The Life and Times of Colonel Blimp: why Churchill wanted it banned The film's ambiguity starts with its title. The central character is not called Blimp, he never achieves the rank of colonel, and he doesn't die. In fact, the Colonel Blimp on which "Sugar" Candy was based appeared in a satirical cartoon strip that ran in the London Evening Standard from 1934. "Blimp" quickly became shorthand for a reactionary figure, harrumphing at a modern world he neither liked nor understood. Candy is played by Roger Livesey, an ebullient, boyishly charming actor whose next two films, I Know Where I'm Going! and A Matter of Life and Death, were also Powell and Pressburger productions. But Livesey was not their first choice for Candy: they had wanted Laurence Olivier. It's easy to imagine how different Candy would have been with Olivier in the role - darker, more dashing, more intense. But he didn't get the part because, having read the script, the Ministry of Information decided it was "defeatist" and stepped in. In 1970, Powell recalled the extraordinary discussions he and Pressburger had with the ministry: "They said, 'We don't think you should make this film." [We replied] 'Go and f--- yourself! They said, 'All right, but you can't have Laurence Olivier. You're going to stop us making it? 'Oh no, we're not going to stop you. After all, this is a democracy. But we advise you not to make it, and you can't have Laurence Olivier because he's in the Fleet Air Arm, and we're not going to release him to play your Colonel Blimp." " That was one of a number of awkward encounters involving the filmmakers and officialdom, culminating in a meeting between Churchill himself and the film's "good German." Austrian-born Anton Walbrook plays Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff, whom Candy meets in Berlin in 1902. The pair fight a duel with swords after the Englishman insults the Imperial German Army; thereafter, over four decades, they remain friends. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Theo arrives in Britain as a refugee - and delivers one of the film's most powerful and moving speeches as he describes how his two sons were seduced by Nazism. At about the time of the premiere, Churchill was said to have confronted the actor backstage at the West End theatre where he was appearing in the play Watch on the Rhine. "What's this film supposed to mean?" demanded the PM. I suppose you regard it as good propaganda for Britain. Walbrook reportedly replied that only the English "would have had the courage, in the midst of the war, to tell the people such unvarnished truth." Churchill, apparently, remained unconvinced. Though the reviews were mixed (focusing mainly on its supposed lack of clarity), Blimp was a box-office hit. Estimates of audience figures for 1943 put it in fourth place behind the Ronald Colman/Greer Garson melodrama Random Harvest, Noël Coward's In Which We Serve and Casablanca. Classic status was finally bestowed on the film after it was restored and re-released in the mid-Eighties. Further restoration was completed last year following a fundraising campaign led by director Martin Scorsese, who could probably claim to be Powell and Pressburger's number-one fan. "Every time I revisit The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp," said Scorsese at the time, "it grows; it becomes richer. With every passing interval of time - and that's what the film is about, after all - it seems to have become more resonant, more moving, more profound. You could say that it's the epic of an ordinary life. And what you retain from this epic is an overpowering sense of warmth and love and friendship, of shared humour and tenderness, and a lasting impression of the most eloquent sadness. As for the then prime minister's close interest in the film - he was, after all, busy leading a nation at war - could it have been that, with a personal history that paralleled Candy's in many ways, Churchill feared he himself was a Blimp?