasises Grigg's role in the incident
but rather underplays Churchill's own involvement. Aldgate argues that it
was Grigg who sparked off the controversy, and that only through the War
Secretary's initial letter of 8 September 1942 did Churchill become involved.
He writes: "it is difficult to believe that the film would have caused such
a furore without Grigg's initially hostile intervention. For he was dead
set against the film from the outset, for reasons which are obvious, and
cast it in a sufficiently bad light for Churchill's anger to be aroused
in turn" [44]. While it is true that Grigg's letter
does seem to have prompted Churchill into action, it must also be remembered
that the letter was in response to a request from Churchill for information
about the film. And furthermore, Churchill continued to oppose the film
long after the War Office had withdrawn its objections.
3. Nicholas Pronay and Jeremy Croft
In their article 'British Film Censorship and Propaganda Policy during the
Second World War' (1983), Nicholas Pronay and Jeremy Croft suggest a very
different interpretation of the Colonel Blimp affair. Arguing that the Government
could have suppressed the film if it had really wanted to - "There can be
no doubt that if the MOI and Bracken had wanted to prevent that film being
made they could have done so many times over" [45]
- Pronay and Croft go on to construct an elaborate scheme behind the film's
production. They argue that because Powell and Pressburger had made 49th
Parallel, which was "secretly" sponsored by the MOI, they were in fact not
at odds with the Ministry when it came to the aims of film propaganda. The
intention behind Colonel Blimp, they suggest, was to make "secret" propaganda
aimed at the Americans to show them that the 'Blimp' stereotype of the British
officer was no longer at all accurate: "The film proposed was to show to
the Americans, whose soldiers were to come over in large numbers, that the
British Army had shed its ineffective, upper-class, 'Blimp' officer attitudes,
and that it had become essentially a 'democratic' citizen army and that
it had also acquired the necessary mental attitudes to become an efficient,
tough fighting force, capable of matching the professionalism of the Germans"
[46]. It was therefore essential that the film should
not appear to be official propaganda, and so an elaborate camouflage was
constructed by Brendan Bracken which depended on the War Office and Churchill
objecting to the film. Thus, according to Pronay and Croft, the MOI did
not really try to discourage the film at all: the refusal to release Laurence
Olivier from the Fleet Air Arm was not an attempt to obstruct the film,
but because such a move would have made it look as if the film had official
sanction, which was the last thing that Bracken wanted. The allocation of
precious Technicolor film stock could not have occurred had the MOI not
secretly approved of the film. The story that there was a ban on the export
of the film was leaked to the Evening Standard in June 1943: this newspaper
was owned by Lord Beaverbrook, "Bracken's only personal confidante in the
latter years of the war" [47]. The ban on the film
would then be reported by American correspondents, thereby creating "far
more advance publicity and interest in it than would have been possible
to achieve by any other means, and establishing conclusively the credentials
of the film as being anything but official British propaganda" [48]. Finally, the fact that the ban finally had to
be lifted provided "a wonderful demonstration for Americans that Britain
was indeed a genuine democracy, in which not even an apparently all-powerful
Prime Minister such as Churchill had the power to suppress a privately made
film" [49].
The Pronay-Croft thesis is imaginative, but too clever by far. The intention
behind their interpretation is to construct a reading of British film propaganda
which bears out Stanley Baldwin's old dictum that "propaganda work is very
like anti-submarine work ... you cannot disclose to your adversaries how
you are doing it" [50]. However, like so many 'conspiracy
theories', there is insufficient evidence to support the conclusions that
are reached. The fact that Brendan Bracken destroyed all his private papers,
for example, proves nothing: there may be no evidence to refute the theory,
nor is there any to substantiate it. Moreover, Pronay and Croft make a number
of assumptions that are either questionable or simply incorrect. In the
first place, the MOI's financial involvement in 49th Parallel was not a
"secret", as they claim. In answer to a question in the House of Commons
on 18 December 1940, Duff Cooper, then Minister of Information, announced
openly that the Ministry had already invested over £22,000 in the project
[51]. Furthermore, the MOI's involvement was known
in America, where the Motion Picture Herald declared: "The partial financial
involvement of the British Ministry of Information might be noted by the
cautious showman" [52].
Pronay and Croft state that David Low's 'Blimp' cartoons were "still appearing"
in Britain at the time of the film's production, when in fact 'Blimp' himself
was absent from the Evening Standard between February 1942 and June 1943.
In their description of the film's producers as "a newly formed production
company, The Archers, with no apparent capital worth speaking of" [53], Pronay and Croft ignore the fact that Powell and
Pressburger had all the financial muscle of J. Arthur Rank behind them.
Curiously, Pronay and Croft seem to deny that Colonel Blimp was actually
made for Rank: "Indeed, if it was produced by the Rank Organization (British
Films), which was recognized by Americans as being as fully integrated into
the wartime scheme of things as MGM was in their own country, the cloven
hoof would obviously have protruded and negated the purpose of the exercise"
[54]. But the film was financed by Rank, as several
documents in 'The Colonel Blimp File' make clear [55]
. Finally, in discussing the "unusual and lengthy correspondence" between
Churchill and Bracken, Pronay and Croft make their least tenable claim:
"Brendan Bracken was not in the habit of writing extended memoranda to Churchill,
in whose living room he habitually slept" [56]. Even
allowing for the fact that what ministers say to each other does not necessarily
correspond with what they are prepared to put down on paper, this claim
is patently ridiculous: not only is it a truism that close friends in government
do write memoranda to each other, but to claim that Bracken did not do so
overlooks the existence of many other memoranda from Bracken to Churchill
to be found in the PRO [57].
There are also a number of more general objections to the Pronay-Croft thesis.
In trying to construct Bracken as some sort of Machiavellian figure manipulating
both the War Office and the Prime Minister, Pronay and Croft ignore the
obvious embarrassment which Churchill's obstruction caused for his Minister
of Information. For example, to quote from Bracken's memorandum of 5 August
1943:
As a result of our illegal ban on this wretched film, 'Colonel Blimp' has
received a wonderful advertisement from the Government. It is now enjoying
an extensive run in the suburbs and in all sorts of places there are notices
- 'See the banned film!'
If we had left that dull film alone it would probably have proved an unprofitable
undertaking, but by the time the Government have finished with it there
is no knowing what profits it will have earned. [58]
This is not the language of a man who had connived to create an elaborate
camouflage around the film in order to distance it from official propaganda.
Furthermore, if the film was secretly approved by the MOI, then it makes
nonsense of Powell's own repeated accounts of a meeting with Bracken and
Beddington at which they tried to persuade him not to make it. If the Pronay-Croft
thesis is to be accepted, then Powell's own recollections and memoirs serve
as a part of the cover-up, which seems highly unlikely.
