Voices - "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp"

-"["Colonel Blimp"] has four story threads. It mourns the passing of a time when professional soldiers observed a code of honor. It argues to the young that the old were young once, too, and contain within them all that the young know, and more. It marks the General's lonely romantic passage through life, in which he seeks the double of the first woman he loved. And it records a friendship between a British officer and a German officer, which spans the crucial years from 1902 to 1942. This is an audacious enough story idea to begin with, but even more daring in 1942, when London was bombed nightly and the Nazis seemed to be winning the war." (Roger Ebert)

-"It would be perfectly in order to choose any of five or six of their films to present among one's personal best. I choose The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp not because it is perfect. Rather, it stands out because at the time of its making during the second world war it raised so many awkward questions that Winston Churchill even tried to have it banned. It typifies Powell's unorthodox approach to the conventions of British film-making, and it was the film that one American critic has called "the British Citizen Kane". But in truth it is more of a tribute to the paradoxical nature of the British character." (Derek Malcolm, The Guardian)

-"The brash young man, who fought a duel with a Prussian officer in 1902, became friends with his opponent and sportingly let him walk off with a beautiful English governess in Berlin, was growing old in the ways of the world even in the warfare of 1914-18. But it is not until 1939 rolls around that General Candy has unknowingly become a mental ancient. Even in retirement as head of the home guard he is out of step, a well-intentioned blunderer whose ultimate embarrasment comes when he is unceremoniously captured in a Turkish bath with his staff during practice maneuvers. "But war doesn't start till midnight," he thunders in pathetic confusion at his blitz-wizened captors." (Bosley Crowther, The New York Times)

-"Clive Candy (played by the hoarse-voiced actor Roger Livesey) is a relic of the past. He is a soldier who defines war by a 19th century paradigm in which war was considered a gentleman’s game – an old-fashioned way of thinking about modern combat. The film is based on a comic strip called "Colonel Blimp," created in England by David Low in the 1930s that was both sarcastic and frequently harsh about the old British imperial attitudes that defined the late 19th century conservative men of the military. But even though Powell and Pressburger clearly satirize the old guard they also give the film a romantic angle by memorializing the main character while also pitying him." (Matt Langdon, filmcritic.com)