The Masters  
The Powell & Pressburger Pages

Dedicated to the work of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and all the other people, both actors and technicians who helped them make those wonderful films.

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Submitted by Nicky Smith & Tipu

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
By: James Agee
The Nation, March 31st 1945


In the English-made Colonel Blimp, David Low's lovingly malicious archetype - and by implication every Tory - has been relieved of all selfish motives for his actions and of nearly all dangerousness or even obstructiveness in these 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's character were blended, Blimp would be a great tragi-comic character. Lacking that, I wish that 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 Technicolour. There is nothing brilliant about the picture, but it is perceptive, witty and sweet-tempered and it shows a continuous feeling for the charm and illuminating power of mannerism, speech and gesture used semi-ritually, rather than purely realistically which owes a good deal to Lubistch in the good second-best of his comedies. I very much like the performances of Roger Livesey as the Colonel, Deborah Kerr as his imago in three instalments, and Anton Walbrook as his German friend.


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