A further broad objection to the Pronay-Croft interpretation concerns the
purpose of the film. Although the film certainly was intended, at least
in part, to demonstrate to American audiences that the British Army was
no longer full of 'Blimps', there is no evidence to support Pronay and Croft's
assertion that this idea originated with Bracken and the MOI. Instead, it
was a line of argument which Powell himself used in defending the film against
the War Office. To quote again from Grigg's letter of 8 September 1942:
The producer claims that the film is intended as a tribute to the toughness
and keenness of the new Army in Britain and shows how far they have progressed
from the Blimpery of the pre-war Army. From this point of view he urges
that it would be valuable propaganda for the USA and the Dominions bec ause
in showing that we are conscious of any faults which we may possess, we
are telling the rest of the world that the faults are being eliminated.
[59]
Moreover, PRO documents show that at this time the MOI was considering another
feature film to depict the modern, professional British Army. Bracken wrote
to Noel Coward on 9 October 1942: "I hope you will consider very carefully
my suggestion that you should make a film about the Army. I have never seen
a really good film about the Army, and I am sure that you could make one
which would be as resounding a success as In Which We Serve" [60]. Although Coward declined, the project did eventually
come to fruition as The Way Ahead (Two Cities, 1944; dir. Carol Reed), in
which both the MOI and the War Office were closely involved through the
provision of facilities and the release of service personnel (David Niven,
Peter Ustinov, Carol Reed and Eric Ambler) to take part in the production
[61]. The Way Ahead was very much an officially sanctioned
film about the British Army in a way that Colonel Blimp was not. There is
evidence that people in the Films Division of the MOI were very pleased
with The Way Ahead once it had been made. Arthur Calder-Marshall, for example,
wrote a warm letter to Carol Reed, stating: "I want to tell you how extremely
enthusiastic I am about The Way Ahead. It is the only picture which I have
seen which gives a true sense of the Army and which keeps the social values
right" [62]. It would be straining the evidence rather
too far to suggest that The Way Ahead was made in direct response to Colonel
Blimp, but it is clear that it showed the Army as both the MOI and the War
Office wanted it to be shown: the film would hardly have been necessary
had Colonel Blimp been an 'official' picture with the MOI's secret approval.
Censorship and the State
If the interpretation offered by Pronay and Croft is to be discounted, then
the historian must look for another answer to the question of why the Government
was unable to suppress The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Pronay and Croft
assert that the MOI could have stopped the film from being made if it had
really wanted to do so. But did the state really have the means to suppress
the film? To answer this question it is necessary to place Colonel Blimp
in the context of British film censorship during the war.
Censorship as exercised by the British Board of Film Censors had of course
relaxed somewhat during the war, exemplified most famously by the Board's
decision in 1940 to pass the screenplay of Love on the Dole, which it had
rejected in the 1930s as being too socially divisive [63]. The Board was able to prevent the release of a
particular film by withholding a certificate, which effectively meant that
cinema exhibitors would not be able to show it. The Board did have a long-standing
regulation which forbade "the presentation of British officers and forces
in disgraceful, reprehensible or equivocal light" [64]
, but this had been relaxed during the war, evidenced by the release
of The Next of Kin (Ealing, 1942; dir. Thorold Dickinson), a feature film
showing how a Commando raid on the French coast suffered heavy casualties
due to the 'careless talk' and general laxity of several British officers.
The representation of the officers in The Next of Kin was far more damning
than the 'Blimp' characterisation in Powell and Pressburger's film. It does
not seem that the Board raised any objections to Colonel Blimp, which was
released with a 'U' certificate [65]. In any case,
the attempt to suppress Colonel Blimp concerned not the BBFC, but the censorship
powers of the Government.
It was the Prime Minister himself who most wanted to stop the film's production.
This was not the first time that Churchill had personally interfered in
film matters, for he had also had certain objections to both Ships with
Wings (Ealing, 1941; dir. Sergei Nolbandov) and The Next of Kin. According
to the memoirs of Michael Balcon, Head of Production at Ealing Studios,
Churchill saw Ships with Wings at Chequers one weekend "and was insisting
that the release should be held up, if not cancelled altogether, on the
grounds that it would cause 'alarm and despondency', as the climax was something
of a disaster for the Fleet Air Arm" [66]. In the
event, Churchill left the decision to the First Sea Lord, Sir Dudley Pound,
who raised no objection to the film. Balcon writes of the incident: "I suppose
the PM had no powers to stop the film but I would not have cared to put
his authority to the test" [67]. The case of The
Next of Kin, which had been made in co-operation with the War Office, was
similar. Churchill thought it showed too many British casualties and too
few German ones. According to a note in the PRO from 'F.D.B.' (apparently
one of the Prime Minister's secretaries) to S. Redman of the War Office:
"The Prime Minister is prepared to leave the whole matter to the Secretary
of State's judgement, but thinks that it would be a good thing if a few
more dead Huns could be shown" [68]. Some very small
alterations were made voluntarily by the film-makers to reduce the number
of the British dead. The director Thorold Dickinson recalled: "Supervised
by two of Churchill's brigadiers I cut the minimum from the battle scenes
... thirty pieces of film running in all twenty seconds" [69]. In both these cases, therefore, Churchill's objections
were to specific details in the finished films, and they were resolved without
any great problems. However, the case of Colonel Blimp was a very different
matter, for Churchill's objections ran much deeper: rather than wanting
cosmetic changes, he objected to the film as a whole and wanted to stop
its production.
In order to have suppressed Colonel Blimp as Churchill wanted them to do,
the MOI would have to possess both the power and the will to do so. Bracken
- who as the Minister concerned presumably knew the extent of his own powers
- told Churchill that the MOI did not have the necessary power: "The Ministry
of Information has no power to suppress the film. We have been unsuccessful
in discouraging it by the only means open to us: that is, by withholding
Government facilities for its production" [70]. This
was corroborated by Sir James Grigg, who told the War Cabinet: "There was
no existing Defence Regulation under which the film could be suppressed"
[71]. However, Pronay and Croft disagree, arguing
that the film could have been stopped under Defence Regulation 39B, which
made it an offence "to endeavour, whether orally or otherwise, to influence
public opinion (whether in the United Kingdom or elsewhere) in a manner
likely to be prejudicial to the defence of the realm or the efficient prosecution
of the War" [72]. The wording of this Regulation
is very vague, and it is hard to see how it could have been applied in the
case of Colonel Blimp. Given that the film shows how the modern British
Army is no longer led by the 'Blimps', who have all been pensioned off into
the Home Guard anyway, it could hardly be judged "prejudicial to the defence
of the realm or the efficient prosecution of the War". Indeed, the film
itself urges a more single-minded commitment to the winning of the war,
through the character of Spud Wilson. Moreover, even if it had been possible
to apply Defence Regulation 39B, then surely the finished film would have
to be viewed in order to make a judgement about it. It would therefore have
been very difficult, if not impossible, for the Government to have stopped
the film at the production stage. This was in fact realised by the War Cabinet,
which decided on 21 September 1942 that the film should be seen by officials
at the rough-cut stage, and if they thought it "undesirable" then the film
would be "withdrawn" through a "friendly agreement" with J. Arthur Rank
[73]. Quite what this "friendly agreement" would
entail never became known, for when the officials saw the finished film
they raised no objection to it.
It was therefore outside the MOI's authority to suppress the film; it is
also evident that the Minister concerned did not have the will to do so.
