Why haven't they...

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

Gee Trefor, I am afraid that you have missed the point about Chaplin's The Great Dictator, which was that it was a film MADE in the USA, at an AMERICAN studio, and with an AMERICAN cast - with one NOTABLE exception (notable in that Chaplin didn't serve in the Great War, and resided in the United States from 1914-1953); that exception being Mr. Chaplin. True he did have to sink a lot of his money into the project (just like Mel Gibson did in The Passion of Chirst to get that project off the ground. Both men, by the way, were the producers of the films they made, and it's the producers who supply the cash.). But, since a movie made in the USA doesn't seem to qualify as "an American film" according to your rather parsed definition, I'll offer another film from the year 1940: The Mortal Storm. The picture concerns itself with how the Nazi takeover in Germany splits a family, and ruins the life of the father, a famous academic. Also from Hollywood, that same year, was Escape which focuses on Robert Taylor (the star) getting his mother out of a concentration camp in Nazi Germany before the start of the war.

I wasn't impressed by The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp myself - it was based upon the cartoon character created by David Lowe in the pre war 1930s as a satire on the establishment and didn't transcribe into a good war movie.

Well, the reason that it isn't a good war movie is because it's not a war movie (despite what wikipedia may think). It also bears no resemblance to the David Lowe comic strip, with the possible exception of Roger Livesey's moustache . The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is first an foremost a story about love and friendship, honour and doing "the right thing". It starts in WWII, then flashes back to the Boer War where the hero, Roger Livesey, meets the woman he will always love, and the man he will always like and respect. Their paths cross repeatedly going from the Boer War, WWI and, finally, WWII. One of the subtle ironies of the film is it's title: The Colonel Blimp comic strip character was a bumbling old geezer who never got it right. In the film, the main charcter (Wynn-Candy, plaid by Livesey) possesses every trait that represents the best in the British character. Made in 1943 it is a long movie-- 163 minutes -- and worth every minute you spend watching it. By and large The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is universally considered to be one of the very best films to ever come out of Britain.

It's a shame you can't appreciate it.