Key Points
In North Africa, British troops were on the retreat from the German Afrika Korps, while in Southeast Asia the vital colonies of Hong Kong, Malaya and Singapore had fallen to the Japanese with humiliating speed..
Tracing this soldier's life over the subsequent four decades, three wars, and two doomed romances, Powell and Pressburger explore how Candy's reactionary worldview is shaped and calcified by his experiences as an unquestioning servant of the British military..
According to SP Mackenzie's book British War Films 1939-45, Secretary of State for War PJ Grigg wrote to Powell in June 1934, "I am getting rather tired of the theory that we can best enhance our reputation in the eyes of our own people or the rest of the world by drawing attention to the faults which the critics attribute to us, especially when, as in the present case, the criticism no longer has any substance.".
"Bracken's line was that British propaganda was geared towards the differences between democracy and dictatorship, and that to suppress the film would have been the sort of thing the Nazis did," James Chapman, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Leicester and author of The British at War: Cinema, State and Propaganda, tells BBC Culture..
"Blimp isn't the only wartime British film to feature a German character, but is the only one with a German in such a prominent role, and who offers a critique of the British conduct of the war," says Chapman..