This is evidenced by Bracken's refusal to adopt the "special authority"
offered to him by Churchill. Bracken's position is made clear in his tactful
memorandum to Churchill of 15 September 1942:
I am advised that in order to stop it the Government would need to assume
powers of a very far-reaching kind. These could hardly be less than powers
to suppress all films, even those based on imaginary stories, on grounds
not of their revealing information to the enemy but of their expressing
harmful or misguided opinions. Moreover it would be illogical for the Government
to insist on a degree of control over films which it does not exercise over
other means of expression, such as books or newspaper articles. Nothing
less, therefore, than the imposition of a compulsory censorship of opinion
upon all means of expression would meet the case, and I am certain that
this could not be done without provoking infinite protest. [74]
Herein lies the crux of Bracken's dilemma: the film could only have been
suppressed by adopting more extensive powers than the MOI already had, but
that would involve such a massive increase in the state's censorship apparatus
that it would be akin to using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. Moreover,
to adopt the necessary powers would have been highly controversial and politically
inadvisable, a fact that Bracken seems to have appreciated rather more than
Churchill did. Britain was, after all, a democracy, and much of the MOI's
propaganda contrasted this with the totalitarian Nazi regime. But "the imposition
of a compulsory censorship of opinion upon all means of expression" would
have made the British Government appear just as repressive as the enemy
it was fighting. To suppress all dissenting voices - and Colonel Blimp was
after all only one such example - would have smacked of Fascism and would
have been a negation of all the MOI's propaganda about what the war was
being fought for in the first place. After all, Bracken had done much to
correct the initially negative reaction of the press to the MOI, which had
been dubbed the 'Ministry of Disinformation' by critics early in the war.
The concern which he voiced about the Colonel Blimp affair is that of a
man afraid that all the good work he had done in building up confidence
in the MOI might be shattered by the Prime Minister's heavy-handed intervention.
In this sense Pronay and Croft are correct in their description of Churchill
as "acting intuitively, and more in his former capacity as a subaltern in
the 4th Hussars and as a brigadier on the Western Front in 1917 than as
the Prime Minister in 1942" [75].
The Minister of Information did not wish to adopt the extensive extra powers
that would have been necessary to stop the production of Colonel Blimp.
Given this, all that he and the War Office could do was to withhold facilities
for its production, but this did not hinder the filmmakers in any serious
way. In order to understand how the film came to be made despite the official
obstruction, the historian has to rely (with all due caution) on Powell's
accounts of the film's production. In the 1978 interview with David Badder,
Powell stated that "everything we had on the screen in the form of khaki
uniforms and trucks is stolen. We could have been shot for it, I suppose,
but nobody minded about a little thing like that then!" [76]. In his memoirs, he added more details:
I have often been asked how we managed to obtain military vehicles, military
uniforms, weapons and all the fixings after being refused help by the War
Office and the Ministry of Information. The answer is quite simple: we stole
them. Any prop man worth his salt - and we had one of the best - would laugh
at the question. There may have been one or two forged passes too. Who knows?
It was all part of the war effort. The Archers were famous now, and we had
friends in all sorts of quarters, high and low. We didn't sneak around the
by-streets with our Army trucks either, but came careering into London,
down Western Avenue, through and round Marble Arch to Berkeley Square. Our
commandos jumped out of their trucks and ran into the Royal Bathers' Club,
watched benevolently by a single policeman. The Royal Bathers' Club was
the name I had given to Blimp's own club. We should have made James Grigg
a member. [77]
Under wartime conditions, as film historian Charles Barr has shown, film
producers had to "indent in triplicate" for any materials they needed which
were subject to rationing [78]. Colonel Blimp was
a picture made on an epic scale, and required much in the way of props,
costumes and set-dressings. Such items as military uniforms and prop dries
would presumably have been available at Denham Studios anyway from other
films: the British Film Producers Association had agreed to a system whereby
rationed materials would be re-used wherever possible. The most difficult
things for Powell to acquire would probably have been the army vehicles
and the necessary petrol coupons, but even so he got them. It must be borne
in mind that The Archers had all the financial muscle of J. Arthur Rank
behind them - Colonel Blimp had, by British standards, the relatively large
budget of £208,000 - and so money was not a significant problem.
[79]
One question which does arise from the production of the film concerns the
allocation of Technicolor film stock. Film stock was subject to rationing
during the war, and as Technicolor stock was not produced in Britain then
it must have been imported from the United States. Pronay and Croft imply
that the allocation of Technicolor stock was a sign of the MOI's secret
approval: if the MOI had really objected to the film, then the stock would
have been denied. This is not necessarily the case. In the first instance,
the control of film stock was a matter not for the MOI, but for the Board
of Trade, which had to grant a licence for any stock imported from abroad.
It did not follow automatically that the Board would refuse film stock for
projects opposed by the MOI. Pronay and Croft themselves quote PRO documents,
in a footnote, which show that when the Board of Trade was asked by the
MOI that it "would not give a licence in cases where the Ministry objected
to their so doing", the Board would reply only that it would "pay due regard
to the advice [sic] of the Ministry of Information" [80].
There are two other possible explanations as to how the necessary stock
allocation came to be made, though both are a matter of speculation. On
the one hand, if the licence had not been granted, the incident might have
been leaked to the press, which would have been politically embarrassing
for Bracken. On the other hand, it may simply be that the stock allocation
was made before the controversy surrounding the film started. Powell's memoirs
state that the decision to make The Archers' next film in Technicolor was
taken early in 1942, when the MOI was pleased with One of Our Aircraft is
Missing [81]. The application for Technicolor stock
would have to be made some considerable time before the film started production,
and so it may be that the necessary licence had been granted by the Board
of Trade before Grigg and Churchill knew of the film and raised their objections
to it. Then, the Technicolor stock allocation could only have been revoked
through a politically embarrassing volte face, which was the last thing
that Bracken and the MOI wanted, and hence Colonel Blimp was made in Technicolor.
It has been suggested that the film was cut for its general release due
to pressure from the Government. In 1978, for example, Powell said:
I don't know whether Blimp was ever shown in its complete version. ... More
or less right away, the Rank people, they loved the picture but decided
it was too long for commercial release in wartime and asked us to cut it.
I've got a feeling that all the opening scenes with the young soldier bursting
into the Turkish bath were lopped and the film made into a straightforward
narrative story instead of being mostly in flashback. That may have been
partly because of opposition from Churchill and the War Office, because
it is a much less abrasive story. [82]
This view is supported by Ian Christie, who writes: "In retrospect, it seems
likely that Churchill's hostility helped to bring about the drastic cutting
which Powell and Pressburger's epic suffered" [83].
However, there is again no evidence to support this view. Indeed, Powell's
statement that the film was cut "more or less right away" once again illustrates
the fallibility of personal memoirs. When the film was released for its
first run it was shown at its full length anyway - the credits in the Monthly
Film Bulletin state its running time at 163 minutes [84] - and many of the press reviews were to comment
on its extraordinary length. Furthermore, there is evidence from people
who saw the film at the time that it was shown in its original narrative
form. One of the respondents to a Mass-Observation questionnaire in 1943,
for example, commented on "the flash-back technique" [85]. What seems most likely is that the film was cut
for its subsequent re-issues, but there was nothing unusual about this practice.
