Customer Reviews

Oh! What a Lovely War

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4 star:		(10)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"Oh! What a Lovely War" takes on nothing less than the immense task of encapsulating the entirety of World War One into two and a half hours. This is a story of courage and sacrifice beyond comprehension, and of stupidity and heartlessness on a truly monumental scale. But the courage and sacrifice are not, as in the usual telling of tales, that of a handful of heroes, but of an entire generation. And the stupidity and heartlessness belong to the military and world leaders of the day. As monarchs, generals, and politicians wallow in luxury and privilege, the ordinary soldier wallows in mud - and brutal death. This is a story that will make you gasp and cry `never again.' And you know your cry is in vain.

A notice after the opening screen credits states something that must be kept in mind throughout the film: "The principal statements made by the historical characters in this film are based on documentary evidence, and the words of the songs are those sung by the troops during the First World War." Therefore, to underscore the absurdity of an international effort that did its utmost to murder an entire generation, much of the dialogue of the historical characters, comfortably ensconced away from the fighting, sounds absurd. Is it really possible, for example, that General Haig, after considering the huge loss of life on both sides, could have said something like "in the end, the Germans will have five thousand men and we will have ten thousand, so we will have won"?. Apparently so.

The men in the trenches, on the other hand, had the unenviable choice of facing probable death or mutilation on the battlefield, or facing the firing squad for cowardice if they deserted. They express themselves in the memorable songs of the day, many of which are rich in gallows humor ("hanging on the old barbed wire" is one cheerful refrain). But despite its gruesome themes, there is not one drop of blood in the film: when death comes, it arrives in the form of a bright red poppy.

Those who cannot relate to epochal events except through the eyes of a circumscribed set of characters may have trouble with this film. And some may find frivolous a film that depicts human tragedy through upbeat song and dance numbers (all of which are wonderfully staged and performed). But recall that the words sung are those of the actual participants in the unfolding tragedy. "We're here because we're here because we're here" underscores the troops' view of the meaningless sacrifice. If their impious words set to beloved hymns seem offensive, perhaps it is because when life is at its bleakest, humor can help save one's sanity.

This film, directed by the great Richard Attenborough, is a work of genius; it delivers a message that is all-too-relevant for our times.

Yes, I know it is a hackneyed old cliche but in this case, entirely correct. I first saw this movie in the Cinema in London's Kilburn during it's first run in the late Sixties. About halfway through it some people got up and left, feeling that it was abusive to the memory of those who gave their lives in that War to end all Wars. How wrong they were. The Movie is a masterpiece in every respect. The sheer stupidity, the waste of that generation are both self evident on screen. Note the beautiful Maggie Smith when viewed from a distance in the Theatre, note again how thick the make up when we are on stage with her "Taking the shilling". The other face of war. The final scene on the glorious South Downs as the camera pulls back to reveal the hillside is breathtaking and at once heartbreaking. In all the times I have seen this movie, I have yet to watch the whole of this scene without a flood of tears filling my eyes. Do I remember which lovely young girl I took to see it in 1969? Sadly no. Have I ever forgotten the movie? No.

I first saw this film on the big screen in London when it was first released. I have been waiting for this film to appear on any video format for years. I can only hope that this is not the edited version. Shown on television only rarely and severely edited the film loses its sarcastic wit and anti-war feelings.
The very idea of setting a musical retelling of the WWI, from the English point of view, on Brighton Pier's Fun Fair is audacious to say the least. "England Put the Kibasch on the Kaiser" truly begins the fun and shock. Maggie Smith's appearance as a Music Hall star is wonderful as she exhorts the troops to sign up. All of the songs, excepting the title one are from the era and provide enough feeling to swamp your feelings. Hooray! I shall use it in class Winter Quarter. It will be a revelation to those who have not seen it!

Genetic testing, I think, would show Oh! What a Lovely War and Paths of Glory to be fraternal twins. Both are anti-war, both use the appalling circumstances of World War I to underline the corruption of old men who use war as a way to occupy their time and cause young men to die in the tens of thousands. But where Paths of Glory uses bitterness, Oh! What a Lovely War uses irony and the clever trick of turning our own jingoistic instincts against us. The movie is a pastiche of fantasy, fact, music halls, songs with words often used by the soldiers and the real-life statements of key personalities. There are two threads which connect everything together. The first is the fate of the Smith family and the five sons who eagerly sign up to beat the Hun. The second is the smugness, the certitude, the deadly self-confidence of those who make decisions about war. The fantasy takes place on a great seaside boardwalk with a wonderful wooden pier and ornate pavilions at the end. Here the Smith family and hundreds of others line up at the counter to buy tickets to join in "the ever popular War Game." Inside the music hall Maggie Smith sings "I'll Make a Man of You," a seducing, winking recruiting song...

"The Army and the Navy need attention,
The outlook isn't healthy you'll admit,
But I've got a perfect dream of a new recruiting scheme,
Which I think is absolutely 'it.'
If only other girls would do as I do
I believe that we could manage it alone,
For I turn all suitors from me but the sailor and the Tommy.
I've an army and a navy of my own.

