Third Man

I saw this over on the French Amazon site - released in 2007 - a possible question for Steve here - is it any better than the earlier UK DVD?






Simon

Moor Larkin

I suppose the danger there is that Theo's bitterly contrite speech might lead to the idea that you had to adopt a Nazi mentality to win. Perhaps I saw the collision of American new-thinking and Blimpish British decency as being the solution proposed.

There are many who seem to want to paint Bomber Harris as no better than the Nazis. The difference is not in his application of war methodology, but in why he employed it. If a war can be won, it should be won as ruthlessly and quickly as possible. The sooner war is over, the better. That was Sir Athur Harris' intention.

Just as an aside of course, Theo, had he lived a long long time, would doubtless have realised eventually, that just as his army had lost the first war, so the nazi Army lost the second one, around about the time Hitler launched Barbarossa. It just took a while to sink in.

But that's just me pontificating about history....... and nothing about A Matter of Life and Death, so I'm evacuating myself from this Thread......

Steve Crook

They're from the same print as far as I can tell. The Amazon listing doesn't say that it has the English soundtrack so it might have a dubbed French soundtrack. It's not one that I have in my extensive collection

Steve

TimR

Yes, I am tougher on them - I have noticed that in reading through the posts. I took it far more seriously than most here, and my response was the same at the beginning as it was towards the end. I don't think it was just a war game: I think it was an example of a general change in behavior.

In the years leading up to the war, it was the appeasers in Britain and the isolationists in the US who refused to respond to the threat that the Nazis and the Japanese represented. They refused to face the reality of events - and we all paid an even higher price for that. Candy and his type were guilty of expecting gentlemanly behavior from evil people, but they were not appeasers or isolationists.

Spud and his men took advantage of the trust of the older military men; they knew they would abide by their principles and used it against them. I would not see them as examples of those who won the war - either British or American.

You mention Bomber Harris. I was thinking, in fact of Dresden when I wrote some of these posts. I spent a month in Germany, including a week in Dresden. This isn't the place to get into long discussion of it. Perhaps a military forum is the place. I do disagree at least in part with what you said here. When the acknowledgment of a moral code is disregrarded, the slope is slippery indeed.

That is why I found Colonel Blimp so moving and so powerful. He was not an especially imaginative or deep man, but he lived by a code that ennobled his life. That code was under attack - and that began at the very beginning of the film. That is the single most interesting question for me in history: What happened to the world that existed before 1914?

It is also the code that has ennobled life in Britain for a very, very long time. It is what brought Theo back to Britain. There is a wonderful moment in the 1969 version of Goodbye Mr. Chips where Chipping's German friend tells him - just before the war - that the English do not always realize (or appreciate) what they have. There are so many details that I cannot be aware of. But perhaps my status as an outsider allows me to see it with greater clarity at times because I have that larger perspective.

Third Man

He may of been under attack at the start but only in the form of the way he did things and by people who would look after him and protect his lifestyle. In hindsight Candy must of been grateful for the young upstarts jumping in before time and showing him that his ways of doing things were over - would he of rather had the Nazis show him for a first time later on?

The saying you have to be cruel to be kind was surely in play here. I think Candy undestood this by the end and would appreciate the chance to be able to tell people about a time when things were done differently and what the world was like before 1914.

Simon

Third Man

Thank you, I might have a look as I think I'm about to order all those P&P Institut Lumiere DVD's.

Simon

penfold

Oh, absolutely. There were good reasons for bombing Dresden, it was the German equivalent of Silicon Valley; but the civilian casualties were appalling. And as for the retention of morals in wartime, it's a lesson we still need to learn....witness Iraq, Guantanamo....and the British Forces have had their dark moments, not just the more heavily publicised US Forces incidents.
But enough of this. By the way, not as Off Topic as you might think...did you know there was a 'Mock Execution' sequence filmed for Blimp, but edited out?? In the WW1 sequence, after Candy has left the South African Officer with the Uhlan prisoners...stills and the script survive.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

TimR

I would disagree here.

There certainly were young upstarts who would teach him to be more dynamic and proactive and wise in his understanding - but not them. They did not teach him a superior form of warfare. They simply cheated. They were able to humiliate Candy because he was living according to principle. Their shrewdness would have meant nothing against the Nazis.

Candy's way of doing things will never be over. Principles may disappear, but they do not die. When they disappear, so do our nations.

TimR

I would like to see that edited scene.

I think we would have an interesting discussion about Dresden.

And yes - the US examples are apt to my general point. I am aware of that every day.

Have you read Modris Ekstein's Rites of Spring?

Stunning book.

Steve Crook

It doesn't survive on film but it's described in the book The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger (edited by Ian Christie). London: Faber & Faber, June 1994. ISBN 0-571-14355-5

That includes all the memos to and from Churchill where he tried to have it banned. And it compares the original and final scripts with a clever system of bracketing to show what was in each version.

The scene in question is just after Clive has questioned the German prisoners in the WWI segment. After Clive leaves, the South African officer tells the prisoners that he isn't an English gentleman so doesn't have to be concerned about good manners or good behaviour.

He orders one of the prisoners to be taken out and shot. A shot is heard out the back but they still don't talk. So he has another one taken out and shot. After a while they begin to talk

In fact the prisoners weren't really being shot. By prior arrangement with his men the prisoners had been taken out the back and gagged so that they couldn't call out. Then a shot was fired into the air.

