6 Comments

Interesting read as always, The Life and Times of Colonel Blimp is in one of my favourite, he was a decent man just a man out of time. I get your point about the anti-colonial aspect of the film but I think a lot of people miss the call for 'Total War' from the characters including Theo. I understand one of the reasons Churchill disliked the film was due to characterisation of Theo as a decent German despite the fact his support of defeating Germany would bring the end of his own estranged sons. I found the speech about how they were 'Good Nazi's' striking.

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Yes - that speech is quite shocking, especially in contrast to the picaresque tone (and moreso because, presumably, Pressburger would have known people in Germany whose deaths he is by implication accepting here). On the anticolonialism thing - it's a bit of a throwaway comment here, but I see a lot of people who are very committed to the idea that Britain has been historically jingoistic and ignorant of the ills done in the name of the nation, which even a quick skim of the Blimp cartoons suggests is v much not the case.

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I saw Sathnum Sanghera at the Times+ event on Wednesday. Absolutely brilliant and disturbingly he said that a major amount of his trolling comes from India.

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I think that Colonel Blimp definitely inspired Dad's Army. All of the Archers' Productions are still wonderful.

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An excellent piece about two works of art which I have myself seen for the first time relatively recently. It seems important tho to mention Daniel Craig's frankly wildly variable Geordie accent, which reminded me of the old Tom Thumb sketches Vic and Bob used to do. I was half-expecting Geordie to break out 'Is it giro day, Tom?'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAFt_4JJsa8

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Haaaa! I have to make a confession here, which is that I have pretty much a tin ear for accents. It took me an embarrassingly long time (i.e. more than 30 seconds) to realise that Julianne Moore was doing a bit in 30 Rock.

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