The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp - Britain's "Citizen Kane"?

[LA]

I presume what I heard about it's commercial success there was correct? How galling it must have been for Rank to realise what a golden goose he'd lost in P&P, once the money eventually started rolling in. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Talking of P&P films, an interesting one I neglected to mention, though perhaps not in the first rank of their work, is Contraband , a P&P film made before they adopted the joint signature. An interesting, slightly Hitchcockian, wartime thriller starring Conrad Veidt and Valerie Hobson. Anyone else seen this one?

[Welles Fan]

Yep, The Red Shoes was ultimately their biggest hit. It is sad that Rank and the Archers split over it, since it was Rank who had come to their rescue in 1942 (or was it 43?) when they were having trouble getting Colonel Blimp released.

Apparently, PM Winston Churchill was opposed to the Colonel Blimp film, and attempted to stop it from being seen by having it banned. Rank ordered production to continue, and he defied the ban by having it placed in all his Odeon theatres in Great Britain in defiance of the ban.

The new Criterion DVD of Blimp has a little documentary about the movie. Much of the info in the doc is covered in the onscreen commentary, but it is good to have it all in one 15-20 minute program. Churchill had worked hard to rid the British military of all vestiges of "Blimpism". The DVD includes many of the original Blimp newspaper cartoons, on which the film is slightly based. In the cartoons, Blimp is a know-it-all Victorian denizen of the Turkish baths, constantly mouthing idiotic commentaries on the military or British society. Had Churchill seen the film, he would've realized that Roger Livesy's Genral Wynn-Candy only superficially resembles his cartoon counterpart.

Also, some mention is made of the version that is 20 minutes shorter. Apparently, the flashback structure is abandoned. I'm curious if Christopher Banks or any one else who has seen the shortened version can verify that this is so. The film should begin with Gen Candy in the Turkish Bath, and when he falls into the pool, a flashback occurs and a much younger Candy emerges from the pool and the story is now 40 hears earlier.

Sometimes, a movie runnig time will be in error. I remember seeing the VHS of The Archers' Tales of Hoffman which listed the running time of the shortened version. I later saw the laserdisc restored version, and they were exactly the same running time.

BTW-the re-mastering of the new Blimp DVD is beautiful, along the lines of the recent re-release of Singin' in the Rain.

I also picked up The Red Shoes Criterion DVD, but as a Xmas present for my wife, so I cannot tell what goodies it contains until after Dec 25.

[jaime marzol]

....................

red shoes criterion dvd is loaded, has a commentary track, has a reading of the book that runs as a commentary track, and the film looks great.

[sergio]

In the UK, on Region 2, Carlton have made a number of Powell and Pressburger films available - AMOLAD, BLIMP, GONE TO EARTH and RED SHOWS are the only special editions however - RED SHOES has different extras to the Criterion disc, but Criterion bought the BLIMP documentary from them and used it on their disc. The transfers all excellent however.

The Criterion discs of IKWIG and RED SHOES are basically re-mastered versions of their prior LD releases, while BLACK NARCISSUS, PEEPING TOM and BLIMP have augmented the extras with UK materials - NARCISSUS in particular has a greatly improved transfer that is just breath taking.

On the other hand, the R2 RED SHOES has a better transfer than the Criterion (which still has the better extras however).

A Criterion DVD of TALES OF HOFFMANN has been delayed so often that I've stopped looking for it - it is now due "some time in 2003"...

Although Powell and Pressburger stopped working together as "The Archers" after 1956, they did work together again on two projects that came to fruition: the children's film THE BOY WHO TURNED YELLOW (1972) and the Australian comedy THEY'RE A WEIRD MOB (1966) which Pressburger scripted using his "Richard Imrie" pseudonym.

I would say though that their finest black and white production are probably IKWIG, A CANTERBURY TALE (which had a severely re-edited US edition) and THE SMALL BACK ROOM which is one of their most underrated films.

Powell's autobiography, by the way, is a wonderful book in two parts, but is in no way reliable - much better to read Kevin Macdonald's biography of Pressburger, or Ian Christie's two short books: ARROWS OF DESIRE, on the Archers, and A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, which is part of the BFI Classics series.

[LA]

Welles Fan: "Yep, The Red Shoes was ultimately their biggest hit. It is sad that Rank and the Archers split over it, since it was Rank who had come to their rescue in 1942 (or was it 43?) when they were having trouble getting Colonel Blimp released."

Indeed, he was quite a brave producer, by all accounts his "Indepedent Producers" set-up was something of a filmmakers' haven ...while it lasted. Before their contract with him that began with Blimp , I read he'd already helped them out once with an injection of funds when the budget for their pre-joint signature 49th Parallel was running thin.

Sergio: I second your recommendation of Kevin Macdonald's Emeric Pressburger: The Life And Death Of A Screenwriter and Ian Christie's Arrows Of Desire. Haven't read Christie's book on A Matter Of Life And Death , but it's on my must-read list.

