Für König und Vaterland

It is 1917, and Arthur Hamp is a volunteer Private with the British Army. After the rest of his company are killed, Hamp decides to "go for a walk," with the deluded intention of making it home to Old Blighty from Belgium on foot. He is caught and put on trial under charges of desertion. If found guilty, Hamp will surely be executed. It is up to Captain Charles Hargreaves to defend the man and prove he was a victim of shell-shock, not a coward. Will Hargreaves be able to save Hamp's life, or will the young man face the firing squad?

Directed by Joseph Losey from a screenplay by Evan Jones, and based on a play by John Wilson- which was, in turn, inspired by a J. L. Hodson novel- 'King & Country' is a devastating anti-war film up there with Stanley Kubrick's 'Paths of Glory.' A frightening depiction of the injustices faced by shell-shocked soldiers in The Great War, it boasts strong dialogue and characterisation, with a gritty narrative both engaging and affecting.

'King & Country' is not just an anti-war film, though. As Losey had done previously with 'The Servant,' the film skewers the British class-system, showcasing its inherent inequality. It portrays the officers as arrogant, aloof and detached from the reality of the war going on around them. They are also indifferent to the plight of the soldiers at their command, who are conversely shown to be loyal and compassionate, for the most part. The narrative also exposes the bias and cruelty of the military court, which disregards Hamp's mental breakdown, condemning him as a yellow traitor.

The film boasts striking black and white cinematography from Denys N. Coop, which enhances the despondent tone of proceedings. Coop uses high contrast, low angles and close-ups to accentuate the feelings and reactions of the characters, while his utilisation of low-key lighting and deep shadows heightens the tension and drama of scenes. Highly impactful, Coop's sterling work is one of the reasons 'King & Country' is so memorable.

Additionally, Richard Macdonald's atmospheric production design creates a damp and despairing environment that immerses the viewer in the harsh conditions of warfare. Macdonald uses realistic costumes, props and sets to recreate the look and feel of a rat-infested World War I trench. 'King & Country' was shot on location in a purpose-built pit near Shepperton Studios, enhancing the authenticity and intensity of the film. Furthermore, Larry Adler's haunting and melancholic score complements the narrative's mood and tone adroitly, lending the film additional power.

'King & Country stars Dirk Bogarde as Captain Hargreaves alongside Tom Courtenay as Hamp, supported by Peter Copley, Leo McKern and Barry Foster. A nuanced and sensitive actor, Bogarde never turned in a bad performance- even if he disputed that- and as Hargreaves he delivers a multifaceted masterclass. He displays the characters' arc- from cynic to compassionate crusader- astutely, while co-star Courtenay is heartbreaking as the innocent, naïve Hamp; a gentle man for whom the endless slog of war proved to be too much. Moreover, Copley and McKern are both brilliant as arrogant officers, while Foster steals his short scene as the unbiased Lieutenant Webb with ease.

A strongly acted, well-written treatise on the class system, Joseph Losey's 'King & Country' is a powerful and poignant anti-war film that ranks alongside the very best of the genre. Boasting stunning cinematography, rich production design and a stirring score, it impresses on every level. Thought-provoking and intelligently made, 'King & Country' will linger with you long after the credits have rolled. It is- if you'd pardon the pun- a film that is absolutely fit for a king; and a country.

On a World War I battleground, British soldier Tom Courtenay (as Arthur Hamp) is arrested for desertion, after serving three years in combat. If convicted, the shell-shocked young man will be shot dead. He is assigned a military defense attorney Dirk Bogarde (as Hargreaves) who seems convinced Mr. Courtenay is guilty. However, as the trenches trial proceeds, Mr. Bogarde becomes more sympathetic regarding his client's extenuating circumstances. "King and Country" will either spare Courtenay, or kill him...

Producer/director Joseph Losey does a convincing job with this drama, though it moves somewhat slowly until the end. Courtenay comes across as a shell-shocked man who volunteered for the war, and could no longer do battle after seeing his entire unit wasted away. He's commendable and understandable, and this shows in Bogarde's astute performance. The film's point is easily made, with Bogarde's character effectively leading doubters toward a shattering conclusion. The film, and both men, won award recognition.

******* King & Country (9/5/64) Joseph Losey ~ Dirk Bogarde, Tom Courtenay, Leo McKern, Barry Foster

This is a grim portrayal of trench warfare and an officer corps seeking to "set an example" by trying a soldier suffering from battle fatigue for desertion. He has attempted to walk home from France to England after enduring the death of his entire battallion from constant shelling and futile attacks. Scenes shifting from inside the trial and outside in the camp underscore the futility of war and its effects on the men who fight.

The last time Britain was a major force in world cinema was in the 1960s; a documentary of a few years back on the subject was entitled 'Hollywood UK'. This was the era of the Kitchen Sink, social realism, angry young men; above all, the theatrical. And yet, ironically, the best British films of the decade were made by two Americans, Richard Lester and Joseph Losey, who largely stayed clear of the period's more typical subject matter, which, like all attempts at greater realism, now seems curiously archaic.

'King and Country', though, seems to be the Losey film that tries to belong to its era. Like 'Look Back in Anger' and 'A Taste of Honey', it is based on a play, and often seems cumbersomely theatrical. Like 'Loneliness of the long distance runner', its hero is an exploited, reluctantly transgressive working class lad played by Tom Courtenay. Like (the admittedly brilliant) 'Charge of the Light Brigade', it is a horrified, near-farcical (though humourless) look at the horrors of war, most particularly its gaping class injustices.

