Like The Godfather or The Bridges Of Madison County, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp is a film whose success is made all the more remarkable by its origins. Though unknown in America, Colonel Blimp had long been a fixture of David Low's political cartoons for The Evening Standard by the time the film appeared in 1943. A stout, stodgy figure with a red face and a walrus mustache, Blimp had a habit of making grand, out-of-touch pronouncements that Low intended as "corrective of stupidity in general." In Life And Death, Roger Livesey looks like Low's Blimp to the tiniest detail when he first appears, objecting mightily when bested in a war game by a young soldier who launches an attack well before the stated start time of midnight, reasoning that the Nazis won't follow the rules. Gentlemen don't conduct wars that way, of course, and in tracing that bit of foolish logic back to its source, the film attempts to find an entire life. It's almost as suspect as making an epic movie to find the source of Andy Capp's penchant for soccer, beer, and destructive relationships, but Powell and Pressburger bring their combination of good humor, visual flair, and unflinching insight to the three telling episodes that make up the film's 160-minute run time. (Lifelong admirer Martin Scorsese, who with Powell provides the 1988 commentary track found on this new DVD version, is among those responsible for making the full version available again.) Livesey's Blimp begins as a rakish young officer out to repudiate a German spy's slander about the British military in 1902. Those good intentions earn Livesey a duel, a scarred lip, the admiration of English governess Deborah Kerr, and the friendship of Anton Walbrook, the German officer sent to battle him. In subsequent episodes, WWI devalues the currency of Livesey's "right is might" philosophy, his relationship with Walbrook twists with the fortunes of the German nation, and two more women played by Kerr change the course of his life. On its initial release, a gesture of misdirected patriotism worthy of Low's Blimp made the film a center of controversy: Winston Churchill himself tried to stifle its release, fearing it would make Britain look bad in the eyes of the world. He couldn't have been more wrong. In contrast to its protagonist's high-minded, outmoded ideals of maintaining honor through war's darkest moments, the rest of the world looks bad.