"On Sunday I walk out with a Soldier,
On Monday I'm taken by a Tar,
On Tuesday I'm out with a baby Boy Scout,
On Wednesday a Hussar;
On Thursday a gang oot wi' a Scottie,
On Friday, the Captain of the crew;
But on Saturday I'm willing, if you'll only take the shilling,
To make a man of any one of you."

And off go the first of the Smith sons up to the stage, encouraged by their proud and smiling wives, to take the shilling and walk out into the trenches. While the pier may be fantasy, the trenches are all too realistic. It is at Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig's headquarters at the pier where sports score boards are kept of the battles: "The Somme, 1916. British losses: 607,781 officers and men. Ground gained: Nil." It's at the pier where staff officers, well away from the fighting, play leap frog while sending out orders to attack. "One more frontal assault, gentlemen, and we shall win." And men leave the trenches as ordered to charge forward with rifles and bayonets against machine guns and barbed wire. In a looney atmosphere the troops are lined up for Sunday services and hear from an upper-class preacher, "I'm sure you'll all be glad to hear news from the home front. The Archbishop of Canterbury has made it known it is no sin to labor for the war on the Sabbath. And I'm sure you'll also like to know the Chief Rabbi has absolved your Jewish brethren from abstaining from pork in the trenches. Likewise, His Holiness the Pope has ruled that the eating of flesh on Friday is no longer a mortal sin..." Through it all the home front, energized against the Hun, reads the death lists with trembling but brave lips, and the men who die deal with the absurdity by singing their own morbid versions of songs...

"If you want the old battalion,
We know where they are, we know where they are,
We know where they are.
If you want the old battalion, we know where they are,
They're hanging on the old barbed wire.
We've seen them, we've seen them,
Hanging on the old barbed wire."

Even their laughter at Christmas can have an ironic twist...

"It was Christmas Day in the cookhouse, the happiest time of the year,
Men's hearts were full of gladness and their bellies full of beer,
When up popped Private Shorthouse, his face as bold as brass,
He said We don't want your puddings, you can stick them up your...tidings of co-omfort and joy, comfort and joy, o-oh ti-idings of co-omfort and joy.

"It was Christmas Day in the harem, the eunuchs were standing 'round,
And hundreds of beautiful women were stretched out on the ground,
Along came the wicked Sultan, surveying his marble halls,
He said Whaddya want for Christmas boys, and the eunuchs answered...tidings of co-omfort and joy, comfort and joy, o-oh ti-idings of comfort and joy."

The film ends with one of the most touching and slightly bitter conclusions I've ever seen. The Smith family, now just the women, walk on a fine, sunlit day through a meadow filled with white crosses. The camera pulls back and back until we can only see these four moving white dots in a vast, endless meadow of green grass and white crosses. And we can hear soldiers faintly singing their own version of "They Wouldn't Believe Me."

"And when they ask us, how dangerous it was,
Oh, we'll never tell them, no, we'll never tell them.
We spent our pay in some cafe,
And fought wild women night and day,
'Twas the cushiest job we ever had.

"And when they ask us, and they're certainly going to ask us,
The reason why we didn't win the Croix de Guerre,
Oh, we'll never tell them, oh, we'll never tell them.
There was a front, but damned if we knew where."

This was Richard Attenborough's first job as a director and he pulls it off with great effectiveness. He rounded up the cream of British actors, starting with Lawrence Olivier. These aren't stunt cameos. Even when some of the parts are just a few lines, the actors perform with great effect. They are key to the opening scene when, playing the important rulers and statesmen in 1913 and 1914, they are gathered around inside a fantasy pavilion and Attenborough constructs the background to the war using them.

Oh, What a Lovely War is not without its faults. At 2 hours and 24 minutes it starts to seem a bit long. The realistic trench and battle scenes, for me, come off as perhaps a little too conscientious and well-meaning. Even so, I think the film remains one of the best and oddest of the anti-war movies. It was based on the Joan Littlewood theater piece, which was small-scale, brisk and acerbic. If any, like me, squirm at Paths of Glory's earnestness, they might want to sample its fraternal twin directed by Attenborough. The DVD transfer looks very good. The extras include a full commentary track by Attenborough. I sampled parts of it and it seems to be an informative and thoughtful piece of work. There are filmed interviews with some of the remaining members of the cast and production crew, along with Attenborough, which is broken down into three featurettes.

In keeping with the spirit of both Oh, What a Lovely War and Paths of Glory, it seems appropriate to give Wilfred Owen the last word. He was a young officer in WWI who often wrote poetry when he wasn't fighting. Owen was killed leading yet another charge just four days before the armistice was declared. He was 25. His poems were published posthumously to great acclaim. This excerpt tells the story of a gas attack and of a man who fumbled getting his mask on...

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you, too, could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's, sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues...
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori. *

*Which translates as "It is sweet and honorable to die for one's country."

The only reason this DVD version doesn't get 5 stars is because Paramount was pretty sloppy with its sequencing (e.g., putting "1917" before "1916"). But the message is the same - and as haunting - regardless. Buy a few copies and spread them around. Send them to draft-aged kids and those thinking of joining up.