Private Hamp is a young volunteer soldier at Pachendaele, having served three years at the front, who is court-martialled for desertion. Increasingly terrorised by the inhuman pointlessness of trench warfare, the speedy, grisly, violent deaths of his comrades and the medieval, rat-infested conditions of his trench, he claims to have emerged dazed from one gruesome attack and decided to walk home, to England. He is defended by the archetypal British officer, Captain Hargreaves, who professes disdain for the man's cowardice, but must do his duty. He attempts to spin a defence on the grounds of madness, but the upper-crust officers have heard it all before.

This is a very nice, duly horrifying, liberal-handwringing, middle-class play. It panders to all the cliches of the Great War - the disgraceful working-class massacre, while the officers sup whiskey (Haig!) - figured in some charmingly obvious symbolism: Hargreaves throwing a dying cigarette in the mud; Hamp hysterically playing blind man's buff.

The sets are picturesquely grim, medieval, a modern inferno, as these men lie trapped in a never-ending, subterranean labyrinth, lit by hellish fires, with rats for company and the constant sound of shells and gunfire reminding them of the outside world.

The play, in a very middle-class way, is not really about the working class at all - Hamp is more of a symbol, an essence, lying in the dark, desolately playing his harmonica, a note of humanity in a score of inhumanity. He doesn't develop as a character. The play is really about Hargreaves, his realisation of the shabby inadequacy of notions like duty. He develops. This realisation sends him to drink (tastier than dying!). Like his prole subordinates, he falls in the mud, just as Hamp is said to have done; he even says to his superior 'We are all murderers'.

This is all very effective, if not much of a development of RC Sherriff's creaky 'Journey's End', filmed by James Whale in 1930. Its earnestness and verbosity may seem a little stilted in the age of 'Paths of Glory' and 'Dr. Strangelove'; we may feel that 'Blackadder goes forth' is a truer representation of the Great War. But what I have described is not the film Losey has made. He is too sophisticated and canny an intellectual for that.

The film opens with a lingering pan over one of those monumental War memorials you see all over Britain (and presumably Europe), as if to say Losey is going to question the received ideas of this statue, the human cost. But what he's really questioning is this play, and its woeful inadequacy to represent the manifold complexities of the War.

This is Brechtian filmmaking at its most subtle. We are constantly made aware of the artifice of the film, the theatrical - the stilted dialogue is spoken with deliberate stiffness; theatrical rituals are emphasised (the initial interrogation; the court scene, where actors literally tread the boards, enunciating the predictable speeches; the mirror-play put on by the hysterical soldiers and the rats; the religious ceremony; the horrible farce of the execution). Proscenium arches are made prominent, audiences observe events.

This is a play that would seek to contain, humanise, explain the Great War. This is a hopeless task, as Losey's provisional apparatus explains, 'real' photographs of harrowing detritus fading from the screen as if even these are not enough to convey the War, never mind a well-made, bourgeois play. Losey's vision may be apocalyptic - it questions the possibility of representation at all - the various tags of poetry quoted make no impact on hard men men who rattled them off when young; the Shakespearean duality of 'noble' drama commented on by 'low' comedy, effects no transcendence, no greater insight.

Losey's camerawork and composition repeatedly breaks our involvement with the drama, any wish we might have for manly sentimentality; in one remarkable scene an officer takes an Aubrey Beardsley book from the cameraman! This idea of the theatrical evidently mirrors the rigid class 'roles' played by the main characters (Hamp's father and grandfather were cobblers too; presumably Hargreaves' were always Sandhurst cadets). Losey also takes a sideswipe at the kitchen sink project, by using its tools - history has borne him out.

The obvious comparison that can be made with King & Country is Paths Of Glory. Both are concerned with people being tried for desertion and cowardice in World War I. Both are outstanding films though I would give the edge to Paths Of Glory.

One important distinction must be made. Paths Of Glory is an American made film with a French setting about wholesale French desertion during a battle and three guys being courtmartialed and shot as examples. King & Country is a British film with an American director at the helm about the British experience in trench warfare encapsulated in the story of one poor English Tommy.

With the last American dough-boy dying this year, World War I is a memory now with no first hand account of what it was like in those trenches. I know the last French veteran also passed away, I'm not sure of the British forces including those in the Commonwealth. America entered in 1917 and our Expeditionary force saw its first action in Belleau Wood in the spring of 1918. By November 11 of that year it was over. We had six months or so, the Allies and the Central Powers had four years.

All fought for ground gain measured in yards. A stalemate of opposing trenches stretching from Belgium to the Swiss border of France. And both sides throwing everything including poison gas in attempt to break through and score the decisive knockout blow.

Tom Courtenay plays Private Hamp who just saw the slaughter of his entire battalion and just went into shell shock and walked out of the trench in the direction of the coast of France and Great Britain. When he was caught he became a symbol of resistance to the futility of war that the British Army could not tolerate.

Like Paths Of Glory the verdict is already fixed though his defense counsel Dirk Bogarde makes a gallant attempt to save Courtney who is a total innocent as to the forces around him. One particularly good supporting performance is that of Leo McKern who plays the officer bringing the charges. He's a complete fool and there were many like him in all the armies of World War I who had not the wit or imagination to just call a halt to the slaughter.

Unlike Paths Of Glory, Dirk Bogarde has a humiliating indignity that Kirk Douglas did not have placed on him. King & Country is a fine film showing if not the futility of war itself, the futility of that particular war that scarred the world for generations and is still scarring it yet.