UK 163m Dir: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger Key Cast: Roger Livesy and Deborah Kerr
Original Screenplay
This feels like a huge step up for British film-making. As soon as it starts you are treated to glorious technicolour which looks utterly fantastic, immediately making it look better than the majority of films that had ever been made. It also feels far more sophisticated than anything that had come before.
The film opens with the elderly Major-General Clive Wynne-Candy (Roger Livesey) being 'captured' in a Turkish Bath as part of a Home Guard training exercise. It then flashes back to tell Candy's life, covering the Boer War, the First World War and how he was rejected by the army and worked for the Home Guard in the Second World War.
The film has a fantastic tone to it, one that feels uniquely British. There's a lot of wit and a comedy within it but it's not outwardly a comedy, dealing with some quite complicated themes. It's interesting in that it doesn't really feel like propaganda in the way other 40s films did. It certainly has it's moments where it highlights the importance of the war but that's clearly not it's sole purpose and it doesn't always show the British as being heroic.
An interesting thread that runs through the film is that Candy develops a friendship with a German soldier called Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (Anton Wallbrook). Obviously this causes problems when Germany are the enemy during World War I and Theo comes to Britain during World War II as he is very much anti-Nazi. There was an element of controversy about portraying a German in a positive light at this time of war but it works really well as Theo is not a Nazi and it's him that highlights just how important the fight against the Nazis was.
There's also a bittersweet love story as Candy falls for a young woman (Deborah Kerr) who then marries Theo. He later sees a woman who looks just like her (also played by Kerr) and marries her but she eventually dies. Kerr then plays a third character who is Candy's driver Angela. You really feel the emotion of Candy's love and loss throughout the film.
The theme that bookends the film is that of growing old and the way you are treated. Candy was a hugely impressive soldier who earned huge amounts of respect and yet as an old man he is humiliated, and disrespected. It's another moment where the film pushes back against British culture and when you think about it feels like the elderly are still largely treated in the same way.
A hugely impressive film, both technically brilliant and with a fantastic, life-spanning script. It's been said that this is the best British film of all time and though there's always a discussion to be had about these things it certainly deserves to be in that conversation.
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