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I Say, Sir!
While not exactly a summer pool scene per se, it does happen in a pool. It’s also simply an amazing scene in a perfect movie. So how could we not share it!?
Tyler Clark
July 05, 2023
Good morning Consumers. This is please consume, the film newsletter that loves you more than Quentin Tarantino loves feet.
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
While not exactly a summer pool scene per se, it does happen in a pool.
It’s also simply an amazing scene in a perfect movie.
So how could we not share it!?
“I Say, Sir!”
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is considered one of the greatest British films of all time, and with good reason.
Made by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the minds behind such films as Black Narcissus, A Matter of Life and Death, and Martin Scorsese’s favorite movie, The Red Shoes, Colonel Blimp documents the life of Colonel Wynn-Candy through 40 years in the military.
It’s a film about love, friendship, the changing landscape of war, and takes the too often rare approach of defending the dignity of the old against the youth.
Winston Churchill famously despised the film, no doubt thinking the Colonel was based on himself (in actuality, it was based on a cartoon of the same name by David Low in the Evening Standard), but mostly because of the film’s message of friendship.
The movie was filmed in 1942, in the midst of the Second World War. “Most of the films being made were implicitly patriotic, if not outright propaganda vehicles,” writes Molly Haskell in her essay for the Criterion edition. Colonel Blimp went against the grain in a major way, challenging the rigid perspective of evil Germans by including a “good” German with whom Candy is a lifelong friend. It also took an ambivalent stance on war by showing that it wasn’t all glory and patriotism.
Churchill tried to have the film suppressed by refusing usage of army tents and vehicles for filming, as well as declining to have Luarence Olivier, who was the first choice for Candy, released from service.
In the end, Churchill had nothing to worry about. The sheer artistic passion was shocking to the British public who were used to realism in their films, not colors and moods!
War Starts at Midnight!
This scene is at the beginning of the film.
A young officer has ignored the orders that a military exercise will start at midnight-a fact that Candy keeps reminding him of-and jumps the gun under the assumption that the enemy wouldn’t follow the rules, so why should he?
He enters the officers' baths and accosts Candy, who at this point is the Major General, and declares him a prisoner.
The scene ends with Candy and the officer falling, fighting, into the pool and moving into one of the greatest time jumps in all of cinema, without a cut!
The dialogue between Candy and the officer serves to set up the rest of the film.
“You laugh at my big belly but you don’t know how I got it! You laugh at my mustache but you don’t know why I grew it!” shout Candy as he pummels the officer, and we know we’re about to see why he has them.
Today’s Scene
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