But that was felt to be too much, even in 1943

Steve

Gazza

Well, I unwrapped my new P&P box set from HMV (thanks for the lead Steve!) put in AMOLAD, and sat in quiet amazement and astonishment from start to finish. Astonishment at the gentle audacity of it all.

For me to be really engaged with something - be it film, theatre, visual art or the written word - I need to feel that a risk is being taken, that the work is brave and pushing boundaries. AMOLAD took my breath away.

I'd seen it as a lad and easily remembered the opening, the staircase and a frozen ping-pong ball. But of course, I'd remembered very little.

Having read so much about the film on here and elsewhere, it's difficult to know where to start, how to order my thoughts, so I'll take just one tiny part of the film for now, triggered by previous remarks in this thread. About the boy on the beach.

It's an astonishing image these days; it was likely astonishing then but in a different way. Seeing children naked was an innocent thing, the idyllic image of boys plunging into pools of water, kids playing on the beach and so on. Here we have a lonely goatherd, a Pan-like figure suggesting that Peter is in another place. It's pure, it's innocent, it's mystical; depending on our perceptions, the boy has found peace in a heavenly place or he's at peace in a world ravaged by war. He's untouched by the horrors and/or is blissfully unaware of them. Then there's the fantastic device of the plane, giving the scene another context and providing a startling contrast between the boy's world and a world at war.

And I see the boy popping up again decades later - Greenaway's films particularly come to mind.

That's why AMOLAD is extraordinary; one scene, so much going on, so much to talk about.

Third Man

I don’t understand what you are saying here with “but not them” are you saying that it shouldn’t of been them to do it to Candy and if so why not?

Humiliation is a powerful emotion and should not be underestimated and when used for the right purposes its effects are far reaching. Candys humiliation was compounded by his own pompous attitude towards the younger officer who had shown initiative in, not to follow his superiors rules that war starts at midnight which is quite a ludicrous thing to put into place for war training anyway.
If only Candy had been more avuncular instead of acting like a buffoon and castigating the officer with threats and having the temerity to do something so outrageous to a higher ranking officer who has had more experience in war and flouting his and his fellow high ranking officers distinguished service in the face of their inexperienced younger soldiers. Candy eventually blows his own top at the exchange between himself and the lieutenant ranting at him and calling him a young pup how inadvertently apt of Candy to call this man a young dog, as we should all realise from this exchange between the new and the old - is that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.


Their shrewdness was meant for their superior officer and his contemporaries - to show them that their way of doing things was over - preparation for the troops was key to fighting the enemy ,mental toughness and adaptability had to be instilled in soldiers before they went off to war this can’t be done by everyone agreeing war starts at a certain time and you can’t look at the codes for the war game now because that will ruin the whole exercise. We know modern warfare is fought on information and gaining secret enemy files - we know that in The Great War information was either ignored or not gained and it resulted in unnecessary death on a huge scale.

I’m afraid Candys ways are over and if we had kept to his code then our great nations would of disappeared long ago. His principles are alive and well because we changed the way we fought.

Simon

penfold

Originally Posted by TimR
I would like to see that edited scene.

The book also includes a still from the missing sequence...the only one I've seen.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

TimR

Yes - that is what I am saying. Candy needed to learn some things, but they did not know enough - or understand enough - to be his teachers,

Why do you assume that the "war starts at midnight" agreement was an example of Candy being a pompous blowhard? I didn't get that from the material. Why it is ludicrous to put a start-time into place for war game training?

How was he behaving like a buffoon? It seems to me you are reading into him. And I suppose I am reading into the younger men.


Well, here I am in agreement with your general comments, but I think I have found the principal area of disagreement. You are assuming (from what I can tell) that Candy's way of doing things was responsible for the carnage of the western front. I don't see him as the sort of arrogant, stupid fool who would have thrown tens of thousands of men to their deaths. The original blimp would have - - but not the P&P Blimp.

You do bring up an interesting point about mental shrewdness.


There is enough in this discussion for a book. I don't think his principles are alive and well. They cannot die because they reflect an objectively true moral code, but they can certainly vanish - and they are not generally accepted, or even respected today.

As for the idea that we would have disappeared if we had fought by that code: that makes sense if you see Blimp as the sort who started - and continued - the Somme. I have a far more generous view of him.

Third Man

But they will come to - you can't stop the law of the jungle the new will overtake the old , it won't be Candy going out to face the enemy it will be the young soldiers putting their lives on the lines.



Well I would never call Candy a blowhard and I didn't - I think you misread something but he was pompous in his dealing with the young officer with his exaggerated self esteem and dignity and using it to make a point. I did not assume the 'war starts at midnight' comment made Candy pompous, the audacity of the situation made him react in that way - not very impressive.

Because it is totally unreasonable to expect war in reality to give it's time and place of strike - the attack on Pearl Harbour being the biggest example I can think of, this occurred before a formal declaration of war and ultimately the US naval base was unprepared and unsuspecting - The art of the pre-emptive strike was now part of modern warfare[/quote]

Well I just get that feeling from the scene, unfortunately it's quite painful to watch when you re-watch it because you know that Candy is a man to be admired, he kind of lets himself down - pride has a habit of doing that to people. Lest have a look at it again (if you want to).




Whether he was responsible or not he represents a rank and part of the First World War that was ultimately responsible - I don't think they put any personal responsibility on him, the young soldiers salute the rank not the man so they can only respond to rank it's nothing personal.

Simon

P.S. Maybe this Blimp talk might be better off in that thread - might be an idea for the mods to move it to it perhaps?