Colonel Blimp and the Critics
What kind of critical reception greeted The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
when it was released in Britain in 1943? Of all the historians to have discussed
the film, only Anthony Aldgate has considered its critical reception at
all, albeit in a single footnote [86]. It is necessary
to consider contemporary reviews of the film in order to assess how its
propaganda content was perceived at the time.
As a large-scale, prestigious Technicolor production, Colonel Blimp understandably
attracted a lot of attention and created much expectation even before it
was released. On 19 December 1942, for example, the photo-journal Picture
Post had Deborah Kerr on its cover, in costume from the film, and carried
an article by Robert Graves entitled 'Cartoonist's Joke Becomes a Film Hero'
which used stills from the film and reproductions of some of Low's cartoons
to accompany a humorous sketch about how "Blimpery is an age-old feature
of our history" [87]. And in April 1943, still two
months before the film's release, the trade paper Kinematograph Weekly had
an article on the film which suggested that it was keenly awaited because
of its controversial theme:
Above all, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp dares to be provocative -
it is perhaps the first such film of the war - in its handling of the complex
British character and its attitude towards war. The film's vital theme that
we must forget chivalry and sportsmanship to fight the enemy successfully
and its dedication to the new aggressive spirit of the Allied Armies is
a challenge to those among the democratic peoples who are only just awakening
to the meaning of total war. [88]
The film was shown to the trade on 8 June 1943, and two weeks later a double-page
advertisement in Kinematograph Weekly declared boldly that "Colonel Blimp
gets the Greatest Praise ever given to a British Picture" [89]. The reviews quoted in the advertisement all heap
superlatives upon the film: "The most brilliantly satisfying entertainment"
(The Cinema); "a great entertainment and one of the outstanding British
films" (Daily Film Renter); "a magnificent piece of film-making" (Ernest
Betts, Daily Express); and "the best entertainment yet from British studios"
(Richard Winnington, News Chronicle). However, the advertisement quotes
only the most favourable extracts from them - hardly surprising given that
its intention was to sell the film to cinema exhibitors.
In fact, Colonel Blimp met with something of a mixed reception from the
critics. There were two main criticisms: (first) that it was too long; and
(second), that its message was not entirely clear. But the critics also
appreciated that it was on the whole a well-made and entertaining film,
that its technical standards were very high, and that it was well acted.
For example, the doyenne of contemporary British film journalism, Miss C.
A. Lejeune of the Observer, wrote:
'Blimp's' worst fault - apart from its title and its length, which is two-and-three-quarter
hours and quite absurd - is an unclarity of purpose. It is a handsome piece.
It is frequently a moving piece. But what is it about? [90]
William Whitebait, film critic of the New Statesman, seemed to appreciate
the film rather than actually enjoy it, writing:
Why three hours of it? Why in Technicolor? Why this and that? One has more
than enough time for doubts, and for long stretches the slowness of this
piece is not concealed by surface liveliness. [91]
Whitebait clearly found the film boring, also mentioning "some flagging
in the middle years", though he concluded that it was "an intelligent, warm,
spectacular and well-intentioned film". The Monthly Film Bulletin, the film
review journal published by the British Film Institute, was rather more
favourable, though its praise was qualified: Its message may be obscure,
but its emotional appeal is high ... The colour is admirable; the script,
and its delivery by the actors, brilliant; and the English atmosphere of
understatement well maintained throughout. Each individual part is carefully
built up and the film as a whole (if a trifle unsatisfying in retrospect)
repays the evident care which has been lavished upon it. [92]
The general critical reaction is best summed up by the Evening Standard:
"This is not a great picture, but it is exceptionally good entertainment"
[93]. The mixed reception accorded the film is understandable
given the context of contemporary British film journalism, which was dominated
by the realist discourse and which preferred documentaries and films made
in the documentary style [94]. A lavish, Technicolor
epic such as Colonel Blimp, with its elements of fantasy and pageantry,
would never fit easily into a critical tradition which preferred the sober
realism of films like In Which We Serve, Fires Were Started, Millions Like
Us and San Demetrio - London - which were all on general release in 1943.
One must also examine how the 'Blimp' character of the film was seen by
critics in relation to the original of Low's cartoons. There was a general
critical consensus that the characterisation had been softened considerably,
with the reactionary lunatic of the cartoons becoming the loveable buffoon
of the film. There was some disquiet on the left that the cutting edge of
Low's satire had been blunted due to this. An article in the New Statesman
lamented:
O Low! O Low! What induced you to offer up your character to be made unrecognisable
under a thick coating of technicolor sugar, to be laughed at, loved and
made piteous as just a dear sentimental doddering old fool? [95]
However, the reaction further to the centre and right of the political spectrum
was more positive. A. J. Cummings of the liberal News Chronicle, for instance,
wrote: "For my part I fell in love with Blimp - a witty and quite sensible
soldier, who would lose a war with dignity and might win it with a little
luck" [96]. And even the leading newspaper of the
establishment, The Times, found much to like in the character. Approaching
its review, as it often did, from a somewhat oblique angle, The Times said:
The title of this very long, serious and most intelligent film is ludicrously
misleading. Colonel Blimp is identified in the public mind with the comic
figure of Low's exuberant, fancy and satiric pencil, but here is nothing
of caricature and little of that exaggeration natural in the cinema. Low's
choleric creation in a bath towel has certainly many acquaintances among
the Brass Hats, but it is the toppers of the City and Westminster with which
he is most intimate. He represents, indeed, less an archaic attitude towards
a changing nature of war than a reactionary stubbornness in the face of
political and economic problems; the film leaves politics alone and concentrates
on drawing a series of full-length academic portraits in colour of an officer
and a gentleman over the 43 years of the present century.
There is the man, say Messrs Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in effect
- take him or leave him - and the discriminating audience will take him.
[97]
The comments on the film which follow are fairly representative of the press
as a whole: the reviewer goes on to praise its "literary quality" and describes
it as "a film which triumphs through its sheer intelligence", but also criticises
its "muddled message" and remarks upon "the puzzling lack of purpose from
which the film as a whole would seem to suffer".
Perhaps the most interesting review came from the film journal Documentary
News Letter, organ of the progressive left-wing documentary movement, which
elected Colonel Blimp as its 'Film of the Month' in September 1943. That
is not to say that the review was particularly favourable, however. In line
with the general critical consensus, it considered the film to be of "inordinate
length" and that it tried to impress through "mere size, rather than symmetry
or grace." However:
the interesting thing about Blimp is not so much the film as its philosophy
of life, and the propagandist slant which it puts forward.
Having agreed therefore that it is too long, has the best acting and the
worst colour seen for a very long time, and one sequence (the duel) which
is real movie, let us pass to a consideration of what factors have contributed
to the sublime un-Englishness of the whole affair. [98]
The journal considered that the film's depiction of England was a false
one. On the one hand, "the Blimp of this film is the Englishman that a certain
type of emigre would like to think exists" but does not exist in reality;
while on the other hand, "not one single ordinary person, such as you may
meet in the street or a bus in England, has anything more than a walking-on
part in the entire film". The film therefore presented an unrealistic, romanticised
and essentially upper-class picture of England. Furthermore, the journal
believed that the central character in the film was so far removed from
Low's original creation that it had significant implications upon the film's
meaning:
there is something highly disturbing in the very sincerity with which our
pseudo-British gent is presented. Not only is he not Low's Blimp; he is
the very reverse - an apologia for the upper-class specialists who misguided
this country into the mud of Munich and the disasters of 1939-40.
