A film adaptation of the play of the same name about the follies of war, in which WWI is played out as a music hall attraction. There are rousing songs, shooting galleries, prizes and a scoreboard totting up the dead as Generals play leapfrog. Attenborough directed and the cast list reads like a roster of great British acting talent: Olivier, a brace of Redgraves, Gielgud, Richardson, Mills, Bogarde, More, Hawkins...
Richard Attenborough never conceived a more powerful or memorable image than the helicopter shot that closes this spiritedly satirical musical. As the camera pulls awa... more >
Richard Attenborough never conceived a more powerful or memorable image than the helicopter shot that closes this spiritedly satirical musical. As the camera pulls away from the Flanders field, the sight of the white crosses stretching endlessly into the distance speaks more eloquently of the barbaric futility of the Great War than any documentary, dissertation, reconstruction or catalogue of contemporary songs. Its chilling simplicity has lost none of its impact and it qualifies this picture to stand alongside Abel Gance's J'Accuse and Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front as a landmark in cinematic pacifism.
Considering it was released at the end of a decade that had witnessed the escalaction of the Vietnam War and the rise of a counter-culture unafraid to challenge the tarnished Establishment's specious claims to rectitude and deference, it was hardly surprising that Oh! What a Lovely War's sentiments had already been anticipated by both Richard Lester's How I Won the War and Tony Richardson's The Charge of the Light Brigade. However, few British films had been as flamboyantly ambitious as this acerbic vaudeville.
The novelty of seeing Olivier, Richardson, Mills, Gielgud and countless Redgraves warbling like turns at a village pantomime was both droll and disconcerting. Indeed, there were numerous instances of the western front's bleakly surreal humour, as staff officers leapfrogged their way to their deaths, while the top brass were made to look like pompous buffoons rather than dangerous incompetents who wilfully sent millions to their deaths through their bludgeoningly inept tactics.
There were subtle digs, such as toffs Dirk Bogarde and Susannah York boycotting German wine for the duration. But nothing surpassed the shocking cruelty of Maggie Smith's raucous recruiting cry at the fairground, which not only showed the ease with which young men were shamed into fighting a war that only really benefited their imperialist-capitalist masters, but also the blinkered, jingoistic mania that the engulfed the entire country. < less
