Oh! What a Lovely War

It's been thirty-five years since I first saw this movie. I remember it as well as any movie I've seen. I check every few months to see if it is available in any format. So far I haven't found it. It would be good if someone could be influenced to create a DVD version. I'd buy it in a minute. I'd probably buy several copies and give them to special friends. It may be my favorite movie of all time.

Until I saw the movie, I didn't realize that there was some special music that accompanied WWI. It's music that now brings a tear whenever I hear it. The portrayal of pompous generals and their subservient minions, as they are posting the numbers of deaths and casualties for the day, is beautifully done. They were simply putting up numbers. But each number was often a death. A death of a promising young person. This movie makes war appear as brutal as it can really be. The poor always die first. It would be nice if international law demanded that the political and military leaders of a country be required to send their own children into war first. If that were the case, there would likely be no more war.

Richard Attenborough's directorial debut translates Joan Plowright's theatre concept onto celluloid. "Oh What A Lovely War" tells the story of World War One through the popular songs of the time, some of them sarcastically re-worded by the soldiers at the Front. Made in 1969, the film rides the wave of contemporary 'make love not war' sentiment, and uses humour and avant-garde zaniness to avoid seeming portentous. Brighton Pier represents the First World War, with the British public entering at the turnstiles, and General Haig selling tickets. The Smith family stands for the nation, and the film follows several young Smith men through their experiences in the trenches, most notably Freddy (Malcolm McFee), Harry (Colin Farrell) and George (Maurice Roeves).

The opening sequence, set in a wrought-iron Nowhere, tries to explain the diplomatic chicanery which (allegedly) caused the Great War. This passage is dull, unnatural, garbled and much too long. It does not harmonise with the rest of the story, and the film would have been better without it. Of the cavalcade of ageing English thespians which populates this sequence, only Jack Hawkins as the profoundly melancholic Austrian emperor is at all memorable.

1914 was the season of optimism, shown here by the cheerful seaside scene and the first Battle of Mons, both flooded in pleasant sunshine. When the casulaties start to mount, a shocked theatre audience is rallied by a rousing rendition of "Are We Downhearted? No!", a song which expresses something deep in the English psyche: "While we have Jack upon the sea/And Tommy on the land/We needn't fret".

The government's cynical drive to recruit a volunteer army by 'milking' the simple patriotism of the people is superbly satirised in the 'Roedean' section. Pretty girls onstage sing "We Don't Want To Lose You, But We Think You Ought To Go", and once the young men in the audience are suitably softened up, Maggie Smith lures them into taking the King's Shilling by enticing them sexually.

Class divisions are emphasised. Wounded men from the lower ranks have to wait for treatment, but officers have taxis laid on to take them to hospital. The War forces an aristocrat to converse with one of his retainers, but the conversation is hollow and awkward, as if the men speak different languages. The working-class men in the trenches fraternise with their German 'brothers', and a staff officer in the comfort and safety of England punishes them for their inappropriate behaviour. The pacifist who addresses the workers falls foul of their instinctive patriotism, and doesn't help herself by referring to her audience as "You misguided masses".

The film has many delicious ironic touches. A wounded man arrives back in England, relieved to be out of the hell of war, and is told by a nurse, "Don't worry - we'll soon have you back at the Front". Upper-class war dodgers carry on as before, but they think they are making noble sacrifices - "I'm not using my German wine - not while the War's on". The staff officer who visits the Front is patently unfamiliar with life there, and desperate to get away, but happy enough to have the men live (and die) in these conditions.

By 1915, the optimism has died. The parade of wounded men is a sea of grim, hopeless faces. Black humour has now replaced the enthusiasm of the early days. "There's A Long, Long Trail A-Winding" captures the new mood of despair, and the scene with the tommies filing along in torrential rain is powerfully evocative. Poppies provide the only colour.

We see English soldiers drinking in an estaminet. The chanteuse (Pia Colombo) leads them in a jolly chorus of "The Moon Shines Bright On Charlie Chaplin", a reworking of an American song, then shifts the mood dramatically by singing "Adieu la vie", a truly great tragic song.

The Australian troops have an easy, informal approach to discipline. They make fun of the 'proper' English reserves who are replacing them on the battlefield, and the contrast between the two cultures is depicted by the stiffness of the English drill compared with the sprawling comfort of the Aussies. Naturally enough, the Australians deride the staff officers who arrive to inspect the reserves.

Another passage in the film which simply doesn't work is the religious service in the ruined abbey. Its purpose is to point out the hypocrisy of the great religions, which all came out in favour of the War, but the scene drags horribly and slackens the film's otherwise brisk pace.

