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What’s expected of a career military man? And what’s expected of a human being?

These questions are at the heart of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s epic masterpiece, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Made in London at the height of World War II, it follows the 40-year career of Clive Candy (later Clive Wynne-Candy) through three wars and the peaces in between.

Candy is a decent fellow, born into money but not prone to putting on airs. He believes that rules and traditions are there to be followed, and he takes great pride in the fact that England always fights honorably (his viewpoint, and the film’s but not mine). His beliefs will be challenged over the picture’s nearly three-hour running time.

It’s an easy, entertaining, and thoughtful three hours. Powell and Pressburger have filled the story with love, heartbreak, humor, light satire, cinematic panache, and a remarkable talent for moving the story forward in unusual and delightful ways.

I discussed this film in detail last October, in Love, Friendship, Aging, and Playing by the Rules: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, and I don’t want to repeat myself. So let me mention a few things I didn’t bring up then.

Although the film encompasses a man’s life, it avoids much of what would conventionally be considered dramatic or exciting. We know, for instance, that he received the Victoria Cross during the Boer War, but we’re never shown why. Important characters die in the years between one scene and the next.

But Colonel Blimp isn’t about the big, exciting moments. It’s about friendship, love, and adapting to changing time. But then, so is life.

The British Government, and especially Winston Churchill, hated this film and wanted to keep it from getting made. This seems odd, because Colonel Blimp may be the most patriotically British film ever made. It glories in England’s sense of fair play (which was never all that fair), even as it preaches that the time for fair play is over.

I admit to being confused by one off-screen transition. When he’s young, he’s Clyde Candy. After he marries a woman named Barbara Wynne, he remains Clyde Candy, and she’s Mrs. Clyde Candy. Then he’s suddenly Clyde Wynne-Candy. I don’t know if such name changes were common in England in the first half of the 20th century.

However the main character got his name (which, either way, isn’t Colonel Blimp), this is a film to see, to revisit, and to treasure.

First Impresssion

Like most Criterion discs, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp comes in a clear plastic case with an artful cover. Inside you’ll find a single disc, and a colorful booklet dominated by an essay by Molly Haskell.

How Does It Look?

Cinematographer Georges Perinal shot Colonel Blimp in three-strip Technicolor, and used that amazing and difficult format in subtle and beautiful ways. The film has recently undergone a major, 4K restoration, and when I saw it theatrically last fall, it looked great.

It still does. The details, the rich color palate, and the way the color red pops when the filmmakers want to control your eyes, all work as they should. It’s a great-looking disc of a great-looking film.

How Does It Sound?

As is Criterion’s custom, the original mono track is reproduced here in uncompressed PCM. There were a few moments when I had trouble understanding the dialog, but not many. For the most part, it was a reasonably good reproduction of a well-made 1943 soundtrack.

And the Extras

• Commentary by Martin Scorsese and Michael Powell: Powell clearly recorded his commentary first, and Scorsese (a major fan of the film) came in later to fill the blank spaces–or at least some of them. Powell, who was 82 or 83 when he recorded the commentary in 1988, speaks in a dull monotone, although the stories he tells are fascinating. Scorsese’s stories are better told, but not quite as interesting. There’s too much time when neither of them is speaking.
• Introduction by Martin Scorsese: 14 minutes. HD. He covers quite a bit of ground here, discussing his first time seeing the film on TV as a child, the problems with the British war office, and how the government kept Laurence Olivier from being in the picture. He also discusses how Colonel Blimp influenced Raging Bull.
• A Profile of Colonel Blimp: Making of doc. 24 minutes. SD. Made in 2000, this is a reasonably interesting but conventional making-of doc.
• Restoration Demonstration: 5 minutes. HD. Very briefly, Scorsese describes three-strip Technicolor, the issues involved with restoring it, and the challenges that this particular film brought with it.
• Optimism and Sheer Will: 29 minutes. HD. Thelma Schoonmaker Powell is both Scorsese’s film editor and Powell’s widow. Here she discusses Powell’s personal relationship to the film. Oddly, the credits are in French.
• Stills Gallery
• David Low’s Colonel Blimp: Years before the movie, cartoonist David Low created the character of Colonel Blimp. Here we get a collection of his cartoons. I can’t help thinking these would look better in a book.