The review is interesting in that it shows how a film with a propagandist
intention could be read against the grain depending on the political and
ideological position of the critic. Low's 'Colonel Blimp' had pointed an
accusing finger at the Chamberlain appeasers of the 1930s, some of whom,
still in power, were perceived as 'Blimps' themselves. But Documentary News
Letter thought that the film actually defended 'Blimp' and his breed, and
did its best "to reassure the reactionaries by making it clearer that they
are, as they themselves so often suspected, the salt of the earth". Of course,
that had not been Powell and Pressburger's intention at all, for they had
set out to show "that Colonel Blimp was a symbol of British procrastination
and British regard for tradition and all the things which we knew and which
were losing the war" [99].
If Documentary News Letter had misgivings about the film's propagandist
message, there were those on the right who were even more critical, though
for rather different reasons. The Daily Mail disapproved so strongly of
the film's representation of army officers that it carried a front-page
article by G. Ward Price under the headline 'Blimp Film Must NOT Go Abroad':
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 ... In such times as these, when the respect and confidence
of other countries are of vital importance to us, we cannot afford to put
out a burlesque figure like this Colonel Blimp to go around the world as
a personification of those British officers who gave and are still giving
such good service to their country. [100]
By
far the most hostile reaction to The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,
however, came not from a newspaper or a film journal, but from the right-wing
sociologists E. W. and M. M. Robson, who made a vitriolic attack on the
film in a pamphlet entitled The Shame and Disgrace of Colonel Blimp (1944).
The Robsons were members of the Sydneyan Society, whose self-proclaimed
purpose was "to help enlighten public opinion on the effect of film, radio
and television on the minds of nations" [101]. The
Robsons termed Colonel Blimp "the most disgraceful production that has ever
emanated from a British film studio" [102]. Their
main objection: Colonel Blimp was "a vivid example of how the living, breathing
germs of World War Three are being carefully hatched" [103]. The Robsons believed that the Germans were basically
an aggressive race who were bent on conquering the world, and that even
in defeat they would plan their next attempt. They thought the film too
sympathetic to the German point-of-view:
The final effect of this film is to present us to the world as mild, foolish
softies and the Germans as the hard done by victims of superior caste. This
film might well be the first step towards a national preparation for this
country to become an aggressed upon nation for the third time. [104]
They particularly disliked the characterisation of Theo: he was supposed
to be a 'good' German, but for the Robsons there was no such thing. Yet
The Shame and Disgrace of Colonel Blimp was more than just an expression
of xenophobia: it actually displayed some of the ingrained attitudes and
assumptions that the film had set out to challenge. For example, in their
description of Spud Wilson's actions at the start of the film, the Robsons
exhibit the same inability as Clive Candy to understand the point:
Although we are given to understand that "The war (i.e. the manoeuvres)
starts at midnight", some whipper-snapper of an officer takes it into his
head to disobey the order, by starting the "war" on his own six hours earlier
than the scheduled time. It all seems to take place on the spur of the moment.
Since the directive accompanying the order says "Make it like the real thing,"
this bright young spark of a Second Lieutenant thinks, as the Japanese thought
(but were mistaken), that he can win by fighting the Jap way and thinking
the Jap way. "All right," says he, with boisterous neuroticism, "we'll make
it like the real thing - Pearl Harbour". We are then asked to assume that
British soldiers, knowing that their Subaltern was disobeying orders, would
follow this cock-eyed officer into an adventure of his own creation. He
will personally set the whole idea of the exercise at nought by capturing
the Commander-in-Chief in his Turkish bath ... If we can assume that a Second
Lieut. can chip off a piece of the British Army to do with just as he jolly
well pleases, irrespective of the wider plan thought out by his superiors
for the purpose of testing out the Army at every joint; if we can assume
all this, we can swallow everything that follows [105]
.
With its failure to comprehend the reason for the young officer's actions,
its condemnation of his tactics, its disavowal of initiative and its implicit
assumption that fair play in warfare is still the right course, this passage
could almost have been penned by Clive Candy himself. It displays those
same stubborn and blinkered attitudes that Powell and Pressburger had set
out to expose, and thus suggests that Colonel Blimp was still very much
alive and well in certain parts of British society.
Colonel Blimp's Audiences
If The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp met with a mixed reception from British
critics, it was a big success at the box-office and seems to have been popular
with cinema audiences. The most reliable guides to British box-office returns
are the estimated annual surveys made by R. H. 'Josh' Billings for Kinematograph
Weekly. His list for 1943 has the Hollywood melodrama Random Harvest in
first place; the most successful British film, in second place overall,
was Noel Coward's In Which We Serve. Colonel Blimp came in fourth overall,
behind Casablanca in third place, and was therefore the second most successful
British film of the year. Billings named the film as the most popular at
the box-office during the month of July, writing: "The Life and Death of
Colonel Blimp was well ahead of its rivals, and, by reason of its provocative
and persuasive subject matter, unique footage and superb Technicolor photography,
made British screen history" [106]. It seems that
the controversy around the film helped its box-office performance considerably,
while the film's success in turn created pressure for the Government's export
ban to be lifted. According to a telegram from Hodge of the Air Ministry
to Sendall of the MOI, they had been told by Rank that "it has broken all
previous box-office records for the Odeon circuit of cinemas. In view of
this, it is becoming practically impossible to maintain our illegal ban"
[107]. There is very little evidence to suggest
any significant regional variations in the box-office success of the film.
Julian Poole's study of the Majestic Cinema in Macclesfield, near Manchester,
shows that it was the fourteenth most successful film of 1943, with 10,366
paid admissions to see it; although this was down on the film's position
nationally according to Billings, it still represented a big success for
the Majestic, if not actually a record [108].
That Colonel Blimp was successful at the box-office is not in doubt. What
is a largely unknown factor, however, is the reaction of audiences to the
film. Did they like it? Did they see it as entertainment or as propaganda?
It is possible to make some general observations. The most useful source
is a comprehensive survey of film preferences undertaken by the social survey
organisation Mass-Observation in November 1943. 220 people across the country
responded to the question: 'What films have you liked best during the past
year? Please list six films in order of liking and give your reasons for
liking them' [109]. Some caution has to be exercised
in using this source, for the respondents to the survey included a higher
proportion of middle-class cinema-goers than the population as a whole,
but it is still the most valuable extant source for analysing audience tastes
and preferences. By far the two most popular films among the respondents
were In Which We Serve (which 54 people named as one of their favourites)
and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (which was named by 49 respondents).
The fact that these two films were the most popular is significant, for
they shared some common characteristics: both were British, both concerned
the war, and both portrayed elements of the British class system.
