I’ve been thinking about The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp lately. I never really understood the meaning of the film until just recently.
There is a moment towards the end where Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff tells Clive Candy that Nazis cannot be defeated with completely moral ways. This always bothered me because, as Nieche pointed out, you don’t want to become the monster you are trying to defeat.
It’s a very long, wandering movie and sometimes it’s hard to keep track of what the point is. But I get it now. I didn’t think the world would have this problem again so soon, and I didn’t think it would appear in this country.
In part Kretschmar-Schuldorff says:
“Clive! If you let yourself be defeated by them, just because you are too fair to hit back the same way they hit at you, there won’t be any methods but Nazi methods! If you preach the Rules of the Game while they use every foul and filthy trick against you, they will laugh at you! They’ll think you’re weak, decadent!”
“This is not a gentleman’s war. This time you’re fighting for your very existence against the most devilish idea ever created by a human brain - Nazism. And if you lose, there won’t be a return match next year… perhaps not even for a hundred years.”
