History Film / TheLifeAndDeathOfColonelBlimp

* AllGermansAreNazis: Averted! One of the main reasons Churchill disliked the film was the character of Theo, a sympathetic German (though explicitly anti-Nazi). He remained in the story thanks to Powell and Pressburger's [[DoingItForTheArt artistic commitment]]. Anton Walbrook, the actor who plays Theo had ImmigrantPatriotism for England noting the fact that their refusal to indulge in stereotypes was why they were better than UsefulNotes/NaziGermany.

* CallBack: The memorable last line. When Clive and Barbara come to their house in downtown London, she says it's a fine house on a firm foundation. Then she makes him promise that they'll both stay there and never change, even if there's a Great Flood. Clive jokes that if the floods come they'll have a lake in the basement. 20 years later, at the very end of the movie, Clive goes back to his home, which has been destroyed by bombing. The bomb damage caused the basement to flood. He remembers the exchange with Barbara, looks down into the basement, and says "Well here is the lake--and I still haven't changed."

* LoadsAndLoadsOfRoles: Creator/DeborahKerr plays Candy's idol Edith. And she then plays two more women he meets throughout the course of his life - to illustrate how they remind him of Edith.

* Also Theo: he goes from a loyal German officer with a conscience, who will fight a duel on someone else's behalf even though he doesn't really believe in duelling, through being an embittered [=WW1=] veteran, to being a melancholy emigré who's left Germany because it no longer stands for anything he can support.

* ObliviousToLove: In 1902 Berlin, Clive completely misses the obvious love signals that Edith is giving off.

* ForeignRulingClass: Clive is such a quintessential old English colonialist that he doesn't think his wife passing away in Jamaica counts as dying in a "foreign country".

* SuddenlyBilingual: Played realistically. Theo's English improves dramatically between the times we see him -- from a halting but earnest attempt at the language to eloquent and poetic fluency -- but it's over a period of decades, he learns better English in the POW camp after the war, and he becomes a British ex-pat after the Nazis' rise to power.

* EvilOnlyHasToWinOnce: Theo, in imparting the deadly seriousness of World War II, emphasizes that the Nazis do ''not'' give clemency, mercy or second chances to those they've conquered, and certainly will not to a nation that humiliated it at Versailles like Britain.

* SuddenlyBilingual: Played realistically. Theo's English improves dramatically between the times we see him -- from an halting but earnest attempt to eloquent and poetic fluency -- but it's over a period of decades, he learns better English in the POW camp after the war, and he becomes a British ex-pat after the Nazis' rise to power.

'''Theo:''' 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"! [...] Dear old Clive... 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.

* EndOfAnAge: The film covers forty years and is essentially the story about the end of the British Empire and its regimented class system and the breakdown of society that happened during the Second World War, essentially its about the Old Victorian and Edwardian England becoming 20th Century England.

* NonIndicativeName: The central character is not called Blimp, he never achieves the rank of colonel, and he doesn’t die.

* WorldOfCardboardSpeech: The film's moving final lines...
--> "''Here is the lake...and I still haven't changed.''"