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George Orwell might have created something like Brazil if he had had a sense of humor. But since he didn’t (at least not any that shows up in his work), the task was left to Terry Gilliam to create this absurd, dark, tragic, yet hilarious look into a dystopian world of bureaucracy gone mad.

A controversial film with a troubled history and four different versions, Brazil combines frightening social commentary with brilliant comedy. Criterion just released this Blu-ray, along with an extensive collection of extras.

Set "Somewhere in the 20th Century," and obviously in England, Brazil follows the adventures of Sam Lowry, a lowly government bureaucrat who wants to remain a lowly government bureaucrat (Jonathan Price). But when the wrong man is arrested and dies under torture, and Sam consequently meets the woman of his dreams, his already-teetering world comes crashing down.

The real star of the film isn’t Price (who’s wonderful), but the society in which his character lives–a place overwhelmed with odd-looking and barely working technology, and a cruel, heartless bureaucracy. Every room is filled with wide ducts carrying..who knows what. Televisions and computers have tiny screens, with larger magnifying screens in front of them. (The film was made in 1985, when home computers were still a novelty, yet it predicts a world where people can sneak peaks at movies while the boss isn’t looking.) Automated gadgets are overly complex and always breaking down.

Every so often, something blows up. The government blames these explosions on terrorists, but you can’t take this government at its word. The explosions could easily be the result of a badly-designed, crumbling infrastructure.

It doesn’t matter, of course. The "terrorist" bombings gives the government  an excuse to arrest anyone who may be the slightest bit suspicious, torture them for information, and then bill them for the expenses. ("Don’t fight it," a friendly guard tells a victim awaiting torture. "It could ruin your credit rating.") The department that tortures prisoners is called Information Retrieval.

Michael Palin–like Gilliam a Monty Python veteran–plays the torturer as an outwardly nice guy, somewhat smarmy, and professionally ambitious. He always has a friendly smile.

Sam escapes from the horrors of his society by dreaming. When he sleeps or daydreams, he’s a heroic figure with wings, soaring through the skies and rescuing a fair maiden from assorted villains. These dreams tell us a lot of Sam as a person–he’s an inept fool who wants to be a superhero (I can identify with that). His heroic desires will lead to both tragedy and an odd sort of victory.

For all its dark subject matter, Brazil is an extremely funny movie. Gilliam’s extraordinary sense of visual humor provides the machines gone wild, the army of bureaucrats dancing down the hall, and some near-perfect and highly original double takes. His screenplay collaborators, Tom Stoppard and Charles McKeown, add a layer of that wonderfully British, low-key verbal wit. Robert DeNiro, in what I believe was his first comic role, steals a few scenes as a heroic repairman.

Brazilian History

There’s no point discussing Criterion’s Blu-ray without first covering the film’s problematic history.

Universal Pictures and 20th Century-Fox jointly financed Brazil, with Universal owning North American rights and Fox the International ones. Gilliam’s contract gave him final cut, provided the film was no longer than 120 minutes.

Gilliam turned in a 142-minute cut, which Fox immediately released in Europe. That explains why this version is generally called the European Cut.

But Universal executives hated the film. They were horrified to discover that Gilliam had used their money to create a work of art.

Hoping to please them, Gilliam recut it, but could only get it down to 132 minutes–a version now known as the American Cut. Universal took the movie away from him, and started massively reworking it, making Sam a much more of a conventional hero, and giving the picture a happy ending.

While the studio was butchering his film, Gilliam took the fight public, with an ad in Variety and special screenings of the American Cut. Based on these screenings, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association proclaimed Brazil the Best Film of 1985.

That shamed Universal into releasing the American cut, but it also pissed them off. They continued to work on their own version, and when the film’s theatrical run was over, they sold their 94-minute "Love Conquers All" cut to television.

Meanwhile, the European Cut–which could reasonably be called the director’s cut–was occasionally screened here in American. Eventually, Universal made this one available for revival theaters.

In the 1990s, Criterion approached Gilliam about doing a Director’s Signature Laserdisc release. He accepted, but chose to create yet another version. This one, sometimes called Terry’s Final Cut, and running 143, became the new standard–and has been released on DVD and Blu-ray by both Universal (bare bones) and Criterion (lots of extras). It is not, I believe, significantly different than the European Cut.

