Winston Churchill hated The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, and tried to have it banned when it was released in 1943. But Martin Scorsese, a champion of directors, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, consider it a masterpiece. A.L. Kennedy, writing as a Scot, is fascinated by the nationalism that The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp explores. She finds human worth in the film and the pathos of stifled emotions and unfulfilled lives. '"If he is unaware of his passions," she writes of Clive Candy, the film's central figure, "this is because his pains have become habitual, a part of personality, and because he was never taught a language that could speak of emotions like pain."