It is instructive to examine the opinions on the film given by those respondents
who named Colonel Blimp as one of their favourites. In general, it was seen
as an example of quality entertainment, albeit entertainment with a serious
theme. It was praised for its high technical standards and the quality of
its acting; several people remarked favourably upon the use of colour. The
following remarks are typical:
Colonel Blimp: I liked it because it attempted to depict a character against
a background of recent English history. It was amusing yet the motif was
serious and thoughtful. It was a cartoon of thirty years of recent life.
[110]
At last a British film that's able to compete with Hollywood efficiency
and technical competence. Pleanty of pleasantly subtle touches and a quite
intelligent story and all so expertly done that I should like to see it
again. [111]
I consider this the best film that I have ever seen. I especially liked
its modern sequences with the speed of modern life compared to the slower,
older sequences. The flash-back technique also appealed to me. [112]
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, because it provided a diversionary
glimpse of an English character that has its faults better known than its
virtues, and which provides good, sensible entertainment. [113]
I like a film that is long and this is the longest film I have seen for
some time. I thought the technicolour excellent. The story and characters
portrayed [were] most true to life. [114]
Col. Blimp for its splendid characterisation and its almost perfect Technicolour
putting American colour to shame. [115]
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp was a grand film, interesting on account
of the period of time it covered. Films of the immediate past are always
attractive to me, probably because they bring back memories. This film also
seemed to be well-produced. The story was easy to believe in, though there
were many unexpected 'twists' in it. [116]
Col. Blimp impressed me greatly - perhaps the best I have ever seen - technically,
for its movement, its Englishness and its colour. [117]
In this admittedly small sample, the film was very well-liked by both men
and women, and by people of different ages and social backgrounds. There
were a few respondents who were less enthusiastic. One woman, for example,
naming it as one of her favourite films, had certain reservations about
the way in which the story was told:
I am not fond of technicolour films, though I must admit that the colour
of Colonel Blimp was the most pleasing of any I have yet seen. The presentation
of the story was unnecessarily involved. There was no need to have the Home
Guard scenes both at the beginning and the end of the picture. The three
periods were uneven in merit - I much preferred the German scenes pre-1914.
The girl in the Berlin scenes was exquisite - not so good as Mrs Blimp.
Again there was no 'oomph' or 'it'. [118]
One respondent explained why he did not rank the film as one of his favourites,
considering it "good in parts but not good as a film and very bad as the
story of Blimp" [119].
The Mass-Observation survey also illustrates how popular perceptions of
the film could differ from the opinions of the critics. Significantly, given
Documentary News Letter's view that it gave an unrealistic picture of England
and English characters, a number of respondents commented on how believable
they thought the film:
Well acted, it gives a good view of an English character. Unfortunately
this character is often misunderstood. [120]
This again appealed to me as being very true to life; and like Dangerous
Moonlight, it was an attempt to understand a problem or, rather, a character.
[121]
Other respondents made similar remarks: one woman said it was "about life
as we know it" [122], and one man said that the
"characters seem real" [123]. Mass-Observation respondents proved closer
to box-office figures than most critics. Finally, a couple of respondents
mentioned the word 'propaganda':
Colonel Blimp. I liked this film because its propaganda was subtle and good,
because the Edwardian scenes, in Germany, particularly the duel, were delightful
and showed a pleasant touch of humour, and because of the splendid character
acting of Livesey and Walbrook. [124]
Very good, true picture of the official English attitude towards the various
problems of this war: e.g. the old-young generation of soldiers; the attitude
of non-hatred; ... [and] propaganda that doesn't clash with reality too
much. [125]
But even those respondents who recognised the propaganda content of the
film seem to have thought it not too intrusive. The fact that other respondents
did not mention the propaganda element does not necessarily mean that they
did recognise it, of course, simply that they regarded the film first and
foremost as a piece of quality entertainment. And it is in those terms -
as high-quality entertainment - that Colonel Blimp seems to have been viewed
by British cinema audiences in 1943.
Colonel Blimp in America
The release and reception of Colonel Blimp in the United States is an interesting
epilogue to the history of the film. Given that the film was intended, at
least in part, for American audiences, its American reception is highly
relevant. It is also useful to examine the reaction of the American critics
to such an 'English' film at a time when some British films were having
an impact in America.
The first reviews of the film in the American trade press appeared before
the film had even made the journey across the Atlantic. Variety's London
correspondent reviewed the film immediately after its trade showing on 8
June 1943, though the review did not appear for two weeks. It followed the
trend of the British critics in appreciating the film's quality but expressing
reservations about its extreme length:
Here is an excellent film whose basic story could have been told within
the normal feature limits, but which, instead, is extended close to three
hours. Longer or shorter, this panorama of British army life is depicted
with a technical skill and artistry that marks it as one of the really fine
pix to come out of a British studio.
This is the longest picture ever made in England. It was carefully and intelligently
written, directed and produced, and should rank as an important feature
in America. [126]
The Motion Picture Herald reported that the film was being held up for export:
"This film was refused an export licence last week by the British Government.
It cannot, therefore, be released in the United States at this time"
[127]. Its reviewer recognised that the film was
a major prestige production, but like the British critics detected a certain
obscurity in its message:
Made at a considerable budget, in Technicolor, presented with a flourish
of trumpets and some rolling on the kettledrum, this is ostensibly one of
the major British films of the War, aiming, maybe, to be the British Film
of the War. It is a magnificent production, scrupulously made, consistently
human, spectacular and discursive - but withal somewhat obscure in its ideas.
Noting that the film "idealized" both its 'Blimp' figure and his German
friend, the Motion Picture Herald opined that it presented "an odd entertainment
pattern to the wartime British and American publics", but concluded that
it was "a prestige achievement and will arrest [sic] considerable public
attention. Properly put over it should, in the appropriate locations, net
considerable money."
Despite the generally favourable reactions of the American trade press at
the film's British release, it took two years for the film to cross the
Atlantic. It was not released in the United States until March 1945, barely
a month before the end of the war in Europe. Thus, even after the export
ban on the film had been lifted, it sat on the shelves for eighteen months
before it was picked up for American distribution. What might have been
an important message in 1943, when the United States was in the process
of sending troops to Britain, had become far less urgent two years later,
by which time the war against Germany was nearly over. From this perspective,
the film's American release was simply too late to fulfil its aim. The substantial
delay in its American release suggests that American distributors did not
have faith in the film's box-office potential. In order to place the American
reception of Colonel Blimp in context, it should be noted that it came at
a time when a number of British films had achieved considerable success
in the United States. For example, Henry V (Two Cities/Rank, 1944; dir.
Laurence Olivier) had received both critical acclaim and box-office success.
Powell and Pressburger's 49th Parallel - retitled The Invaders in America
- had won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and one of their later
productions, the ballet film The Red Shoes (1948), was to take in $5 million
at the US box-office [128]. However, the case of
Colonel Blimp (the abbreviated title used by the American distributors)
was somewhat different.
