Winston Churchill tried to stop this movie. Government reviewers found nothing worth suppressing, and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp opened in London in June 1943. Later prints ran barely half the original length and dropped the flashback structure that gives the story its shape. The restored version, completed in 1983, is now considered among the finest British films ever made.
Cinema Under Pressure, our monthly series showcasing controversial and suppressed films, screens The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp next Monday, August 31, 2026. Filmmaker Kevin Macdonald joins us afterward in conversation with Wende film curator Aidan Victor. Macdonald is Pressburger’s grandson and biographer; who won an Academy Award for One Day in September.
His other films include Touching the Void, The Last King of Scotland, and Whitney.
Reception at 6 p.m. screening at 6:30 p.m.