1916 passes, and the film's tone darkens appreciably. Now the songs have a wistful quality, laced with the chirpy stoicism of the British soldier - "The Bells Of Hell", "If The Sergeant Steals Your Rum, Never Mind" and "Hanging On The Old Barbed Wire". The trench scenes are terrific, powerfully evoking the squalour of the Front. The wounded are laid out in ranks at the field station, a mockery of the healthy rows of young men who entered the War. Harry Smith's silently-suffering face is one of the film's great images.

The War is drawing to its close, but still the ironies are piling up. The Americans arrive, singing (in travesty of Cohan) "And we won't come back - we'll be buried over there!" Freddy notices with disgust that after three years of this nightmare, he is literally back where he started, fighting at Mons.

As the Armistice is sounding, Freddy is the last one to die. The film closes with a truly stunning aerial view of soldiers' graves, dizzying in their geometry and scale, as the voices of the dead sing, "We'll Never Tell Them". It brought a tear to this reviewer's eye.

This is a superlative film. Though based on the Joan Littlewood stage play (itself derived from a Charles Chilton radio piece), the film has the creativity, visual sense and sardonic wit of Len Deighton throughout. Apparently, it also was Len who had the brainstorm to set the fantasy sections at Brighton, which worked brilliantly! Inexplicably, he asked for his name to be removed from the writing and producing credits. (Later, after swearing off the film industry, he got his revenge with his novel "Close-up.") Whatever "corporate changes" (in the sense of group-think) were made to his script, it still works. And it works extremely well. Not only as an anti-World War I piece, but as a powerful critique of the British class structure and the amoral diplomats and generals who sent millions, nearly a generation, to early graves. I can't think of another film that has so artfully blended satire, farce, tragedy and history. This film is "Dr. Strangelove" caliber, but it's a musical, using the patriotic tunes of the day with the sarcastic alternate lyrics that the troops themselves created.

Kudos go to first-time director (now Lord) Richard Attenborough, and a stellar cast that was essentially the British Pantheon, circa 1969.

I have never seen anything remotely like this, and I doubt if I ever will again. Emotional? If you don't have a few tears by the time they're playing "No, We'll Never Tell Them,"...better check for a pulse.

I first saw this movie in the theater in 1969. In my opinion it was by far the most powerful anti-war movie I had ever seen. I came to IMDB looking for a place where I could order a copy so that my children could see it. I can not think of another movie which makes use of the media so effectively. For instance, the party atmosphere of the boardwalk where we see a toy merry-go-round with puppets which blends into a real merry-go-round with real soldiers and real women which blends into real soldiers in a real battle. And the scene where the "upper class" lady is enticing men to join the army morphs into a whore soliciting anybody she can drag onstage. Then the camera moves to the men gathered backstage and the backdrop of the curtains in the theatre becomes the canvas cover of the truck carrying the men to the battlefront. Death is symbolized by poppies. The surrealistic atmosphere allows the characters to pass by poppies, or be handed a poppy rather than being shot or dying from mustard gas. And I particularly liked the scoreboard where the result--regardless of the men lost or the ground lost was always VICTORY! The final scene with the women and children having a picnic in a beautiful field requires the scope of the "big screen." When the child comes running up to his mother and asks, "What did Daddy do in the war?" the answer comes not from the mother but from the camera pulling back very slowly from the picnic. We see a cross and some poppies and then we see more poppies and more crosses until all we can see are the crosses and poppies of Flanders Field and we are no longer able to distinguish the people having the picnic. This is a film for those who enjoy surrealism and satire. It is a must for anyone studying anti-war films. And as an added treat, it has in it practically everybody who was anybody in British theatre at the time it was made.

I first saw this film when it came out. I was 10 years old, the Viet Nam war was still going on, and it blew me away completely.

I saw it again 5 years later, in a revival house. I went with a high-school friend, happy to be able to introduce its power and brilliance to someone new. It blew her away completely.

That was 27 years ago, and I would give almost anything to know if the film could still move me as much as it did those first two times. It is not available on video, and I've never seen it broadcast on any TV channel.

This is truly one of those films that burned itself into my memory at first viewing. I urge anyone who finds the chance to see it to run, not walk, to the theatre! The Great War -- the War to End All Wars -- has faded deep into the past for most people, and we forget that the death-toll from that conflict blighted an entire generation. This film makes that loss all too vivid, using the music of the war itself.

Truly a classic, in the most literal sense of the word: a film for the ages.