The entire Turkish bath sequence is magnificent and perhaps the shot from Blimp falling into the bath in an undignified scuffle as an old man and emerging at the other end as a young man is one of the greatest plunges (sic!) into flashback in the entire history of cinema. It would of course be perfectly possible to analyse virtually every shot and sequence in the movie in terms of the brilliance of the cinematography, the colours, the design, the camera-movement and so on; there is never a moment when one is not aware that one is in the presence of cinematic genius. The famous duel scene with its astonishing cut-away and pull-back through the roof to the snow falling on the yellow windows of the gymnasium and the more distant twinkling lights of Berlin is merely one example.   

“…a 100% British film but it’s photographed by a Frenchman, it’s written by a Hungarian, the musical score is by a German Jew, the director was English, the man who did the costumes was a Czech; in other words, it was the kind of film that I’ve always worked on with a mixed crew of every nationality, no frontiers of any kind.”  

At the heart of the film is, of course, the figure of Blimp himself as so magnificently portrayed by Roger Livesey (apparently the original choice was Olivier and one can only be profoundly grateful that this did not work out). Livesey has the ability to bring out every aspect of the Blimp figure which PandP wanted to draw attention to – the gallantry, the stupidity, the honourableness, the incapacity to see beyond the ties of friendship and loyalty which draw him to those around him and in turn attract their devotion.  Again the portrait of Blimp is intimately related to the questions of Englishness which I have referred to previously. He is – like the picture of England – a mythologized and air-brushed figure; he is representational yet never less than convincing as a character in Livesey’s performance and under Powell’s direction.  

  The film is shot through with nostalgia for a mythic England and a mythic past; but the mythic values which that place and time represent become transmuted in the film to a propagandistic statement of what the war should be fought for and what it is being fought against. In the end it is the bitterest of ironies that the film suggests that in order to preserve those values methods will have to be adopted which are likely to destroy them. There is never a question that this is not ‘worth it’; that Nazism is an unspeakable horror which must be destroyed at all costs, but there is similarly a recognition that the fight to resist will have enormous consequences. The film is therefore both propaganda and nostalgia intimately combined and playing off each other. Stephen Fry has suggested that the film…   

“.. addresses something I’ve always been profoundly interested in — what it means to be English … it is about bigger things than the war. It takes a longer view of history which was an extraordinarily brave thing for someone to do in 1943, at a time when history seemed to have disintegrated into its most helpless, impossible and unforgivable state.”  (interview with The Daily Telegraph in 2003 according to wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_and_Death_of_Colonel_Blimp )While I think it is very concerned ‘what it means to be English’ I think it is important to stress again that this is a about a mythic social/cultural vision of Englishness which is not connected with questions of birth or even in a way nationality. Pressburger was a fanatic anglophile and I think that is perhaps his influence which emerges most strongly here (the issue of who contributed what – and PandP are quite unique among the great cinema makers in this collaborative ascription – is a vexed one; that Powell on his own was capable of directorial genius is amply proved by Peeping Tom, but in the great collaborative works – and particularly those centred around these questions of Englishness or nationality it may be that Pressburger’s influence is strongly felt). I certainly agree with Fry that the film takes a longer view of history but the extraordinary thing to me is that it manages to combine this with being effective propaganda.  

 Perhaps though it is redundant to make somewhat commonplace observations about this masterpiece which has been so extensively analysed by better minds. It is certainly an evasion of the issue of why the film has such a deep emotional impact on me. In the case of other favourite films – say The Sound of Music – I can analyse exactly why the moments which move me do so and the tricks which the film-makers use to achieve this effect (tricks may be slightly unfair – techniques would be better). In the case of Blimp however I am much more uncertain. It is worth noting that politically and ideologically the film is deeply suspect to me – for all its internationalism the realities behind the mythic England constructed are class-bound, militaristic, imperial. It is also worth noting that none of PandP’s other work, much as I love and appreciate it, has the same impact. I think that it has to do with the air of melancholy and nostalgia, the themes of loss and survival, which permeate the film and connect to some deep psychological reactors. In a way this is similar to the reaction I have to that great closing passage of Hearing Secret Harmonies – the very end of the very volume of Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time – and again a profound but transcendant melancholy (there given concrete force by the reference to Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy). Perhaps this is indeed tied to the notion of Englishness and there is some Jungian collective unconscious at work. Perhaps it relates to being a depressive or to a pervasive emotional perception that life is about loss and regret. To explore this fully I would need several sessions of hard psychoanalysis. Whatever the case re-watching Blimp re-establishes it – as it always does – as not only the great masterpiece of English cinema but also as my favourite film.