[Le Chiffre]

One of Powell and Pressburger's last collaborations, THEY'RE A WIERD MOB, from 1966, is on Youtube in two parts. It stars Walter Chiari (Welles's Silence in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT) as an Italian visiting Australia:

Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTuL3XnZpoQ

Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuEzthzw_DM

[tonyw]

Actually it is Powell only since the partnership broke up after ILL MEETS AT MOONLIGHT. Don't forget it also stars archetypal Aussie Chips Rafferty himself!

[Le Chiffre]

While technically not an "Archers" film, it's a collaboration of sorts since, according to Wiki, Pressburger wrote the screenplay under the pseudonym "Richard Imrie". I'm not too familiar with Chips but I'll watch for him, thanks.

[tonyw]

Your term "of sorts" is correct. The main difference is that Emeric was not around during the filming and the Powell and Pressburger Society usually distinguish a Michael Powell film from "The Archers."

[Le Chiffre]

Speaking of Michael Powell's solo efforts, my favorite, the rarely seen Bluebeard's Castle from 1964, is available in it's entirety on YouTube:

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=FSFFR9lS ... SFFR9lSVJc

[MartynH]

I am also a big P & P fan. For those who have seen Canterbury Tale (1944) there is one of the great scenes in movie history. At the start it shows a lot of pilgrims in medieval days on their way to Canterbury. One of the men lets a falcon go and you see the his face with a hat of the day on, then you see the falcon flying in the sky. Then the falcon suddenly changes into a Spitfire, the camera tracks back to the man. It's the same man but he now has a steel helmet on with chin strap, circa WW2. Sheer genius, I think.

Does that shot remind anybody of anything? Kubrick's 2001 with the bone and spaceship? However, I think there's more in the Canterbury Tale shot. Whether Kubrick had seen this film, who knows. By the way, I am also a big Kubrick fan as well.

What does Hannaford say, "it's alright to borrow from each other, what we must never do is borrow from ourselves."

[Wich2]

As Lord Olivier said to one of his acting students once, when they were speaking of seeing another actor in a role they were working on:

"Oh, you MUST crib the best bits!"

[Wellesnet]

From Bart Whaley's "Orson Welles: The Man Who Was Magic"

That winter (1954), while Arkadin was still in production, Michael Powell reappeared to offer Orson a costarring role with Bing Crosby, Maurice Chevaliar, and Anton Walbrook in Oh Rosalinda!, a movie version of Johann Strauss's popular operetta, Die Fledermaus. Encouraged by Dolivet, the ever-needy Orson agreed to sell three days' work on three-days' notice for the tidy sum of £30,000. By the time Powell got this ill-starred film into production three years later, only Walbrook was still available. Powell "cursed" Orson:

"After our meeting in Paris, and after repeated promises, Orson had vanished into the Mediterranean sunset somewhere, leaving behind him a sketch of himself singing "Chacun à son goût," a cigar in one hand, champaign glass in the other, with a mocking caption underneath. I had always believed that he would turn up eventually, but dear Orson had too many irons in the fire. He left unfinished films all over Europe that he had to visit from time to time, just as a doctor visits his patients, giving them a shot in the arm, or the ass."

Powell had seized upon the old "Irresponsible Playboy" myth to explain Orson's behavior. But was it true? Not quite, when we learn the eyewitness circumstances from the go-between for Powell and Orson and Dolivet. This was Mary Harris, an actors' agent in London who'd been working closely with Orson on radio and movie casting for the previous three years. Typically, he'd cajoled her step-by-step into extending her normal services to include supplying everything from technicians through false noses to a flea circus (for Akim Tamiroff's scene in Arkadin). Then she'd done the paper work for him to co-star in Powell's Oh Rosalinda! movie. But, she reports, he became too immersed in cutting and dubbing Arkadin to firm things up. Weeks later, well into 1954, when he phoned her to ask when his presence was required she explained that Powell and his co-producer had hired someone else (Anthony Quale). “Orson," she
said, “just couldn't believe it."

So, while Orson's behavior toward Powell had been selfish, it hadn't been merely frivolous but had been designed to assure the success of Arkadin, his main current project. I would have expected that Powell, as one of the few British film makers who'd generally resisted compromising his art for commerce, might have been more understanding of Orson's predicament.

On her part, Mary Harris, having had so much of her time wasted, was disappointed next Christmas by getting nothing more than one of Orson's hand-sketched Xmas cards. Disappointment quickly turned thoroughly galling when a follow-up mailing brought a large batch of other cards for her to forward to his friends throughout England. “But", she admitted, “Orson's charm and magnetism are such that, however cross he makes one, he is forgiven instantly at the next meeting."

[Wellesnet]

Powell and Pressburger's rarely seen last film together; the 51-minute TV movie from 1971, "The Boy Who Turned Yellow", from a Russian website:
https://ok.ru/video/1425929276002?fbcli ... VBkkRQq92I