Originally Posted by Keechelus

Powell was an Englishman with a world view, quite rare at the time. And when he was combined with Pressburger, an outsider looking in, it's no wonder that they came up with some films that had a view that was totally different to what everyone else was doing.

Jeez. Not "no wonder" I believe. It really is a wonder, a unique and unlikely partnership that will never be re-created. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett came close in their acerbic Hollywood hits, but Powell and Pressburger were unexpected and perfect partners in films from grim reality to poetic fantasy.

As Butch Cassidy said of his relentless pursuers: "Who are these guys?"

Yeah. Who were these guys, Mickey Powell and Emeric Pressburger? I dunno, but together they gave us 14 years of fascinating, never-the-same movies.

Originally Posted by Keechelus

May 2007 on Prince Edward Island (4000 miles from our Vancouver home), our own black Bo ran on the empty beach near Skinner's Pond:

Originally Posted by Keechelus

May 2007 on Prince Edward Island (4000 miles from our Vancouver home), our own black Bo ran on the empty beach near Skinner's Pond:

Originally Posted by Steve Crook

Remember that they wanted to make AMOLAD in 1945. But the story required that they have Technicolor and all the Technicolor cameras in the world (there weren't many of them) were in use making training films for US servicemen. And there wasn't much Technicolor film stock in the country either.

Steve

Originally Posted by alan gowdy

I don't think there was a Technicolor camera stock - the cameras just used three ordinary monochrome negatives receiving colour-filtered light with the dye transfer processes happening later in the chain - mind you I could be wrong and will happily stand corrected if so.

Ah Shere - a lovely village that I visited numerous times before hearing of the AMOLAD connection.

I've always thought the naked boy was an entirely innocent atmospheric invention that has been distorted by some in our paedophile-obsessed age.

Funny thing - when I first saw this film many years ago I thought my enthusiasm for it was unique. The innocence of youth.....

Originally Posted by Keechelus

" It's a shame that this film is still quite difficult for many people to see. But we do keep hearing about a planned region 1 DVD "

Take heart, North Americans. We can hope that Criterion will follow their recent 49TH PARALLEL and new THIEF OF BAGHDAD with AMOLAD. Criterion has released much of the PnP catalogue with excellent DVDs.

In the meantime, the inexpensive Carlton AMOLAD is just fine for those of us with region-free players.

Originally Posted by Steve Crook

Thelma Schoonmaker has said it is still definitely planned, but is waiting for Scorsese to do the commentary. No hint of a release date as yet.

Steve

Originally Posted by Third Man

I'm wondering if the restoration is actually gong to be a proper one unlike the Criterion 'Thief of Baghdad' recently released DVD which looked nearly the same as the MGM one. In fact I think the earlier MGM DVD looked a bit more lurid which I associate with how Technicolor should look .

Simon

Originally Posted by TimR

That is one of the most profoundly and deeply insulting examples of anti-Americanism I have ever heard - and you intended it that way. You are no fool. But you see: neither am I.

It is also, by the way, just about the most ignoble and ungentlemanly thing it is possible to say in the circumstances, so you might want to take a look at yourself.

It is time for me to leave this place for another long break. No need to show me to the door.

Originally Posted by Moor Larkin

Oh bugger. Trust me to take a few days off at just the wrong time.......

I was imagining that the young British soldiers who ignored Blimp's preposterous rules were exemplars of a new culture that rejected the buffoonery of fighting wars as a gentleman's game. If I was trying to imply anything it was that they looked to an imagined American way of individual initiatives seeking as quick a resolution as possible, as the proper way of doing things, rather than doddering old colonels blustering over the Port and telling their boys to wait for the whistle.

Given the real-time environment the film was being made in, I would see that as a logical idea. Who else could we look to for our example? The Nazis? We could not do it their way, could we.

Steve Crook may well be right that Britain merely needed to make its own internalised changes, without reference to any other nation or Army Culture and that The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp , unlike A Matter of Life and Death, has nothing to do with America or Americans at all.

Don't let a fool like me make you leave the room.

Originally Posted by Steve Crook

The expression often used to describe American servicemen at the time was "Overpaid, over-sexed and over here". This was prevalent from about the time they started arriving in large numbers for the build up to D-Day in about 1944.

Remember that by that time the British people had been at war for 5 years. Their homes had been bombed killing many of their friends and relations, they were on a strict food ration and hadn't had many luxury good for years. Most of their young men, their sons, brothers and fathers had been abroad fighting, getting captured, wounded or killed, in North Africa and the Far East or they had been on convoy duty bringing in the few supplies that did make it here.

Then the Americans turn up. They are better paid and better dressed than British servicemen. They have access to all sorts of luxuries that haven't been seen for years like chocolate, nylons and even simple things like chewing gum and fruit. They turn up at local dances and bring their new music with them, jazz, big band music, and the new dances that go with them. Of course they are going to appear glamorous to the young ladies and the British people, in uniform or not, aren't going to get a look in. It's no wonder that there was a lot of ill-feeling.

Steve