The War Game (II): The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp, Millions Like Us, The Gentle Sex, Two Thousand Women

A much more unusual and, as it turned out, controversial war film was made in 1943, produced by the prolific team of Powell and Pressburger. The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp starred Anton Walbrook, Deborah Kerr and Roger Livesey. It was Powell and Pressburger’s first film for their new company and was very loosely based on the character created by British cartoonist David Low. Blimp, as depicted by Low, was a member of the upper class, a personification of those who thought the British Empire was a nation on which the sun would never set. His views were right wing in the extreme – he was, in fact, the British equivalent of the diehards who had helped Hitler’s rise to power in Germany.

It had been Powell’s original conception to have Blimp played as a man reflecting extreme bigotry. This Blimp would have been ‘vicious, slashing, cruel and merciless’. The MOI, however, were so horrified that a British Colonel could be regarded in such a manner, that they brought pressure to bear on Laurence Olivier, who was then serving in the Fleet Air Arm, and had been offered the role. They advised him that it would do neither the national cause, nor his career, much good if he accepted.

So the script was re-written and toned down, and Roger Livesey cast. Livesey provided an entirely new and compelling interpretation, turning the character into a bumbling, sentimental old buffoon. The public loved him, the Low fans didn’t recognize him, and Winston Churchill, after attending the film’s premiere, thought it ‘disgraceful’. Powell claimed that, although on the whole the film was a public success, he would still have preferred Olivier in the role. However, Pressburger, who did much of the rewrites, was delighted with the result, and especially with Livesey’s fine performance.

The story concerns Clive Wynn Candy (Roger Livesey), a young Boer War VC who goes to Berlin to trap a German spy. He becomes friends with the German officer, Theo (Anton Walbrook), after they fight a duel, which is brought about by German accusations of British atrocities committed against the Boers. This was probably the part that Churchill detested the most, as he had been a young officer serving in the Boer War himself. Candy and Theo become such good friends, in fact, that Theo steals the girl to whom Candy was about to propose. But in the 1914 War, Candy meets another girl who reminds him of his first, lost love and this time he slaps the ring on her finger pretty damned quick, or at least fast by his standards.

At the outset of the Second World War, Candy is now a widower, and his old duelling chum Theo has come to live at his house as an anti-Hitler refugee. Having been axed from the Army, Brigadier-General Wynn Candy becomes a leader of the Home Guard. Before a planned exercise begins, Candy is captured in the Turkish bath of his club by a young officer, who on his own initiative has decided to start his ‘war’ before midnight and not at midnight, as laid down by the rules of engagement. Furious at the young officer’s impertinence, Candy threatens to break him, but is dissuaded from doing so by Theo. In fact, Candy realizes that ‘total war’ needs totally modern ideas. A young Deborah Kerr became a star, playing all the loves of Candy’s life - his lost first love, his wife, and later as his driver in the ATS.

The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp was an expensive and ambitious film. Shot in Technicolor, a rarity for wartime productions, it also ran for 163 minutes, well over an hour longer than the average for a contemporary feature film. Despite mixed reviews at the time, the film has been rightly recognised as a thrilling, comic and moving epic. Martin Scorsese said that when he saw the film as a young man it had a profound effect and admits the build-up to the duel sequence in the gymnasium, with its almost ritualistic and religious quality, influenced the way he directed Raging Bull (1980).

The importance given by the MOI to the role played by women in the War - both as members of the forces and in industry – resulted in a series of British films charting the changing role in society as well as injecting into the storylines the idea that working in factories and other essential services also had an element of glamour. Millions Like Us (1943) was typical of this type of propaganda, making the showbiz personnel at the MOI beam from ear to ear, and shout ‘encore’ to the busy studios.

Millions Like Us was written and directed by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat and was the only film the famous duo directed side by side on the floor. It was an account of two girls working in an aircraft factory, shot in documentary style, with the emphasis on the message of the moment. It focused firmly on relationships (family, friends, romantic), but thrown in for good measure was a cross-fertilization of class, as an ‘upper-class’ young lady (Ann Crawford) is drafted into the factory on essential war work, and in spite of her snobbish upbringing falls in love with the foreman (Eric Portman), whilst a down-to-earth working-class lass (Patricia Roc) meets and marries a boy in the Air Force (Gordon Jackson) representing the middle class. Basil Radford andNaunton Wayne as Army officers, performing with usual upper-class eccentricity, give the film some lighter moments.

Just before his death on a flight from Lisbon in 1943, Leslie Howard made his own personal statement on women at war by directing The Gentle Sex. This time the women were members of the Auxiliary Territorial Service. The story covers the lives of seven girls who are all from different backgrounds, and who meet for the first time on a train. The introduction to the film, by Howard himself, picks out the principal players amongst crowds of real servicemen and women on Victoria Station. After that we follow their activities as they are processed through actual ATS training centres. Of the seven young girls featured in the film, Rosamund John, Joan Greenwood and Lili Palmer (playing a Czech refugee) went on to distinguish themselves as fine film actresses.

It’s easy to dismiss the giddily implausible setup of another Launder-Gilliat production, Two Thousand Women (1944), as a formidable array of British talent such as Patricia Roc, Phyllis Calvert, Flora Robson, and Renée Houston are amongst those held captive in a Parisienne hotel turned women’s internment camp. Organizing themselves into groups, their primary aim is to do their utmost to upset the guards, help two RAF airmen who have bailed out near the camp escape and generally parade around in revealing underwear. The contrast ranges from glamorous Jean Kent, in silk stockings and camiknickers, to nun on the run Patricia Roc, to liberated Phyllis Calvert, practical and adjusted for a new society. Yet, although a lighthearted tone prevails and the narrative is sometimes awkward, there are persuasive sequences, and the characterization of strong, independent women is smart and subversive. It’s no surprise it proved such a hit in the UK, touching a nerve with the predominantly female audience and, in its camaraderie, even provoking genuine emotion.

Other war films aimed straight for the funny bone and were produced purely as vehicles for music-hall comedians to ridicule the ‘nasty Nazis’, like the Crazy Gang in Gas Bags (1940). But every aspect of music and drama was explored and exploited in an effort to boost morale because in the War’s later years, the British cinema public was beginning to tire of films that dealt solely with the chaps above and below the waves, the boys in light blue buzzing around in the sky, and the lads in khaki being square-bashed by a barking sergeant major with the heart of gold.

In the darkest hours, more than anything, entertainment was needed; to be removed, however briefly, from the grim situation and not constantly reminded of it. The producers needed to strike a balance: propaganda as, decreed by the MOI still had to be very much in evidence, of course, but now the medicine was to be sweetened.