The initial critical reaction to Colonel Blimp in the United States was
mixed, rather as it had been in Britain. The film premiered at the Gotham
Cinema in New York on 29 March 1945 [129]. Interestingly,
the version of the film first shown in America was neither the 163-minute
original British version (as recorded by the Monthly Film Bulletin) nor
the shortened 120-minute British re-release version, but a 148-minute version
that appears to have been prepared specifically for American release
[130]. Thomas M. Prior, who reviewed the film for
the New York Times, described it as "impressive, if not always consistent,
entertainment". He seemed to think it was better in parts than in the whole:
it had "several distinguished individual scenes which will long remain in
fond memory", but the story "bogs down for considerable stretches". He concluded
that its quintessential Britishness was its most attractive quality: "'Colonel
Blimp' is as unmistakably a British product as Yorkshire pudding and, like
the latter, it has a delectable savor all its own" [131]. James Agee, the film critic of The Nation, also
had mixed feelings about the film because it changed the cartoon 'Blimp'
into a softer character:
In the English-made Colonel Blimp, David Low's lovingly malicious archetype
- and by every implication every Tory - has been relieved of all selfish motives
for his actions and of nearly all dangerousness or even obstructiveness
in those actions. This is annoying, and worse; but at the same time the
movie's characterization of an innocent, brave, honourable, and stupid man
is, within its own limits, so persuasive and so endearing, and so rare to
movies, that I am at least as grateful as I am annoyed. If Low's and the
movie character were blended, Blimp would be a great tragi-comic figure.
Lacking that, I wish some publisher would get out a twenty-five-cent volume
of the cartoons, to brace and extend the picture among the many people who
otherwise will get their only idea of Blimp through the gentlest kind of
Technicolor. There is nothing brilliant about the picture, but it is perceptive,
witty and sweet-tempered. [132]
A similar point was made by Manny Farber in The New Republic:
Colonel Blimp is a gentle character study of an English army man named Clive
Candy that is based on David Low's much less optimistic cartoons and much
less admirable cartoon character. In the cartoons Blimp personifies all
that is wrong with the English Tory; as Candy in the movie he can hardly
make a mistake, and actions he is criticized for - such as wanting to fight
the Nazi as a gentleman - are readily understood by him and corrected, causing
no trouble. [133]
The opinions of these two influential American film critics ran along similar
lines to those of British journals such as the New Statesman, in regretting
that the film had softened the 'Blimp' of Low's cartoons.
The American trade press tended to praise the quality of the film, but expressed
reservations about the extent of it potential audience appeal. Film Daily,
for example, declared:
Top-ranking British Picture in Magnificent Technicolor Designed Principally
for Class Audiences.
Insofar as the United States is concerned, Colonel Blimp will have its principal
appeal in the larger theaters catering to class audiences.
Its success in so-called sub-subsequent runs is dubious, despite the fact
that the picture has been produced on a lavish scale, is flawless technically
and has drama, comedy and suspense. It may be regarded by some as being
"too British" in dialogue, but there again the reaction depends on the type
of audience which sees it. As a whole, however, the picture proves anew
that Britain can produce films on a quality par with Hollywood. [134]
Colonel Blimp was regarded by the trade as too parochially 'British' to
be a winner with the general American cinema-going public, but as a piece
of quality cinema it might appeal to "class audiences" who were more likely
to appreciate it.
Despite the favourable comments of some American critics, Colonel Blimp
performed very badly indeed at the American box-office, taking only $305,943
[135]. Why was it so unsuccessful in the American
market? One explanation was offered by Richard Griffith in an article for
the British Film Institute's quarterly journal Sight and Sound in January
1950. Discussing the release of British films in the American market, Griffith
laid the poor performance of Colonel Blimp at the door of its American distributors,
United Artists, who made severe cuts:
Colonel Blimp was an unmitigated disaster. Too long for the ordinary double-feature
program, it was drastically cut by United Artists, thus alienating the intelligentsia
who were eager to see it because of the warm critical praise given the original
version. In aiming at the mass market, United Artists had lost the only
audience the film could possibly have pleased ... I much doubt that Blimp
achieved a thousand bookings here. [136]
Given that Griffith estimated the film would need "at least seven thousand
bookings" to recover its distribution costs, then the performance of Colonel
Blimp was indeed an "unmitigated disaster". United Artists seem to have
aimed the film at the wrong type of audience, while denying "class audiences"
the opportunity to see it at its full length. Furthermore, the promotional
policy adopted by United Artists to sell the film to exhibitors was inappropriate.
They tried to sell it as a bawdy romance. The advertising line on the posters
for the film read: "The lusty lifetime of a Gentleman who was sometimes
Quite a Rogue! Duelling - hunting big game - and pretty girls - life's a
grand adventure with Colonel Blimp!" [137]. Powell
wrote in his memoirs that "we didn't feel that United Artists understood
the film", and in particular he objected to an idea by Arthur Kelly of United
Artists for the film's promotional strategy:
Esquire magazine, labelled ostentatiously as "the magazine for men", had
invented a cartoon figure of a lecherous little man who peeped through keyholes
and up girls' skirts and dressed as a man-about-town, in their pre-war issues,
and was now in uniform for the duration. This character shared some of Colonel
Blimp's physical appearance: he had a heavy moustache and rolling eyes,
but his sole reason for existing was to chase girls and make lecherous innuendoes,
all of which were as popular as could be expected.
Arthur had hit on the idea of using this well-known image to popularize
our own Colonel Blimp, quite missing the point of David Low's immortal character.
He was extremely hurt when we criticised his brainchild. [138]
United Artists emphasised the romantic interest of the film, with Deborah
Kerr being promoted more than the two male stars. This was probably a reaction
to the fact that most of the critics had praised Miss Kerr's performance
and commented upon her beauty: the New York Times, for example, had described
her as "a lovely and talented actress" [139]. However,
this promotional policy did little for Miss Kerr's refined 'English Rose'
beauty, far removed from the steamy sexuality of such Hollywood stars as
Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner or Jane Russell. For example, writing in the
magazine Rob Wagner's Script in November 1945, the critic Herb Sterne was
critical not only of the promotional strategy used to sell the film, but
even more so of the cutting which it had suffered at the hands of both the
distributors and the Hays Office:
Colonel Blimp, whether it retains the original British prefix of The Life
and Death of _____, or masquerades under the American box-office enticer
of The Loves and Adventures of _____, is a distinguished endeavour. It is
possible to overlook the raffish advertising vouchsafed the film in these
bucolic parts. But it is impossible to forgive our native censorship pundits
the dialogue deletions demanded, and the US releasing organization, United
Artists, for the sixty minutes of footage sheared from the original prior
to its showing this side of the Atlantic. However, despite the mutilative
measures visited upon the work, it retains sufficient value to intrigue
patrons of eclectic leanings. [140]
One consequence of United Artists' handling of the film, however, was that
the company found themselves in court when Rank complained to the Federal
Trade Commission about the way in which they had distributed it. According
to The Times of 14 June 1947:
The Federal Trade Commission has accused Mr Charlie Chaplin, Miss Mary Pickford,
and their associates in United Artists Incorporated of misleading motion
picture exhibitors and the general public by failing to reveal to them in
its advertisements of the British film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
that the film had been materially revised, its length being cut from 14,700
ft to about 8,400 ft.