First Impression

Criterion ships the two-disc Brazil in a standard-sized, clear case. Unfortunately, it’s one of those cases where disc 1 is over disc 2, so you have to remove it get to the second disc. The first disc is tricky to remove, and the second one is much worse. I’m always worried that I’m going to break one.

It also comes with a thin book that includes a sometimes-interesting but uneven essay by David Sterritt.

How Does It Look?

Terry Gilliam likes to fill his movies with small, visual details. And he never did that more than in Brazil–his first film on a Hollywood budget.

Criterion’s transfer does justice to Gilliam’s vision, allowing you to examine, appreciate, and wallow in Gilliam and his collaborators’ wild imaginations. The absurd, overly-complicated machinery, the dank ugliness of the homes and factories, and the comic facial expressions all come out here better than they ever have before in a home video format. Brazil cries out for Blu-ray.

How Does It Sound?

Like most Hollywood movies of the 1980s, Brazil was originally released in the 35mm Dolby Stereo format. This involved two-track stereo media, and some electronic wizardry to send the sounds from those two tracks in four separate directions–left, center, right, and surround. Most home theater sound systems can decode that electronic wizardry, referred to now as Dolby Surround 2.0.

So it’s appropriate that Criterion has provided Brazil in a Dolby Surround 2.0 soundtrack, mastered with DTS-HD Master Audio lossless compression. In other words, it’s the original theatrical mix, only it sounds better. Much better.

And the Extras

When Criterion released Brazil on laserdisc, they included a mammoth selection of extras, all of which were ported to the three-disc DVD boxed set, and now to the two-disc Blu-ray package. This time around, they’ve updated some of the extras.

Disc 1

This disc contains Terry’s final cut of the film. The only extra is Gilliam’s commentary, which is well-worth listening to.

But there are two extras I wish were on this disc. Criterion should have used Blu-ray’s seamless branching technology to include the European and American cuts, as well.

Disc 2

The biggest extra on this disc is the 94-minute Love Conquers All version. I found this too depressing to watch until I tried it with David Morgan’s fascinating commentary. With that, it’s a must for any Brazil fan.

One irony here: In some ways, this is the more radical version, since the happy ending celebrates violent revolution against society.

You also don’t want to miss The Battle of Brazil, a 55-minute documentary on the various versions and the controversy surrounding them.

Another doc, "What is Brazil," was shot as during the film’s production. It’s breezy and fun, but not essential.

A section called "The Production Notebook" contains short docs on how the film was made. It covers screenwriting, storyboards, design, special effects, fashion, and the musical score. This section has been improved since the Laserdisc and DVD versions, replacing screens to text with narration.

Brazil deserves royal treatment. Criterion has provided it.

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Few filmmakers could make a thriller that has the audience biting their nails about whether the champagne will run out before the party is over–or a romance where the hero treats the heroine with contempt, but the villain truly and tenderly loves her. Yet the team of Ben Hecht and Alfred Hitchcock could put all that and more into one great motion picture.

That picture is Notorious. MGM and 20th Century-Fox are releasing this Blu-ray version of Hitchcock’s masterpiece (well, one of his masterpieces). Neither company was involved with the film’s production or original release.

Ingrid Bergman plays Alicia Huberman, the apex of this romantic triangle. The daughter of a convicted Nazi spy, she’s made a reputation for herself as a good-time party girl. She drinks heavily and apparently sleeps around (something that an American movie could only vaguely imply in 1946). Then a government agent named Devlin (Cary Grant; we’re never told the character’s first name) offers her a chance to redeem her reputation and prove her patriotism. She’s to fly with him to Rio, and then…who knows?

By the time they get her assignment, Alicia and Devlin are in love–a complication that makes the assignment very bad news. She is to befriend and seduce an old friend of her father’s, Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains). She succeeds beyond everyone’s hopes. Sebastian clearly loves Alicia deeply, and seems as devoted to her happiness as he is to reviving the Nazi cause.

What we have here is a heroine who, on orders of the man she loves, is literally sleeping with the enemy. And the man who sent her onto this dangerous and degrading mission burns with jealousy, hating her for doing what he told her to do.

Neither Hitchcock nor Hecht are known as ahead-of-their-time feminists, yet Notorious clearly condemns male hypocrisy concerning female sexuality. Note the scenes with Devlin and his superiors. When Alicia is with them, Devlin can’t even look at her, while the other men treat her with chivalrous courtesy. But when she’s out of the room, they talk of her with contempt, while Devlin defends her honor.

