The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, released in 1943, is regarded as one of the masterpieces of British cinema. In this interpretation of the film, A.L. Kennedy finds it to be a complex and richly ambiguous dissection of what it means to be English, and what it is to be "at home".
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"A wonderful piece of writing." -- Empire
About the Author
A.L. Kennedy was named one of the best young British novelists in 1993. She is the author of Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains, Looking For the Possible Dance t, and So I am Glad the Encore Prize. Her first screenplay has been filmed as Stella Does Tricks.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Hard to find the movie in all this anecdote,
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This review is from: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (BFI Film Classics) (Paperback)
I really enjoy this book series. But this is the least interesting BFI book I've read. There is film writing that is enlivened with personal anecdote, and then there is film writing buried in it. Kennedy has produced a turgid, Proustian (not in the good way) essay that's so self-absorbed it defies an inlet for others. Kennedy introduces the film with a long, embroidered, meandering preamble about what was worn to school in the dark winters of her Scottish childhood. It is not illuminating, and frankly the tether to the movie was lost on me, except as an excuse to talk more about herself.One wants to grab her and say "It's a short book. We don't have time for two pages of personal memoirs to set up each item you'd like to discuss." A good editor would have scrapped half of this, to make room for actual remarks about the movie. And then something scary occured to me; maybe he already did!
7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Archers deserve better.,
This review is from: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (BFI Film Classics) (Paperback)
This is a disappointing and frustrating monograph. Disappointing in that it concerns one of the staggering masterpieces of the greatest filmmakers of all time, the team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and manages to capture only their sadness and intelligence, with little of their madness or danger. This is because, as an author-screenwriter, Kennedy concentrates on Pressburger, the screenwriter. Now, Pressburger is a too often marginalised figure, and a crucial component of the Archers' magic, providing the bass-line spirit, wit and humanity of the films, but to reduce Powell's overwhelming contribution to a couple of patronising lines is to miss the essence and tensions of BLIMP (and surely, as a Scot, she might have found his Celtic roots interesting). A screenplay is not even a tenth of a film, it is the bricks with which the director builds a house. Kennedy's book is an analysis of the script, not the film; she betrays little meaningful knowledge of cinema, and so cannot explain the film as a visual experience, beyond a few platitudes. BLIMP contains arguably the greatest shot in all cinema - as Powell pulls back from the duelling scene - but Kennedy is unable to respond to it satisfactorily. Powell and Pressburger films are such an emotional experience that it is difficult to discuss them analytically. Kennedy offers a very personal, autobiographical response to the film which chimes very much with my own, but sometimes you want to shake her, and ask for something a lttle less comforting and vague. The book is frustrating, not only in its narrow focus, but in its nagging, repeated inaccuracies (Jack Cardiff did not photograph the film, he was a mere Technicolour cameraman - Powell liked his work, and asked him to shoot later Archers' films; the nurse and Barbara Wynne are the same character etc.), its lack of cinematic context or original research, its evasion of whole sequences at the expense of those that fit the thesis. It is extraordinary, though, that in a piece that discusses various notions of 'Home', Kennedy doesn't mention the play Clive attends, 'Ulysses'. So why three stars? Because just reading about one of my favourite films is such a pleasure. Because Kennedy is so nice, clear and familiar, and we share quite a lot in common. Because in between the reassuring padding, she comes up with the odd unique insight that startles you into rethinking old assumptions.
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