In its complaint the Commission said that this cutting was done after the
respondents had put an original full-length picture "through the usual publicity
routine". After the cut was made, substantially and materially changing
the film and the story it carried, the respondents, the Commission said,
continued to advertise and distribute the picture without any announcement
of the change and continued to use in advertisements the laudatory comments
which were contained in reviews of the complete and original production.
[141]
In the long court proceedings which followed, United Artists' chief witness,
Harold Arlen, was contemptuous of Colonel Blimp: he said that it had not
recouped its distribution costs, and suggested that the company's cutting
had actually improved the film, which, like other British pictures, "contained
too much padding and too much tea drinking" [142].
The incident did nothing to help relations between Rank and United Artists,
which had been deteriorating steadily for some time. Indeed, at the end
of 1946, Rank had ended his arrangement with United Artists and turned instead
to Universal-International to release his films in the United States.
What conclusions can be drawn from this reconsideration of The Life and
Death of Colonel Blimp? In the first place, the failure of the British Government's
attempt to suppress Colonel Blimp illustrates some of the limitations that
existed in the British system of censorship. Whether or not the film could
have been suppressed is a controversial question: did the War Cabinet have
the power to stop the film, or did it have the power to stop it but elected
not to do so? The answer is no longer in doubt: the Government did not have
the authority to suppress the film under the Defence Regulations as they
existed: this much was stated at the time by both Brendan Bracken and Sir
James Grigg. If the film was to have been suppressed, it would have necessitated
the adoption of additional powers of censorship - the "special authority"
that Churchill offered Bracken - not available under normal circumstances.
The War Cabinet could have changed the Defence Regulations, of course, to
enable them to stop the film, but this did not happen. That it did not happen,
and therefore the reason why the film was not suppressed, was due to Bracken,
who resisted Churchill's offer of additional powers. This was not because
he had engineered some Machiavellian scheme behind the film, but because
he feared the possible political consequences of taking such drastic and
heavy-handed action. The last thing that Bracken, as Minister of Information,
wanted was "the imposition of a compulsory censorship of opinion upon all
means of expression", the very opposite of the image of a democratic Britain
that the MOI wanted to project both at home and abroad. Bracken realised
that the exercise of censorship in a democracy was subject to certain political
considerations which would have made it very unwise to proceed in the manner
which Churchill advocated. Therefore, while it may have been theoretically
possible to adopt the powers necessary to suppress the film, it would have
been politically maladroit. Bracken realised this; Churchill did not.
A second conclusion concerns the propaganda content of the film. Colonel
Blimp was intended by Powell and Pressburger to put across a serious theme
- that more urgency and less complacency was required in the war effort
- while at the same time being a piece of high-quality entertainment. In
this respect, the film fulfilled one of the MOI's own dicta, laid down in
the Programme for Film Propaganda of January 1940, which stated: "The film
being a popular medium must be good entertainment if it is to be good propaganda"
[143]. The reception of the film, both by critics
and audiences, suggests that they found it entertaining, and therefore in
those terms it was a success. However, the remarks made by critics about
the film's unclear message suggest that its precise propagandist intentions
were not easily discerned. Did the film attack 'Colonel Blimp', or defend
him? The critics were undecided. Furthermore, the way in which critics from
different sides of the political spectrum reacted to the film shows that
'reading' the narrative and the propagandist message which it contained
remains a subjective process closely connected to the ideological perspective
of the viewer. The propaganda content of Colonel Blimp cannot therefore
be reduced simply to what Powell and Pressburger intended it to be.
Finally, there is one unanswered question about the whole Colonel Blimp
affair: why did Churchill object so strongly to the film? His personal opinions
about the film are not recorded, and given the present unavailability of
the Churchill Papers, the matter remains one for speculation. In his book
Images for Battle: British Film and the Second World War, 1939-1945 (1989),
Clive Coultass suggests that the film's opponents were put off by its message.
He writes: "No doubt it was difficult for some of those who disliked Colonel
Blimp to face up to the implications of a new concept of warfare, the acceptability
of Pearl Harbour methods, and a matching of Nazi ruthlessness with equal
disregard for old fashioned moral codes" [144].
However, this would scarcely have bothered Churchill, who was constantly
urging a total commitment to the war effort and who was not above using
questionable methods himself. For example, as First Lord of the Admiralty
in April 1940 he had authorised the mining of the Norwegian leads (territorial
waters) at a time when Norway was still neutral, and - rather more significantly
- he had allowed Bomber Command to follow a policy of indiscriminately bombing
German cities. A more convincing explanation for Churchill's hostility is
that his idea of propaganda was very different from that of the filmmakers.
Churchill believed that the propaganda role of the media should be to provide
inspiration and promote national unity, and this was the theme that he followed
in his own radio broadcasts. To quote Ian Christie: "The basis of Churchill's
propaganda thrust was an idealised concept of 'the people' welded into 'one
nation'; united in suffering and defiance; with class divisions, historical
allegiances, even regional distinctions blurred in their stand against the
'common enemy'" [145]. Colonel Blimp did not fit
into this supposed ideological consensus: it presented a very different
picture of Britain, one where a hierarchical class system still existed,
where the traditional military elite were shown to be out of touch with
modern warfare, and where certain sections of society were still unaware
of exactly what was at stake in the war. The latter point is made in the
film by Theo: "This is not a gentleman's war. This time you are fighting
for your existence against the most devilish idea ever concocted by the
human brain - Nazism! And if you lose there won't be a return match next
year, perhaps not even for a hundred years!" Churchill himself needed no
reminder of this, of course, but the fact that such a critique of the British
way in warfare should come from (of all people) a German may have been another
reason why he disliked the film. Or it may simply have been that he saw
in the film's 'Blimp' character something of himself. Ian Christie quotes
the American observer General Raymond Lee who in 1940 detected a certain
'Blimpish' quality about the British Prime Minister: "Churchill's strength
and the reason he refuses to give ground anywhere is because he himself
is a Blimpish character who has a very high intelligence and knowledge of
history on top of it" [146]. Such a comment illustrates
the sometimes contradictory conceptions of what makes a 'Blimp': Churchill's
stubborness, satirised by David Low in the 1930s, was one of his strengths
as a war leader. Moreover, there are certain parallels between Churchill
and Clive Candy: like Candy, Churchill had been a serving officer in Kitchener's
Sudan campaign of 1898; like Candy, Churchill had been involved in the Boer
War (albeit only as a war correspondent); and like Candy, Churchill had
served as a brigadier on the Western Front during World War I. But if Churchill
did see himself as 'Blimp', then it was a view which he kept to himself
for the rest of his days.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Charles Barr for commenting on a paper about Colonel
Blimp that I gave as an MA student at the University of East Anglia in 1992;
Jeffrey Richards and Tony Aldgate both discussed Blimp with me and kindly
allowed the use of film stills belonging to them; David Culbert made helpful
comments on an earlier draft of this article.
Correspondence: James Chapman, Department of History, Lancaster University,
Bailrigg, Lancaster LA1 4YG, UK. Fax: 44. (0)525-846.102.
From:
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 03/95
v15:n1. p19(36)