Hitchcock fills the second half of Notorious with some of his scariest set pieces. The wine cellar sequence has been studied by would-be filmmakers for decades, and with good reason. And the long walk down the stairs can tie your stomach in knots–no matter how many times you’ve seen the movie.

Before things get scary, Notorious contains one of cinema’s greatest kisses. The Production Code Authority ruled that no on-screen kisses could last longer than 30 seconds. Hitchcock got around that rule by breaking the long kiss up into multiple, shorter kisses. Kiss, talk a bit, kiss again, and so on. From the audience’s point of view, it’s one very long kiss.

Like so much of Hitchcock’s work, Notorious is great entertainment. But it’s impossible to watch without thinking about hypocrisy, male chauvinism, and the moral compromises people make to fight a worse evil.

How It Looks

I suspect that the original Notorious negative has been lost or destroyed; or maybe it’s just in very bad condition. While the video quality is a big improvement over the Criterion DVD, it doesn’t measure up to the best transfers I’ve seen from other black-and-white films of similar vintage. The image is just a touch soft, and a little too grainy. In one or two places I spotted what looked like nitrate decomposition.

Yet the transfer is more than acceptable. There’s many a fine detail that I haven’t seen since I last caught Notorious on the big screen. The bright Rio sun and the dark noir shadows played their atmospheric roles without hurting the picture. This is probably as good as Notorious is going to get.

As is often the case with films of the 1940′s, the HD transfer sometimes brings out the fakery. Only a second unit crew visited Rio, and most of the exterior scenes involving the actors were done in front of rear-projection screens. That’s extremely obvious here, but it was just as obvious with the original audiences. In 1946, people accepted such techniques the way we accept fake-looking CGI today.

(I’ve often wondered what Notorious would have been like if Hitchcock had made it a decade later. He would have shot it in Technicolor and VistaVision, and he would have shot the exteriors in Rio. It would have been a better looking movie, but it would lack much of the atmosphere that makes the film work.)

How It Sounds

MGM and Fox present Notorious with the original mono mix, in lossless DTS-HD Master Audio. It doesn’t sound like modern, explosive surround sound, but it’s not supposed to. This is the original soundtrack, sounding as good as it possibly can.

And the Extras

This disc comes with a large selection of extras. Some of them are even worth listening to.

• Commentary by Film Professor Rick Jewell. Imagine signing up for a class in a subject that fascinates you, then discovering that the professor is the dullest lecturer alive. I gave up about half an hour into the lecture. He spent those 30 minutes droning on about the history of RKO.
• Commentary by Film Professor Drew Casper. This one’s a lot better. Casper’s voice drenches with enthusiasm (sometimes too much enthusiasm) as he goes through the film shot by shot, discussing the characters, the story, the cinematography, and a lot of other topics. I didn’t agree with everything he said, but it was always interesting.
• Isolated music and effects track.
• The Ultimate Romance: The Making of Notorious: 28 minute. A pretty typical making-of documentary. Interesting, but not exceptional.
• Alfred Hitchcock: The Ultimate Spymaster: 13 minutes. A number of film historians make the case that Hitchcock defined the spy genre, and influenced the James Bond films–although the Bond franchise lacks Hitchcock’s moral complexity. There’s a fair amount to think about here.
• The American Film Institute Award: The Key to Hitchcock: 3 minutes. We get a few brief excerpts from Hitchcock’s AFI award ceremony. It includes his speech, where he honors his wife and primary collaborator, Alma Reville. That’s good, because too many people forget that Hitchcock was the famous half of a team.
• 1948 Radio adaptation starring Joseph Cotton and Ingrid Bergman: 59 minutes. It’s a curious adaptation, vastly inferior to the film, of course, but interesting in how they adapt it to the shorter and audio-only medium. You even get to hear to the old commercials. It’s also the only extra on this disc that’s also on the Criterion DVD.
• Two audio interviews with Hitchcock, one by Peter Bogdanovich and the other by François Truffaut
• Restoration comparison: A very short look at how they fixed up the image from their original source material. They never say exactly what that source material was.
• Theatrical trailer: This makes it look like a love triangle drama, with little suggestion of espionage or thrills.

Here’s one of the great Hollywood movies, and MGM and Fox have done a solid job bringing it to us in Blu-ray.

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