Although a musical, the dates, statistics and conversations are factual. Only recently, for example, have there been serious books discussing the Xmas Truce of 1914, a highlight of this 1969 film. The contrasts between the light-hearted musical format and the horrors of WW I only heightens the viewer's awareness.

My adult children were set to roll their eyes as their anti-war father had them watch it. I grew weary of picking their jaws up, however. At first they were tempted to accuse the film of plopping lines from the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars into the script. Examples:

"They didn't really attack, we're just going to say so and erase it later..."[diplomats]

"We are just defending ourselves!" [politicians, when they were doing just the opposite].

"She's lost three. No, four! No, three. They're bringing them home at night now, you know..." [women on the pier discussing the casualty lists].

Antiwar suffragette is run off by an itiotic crowd spouting non-sequetors and mindless un-related insults. "The papers are lying to you," she pleads, unsuccessfully. Was that woman talking about 1916 or 2002 articles by the NYT's Judith Miller?

"Thank you for sending me a copy of the [London] Times; I see that all this suffering was a great 'victory.'" --Nurse attending wounded after the Somme.

Add to this the scenes of the Army Ball, politics, and the media all the while in contrast with the filth of the trenches. Can't you just see Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell or James Dobson giving the priest's blessing?

My kids figured out soon enough that the poppy (rarely seen these days on Nov 11) was the symbol of death. The ending, though, left them speechless, as it does me, after all these years.

Cementing the shock were the haunting songs that expressed the fatalistic and antiwar views of the average soldier. The resemblance among the politicians of WW I, the Bush Administration, its general staff and its media is beyond such simple words as "frightening" or "terrifying."

Kudos to Paramount for the release! I can't think of a better time for the US to start singing "When this lousy war is over."

I was given this DVD as a Christmas gift, and am forever grateful. It has been the Holy Grail of movies for me since I remember it as a work of genius from the time it was first released. The other reviews below well attest to the critical elements of the film, and you should read them, but I had a much more personal reason to seek out this film. This film was released in September, 1969 in New York City; I was drafted (inducted) the following day for the Viet-Nam War. I went to New York that night, and watched this film as many times as I could, trying to commit it to memory. I have not had a chance to see it since other than a fleeting glimpse on PBS in the early 1980's. It is just as good now as the day I first saw it in 1969.

This film is an extraordinarily good adaptation of a cabaret show put together by Joan Littlefield in the early 1960's. It gained underground popularity as an anti-war vehicle during the Viet-Nam War, finally emerging in the Attenborough movie. While it has overtones of that era, perhaps, Attenborough has been exceedingly careful to maintain the character of the period of World War I, and that care translates to a film that transcends its period.

The strength of the cabaret show and the film is that, in paying homage to the carnage of WWI in the songs of the soldiers and the words of the real people of the period, they have captured the folly and destructiveness of all wars. By following the historical sequence of the songs and the words, they show the inexorable destruction of of the civilised life of the 19th century, and the pain of that destruction for the people involved.

Buy it.

I saw this at school 40 years ago and always wanted to see it again. Excellent creative and very different approach. wife and grown up kids accepted it at face value and enjoyed something different.

OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR is the ultimate anti-war film. Is it a coincidence that this DVD release of a 70s classic comes when we are mired in another lengthy and senseless conflict? Through pastiche and music this film portrays the appalling losses and futility of World War I - the war that started in the hot summer of 1914 and was supposed to be "all over by Christmas" but dragged on for almost five long years - and just about every major British actor of the day appears in it - Olivier is mentioned in the credits, but look for Maggie Smith, Ralph Richardson, John Mills, Jack Hawkins and many others, plus Jean Pierre Cassel. Through popular songs of the day and vignettes of historical events in France, Russia and Britain the story of the approach and arrival of war and its effects are portrayed with a "musical hall" (vaudeville) ambiance, to devastating AND grippingly entertaining effect. The dialogue includes numerous historically accurate quotations from the personalities involved, politicians and members of the doomed royal houses of Europe, and ordinary people caught up in the "War to end all wars". The film which was based on a successful long running theatre production that played in London in the late sixties had a very brief release in the USA and then vanished. I treasure the (inferior quality) bootleg video copy I managed to get, but am very anxious to see the DVD and relive the experience. Highly recommended.

This was a film which originated as a west end musical play long before being made into a film.
More recently it has been playing out in London.
It is an anti-war film and it could be superimposed over Irag and the Bush Administration.
It shows how the instigators are well away from the action and destruction
And how it is fought out by die for your country concepts.
The music is sincerely constructed from the minds of the trench soldier with a great deal of resigned vunerability and you must follow the leaders in command or you will be an outcaste.
The striking thing about the songs and lyrics are that they are light and bubbly when trenches are so very bad and cruel to these brave men.
It is a long film but I enjoyed every minute of it.
It can not be purchased by me in my home country Victoria Melbourne Australia so thank you so very much for the copy

Still the best anti war film ever made. Still as fresh as when it was first made.