The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is the story of a British officer who rises through the ranks, but it touches on much more. Shown in flashback, we see Clive “Sugar” Candy change from a dashing young man to a retired brigadier general and wrestle with the conflicting ideas of British fair play and the ruthless tactics of modern warfare.

According to the directors, the idea for the film came from a scene cut from their previous film, One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (IA #27), in which an elderly member of the crew tells a younger one, “You don’t know what it’s like to be old.” Due to the British government’s disapproval of the film, it was not released in the United States until 1945 and in a modified form, reduced to 150 minutes, then later to 90 minutes for television. We’re fortunate to have the original 163-minute version available in the Internet Archive Top 100.