Overlord

Fantastic little "war" gem this. Stands to reason why it won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Filmfestival once. We are offered visually very beautiful images of documentary footage from world war 2. In an extremely competent manner this material is mixed into a fictitious story about a young soldier´s life and death as a soldier participating in the famous D-Day invasion (Operation Overlord).Don't expect another Saving Private Ryan or The Longest Day.....Overlord is by far too "experimental" for that.Well, it's really impossible to compare these films, but rest assured Overlord will deliver a very unique war movie experience, like you´ve (probably) never seen it before.

"Overlord" follows the experience of a young soldier from his induction into the army up to his participation in Operation Overlord, the D-Day landings.

Beautifully photographed in black and white, the film weaves archive footage seamlessly into the fabric of the story and captures, not only the look, but the very essence of the period.

Until the closing moments, the protagonist is not involved in any fighting. What we see are the minutiae of life for a young soldier being trained and waiting to go into battle – the marching and military exercises; a trip to the cinema and the local village dance, where he meets his first girlfriend; the eve of battle, when he writes his last letter home, fills in the standard army issue will form, and burns all the private papers which he is not permitted to take into battle lest they fall into enemy hands and give away some information of use to the enemy. These small personal details give the film an emotional depth and a feeling for the times, which most war films made in the post war period fail to do.

Mixes archival footage of World War 2, with fictional story of a young man getting ready to go off to war. The archival footage, serves as the young man's thoughts and fears about going into battle. Scenes of air raids and bombings are spliced together with the scenes of sitting on the bus, being polite, and just doing normal everything things.

The film ends with D-Day, where our hero is among the first to storm the beach, the point where fact and fiction finally meet. Strange, and bizarre military weapons you have never seen before(the rocket wheel???), the barbed wire removing vehicle, appear throughout as well as amazing Arel footage.

The most unique and effective "war" film ever seen. Like Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence At Owel Creek", for the WW2 generation. It really puts you in the place, not of a soldier, per say, but of a human being, undergoing the process of becoming a soldier, facing the dread, anxiousness, and absurdity, with a solemn dignity, "Im not frightened", he writes to his parents, admitting he is almost certain he is not coming back.

Overlord cannot easily be place as either a pro or anti-war film. The situation of a gentle, very boyish, nice guy being sent off to the worlds most violent and dangerous conflict in all it's history (he takes a copy of "David Copperfield" with him, so he will have something to read.), is absurd, but it's not handled for irony. There is a scene, where two soldiers are off for R&R and they stumble across a theater, where a young girl is being forced to sing, by her mother in practice for some kind of competition. When the soldiers enter, the mother demands she sing again, though the daughter is even more shaken by the unexpected audience. She sings, and about halfway through the soldiers walk off, in disgust or discomfort, the mother still begging them to stay and listen.

Do the soldiers want to fight? No more than this girl, wants to sing,but for mother and mother country, they both do their share. The reason to watch this film, is because it contains none of the usual images and ideas we come to expect from war and anti-war films. Englad took tremendous beating during World War 2, for years sending their sons to stem,the rising tide of Nazism, inching ever further across the sea between them. Overlord, is thus not the story of heroic victory, or the horrors of war, it's the story of the guy who got sent out, the day-after he made a date(from his level of excitement, maybe his first),and who will probably not be making it back...

That this film is not better known than all the jingoistic crap that came out of Hollyweed about WWII is nothing short of a crime. Many thanks to TCM and Criterion for making this gem more available. A word of warning to the viewer. There are no huge battle scenes, no stars, no digital effects, no big overblown music, just a simple tale of a soldier inducted into the army prior to D-Day, and the tragic outcome. And I'm not giving anything away. One knows from the first moment what the end will be. Everything about this film is superb. The acting by a cast of unknowns, the realistic script and dialogue, the brilliant cinematography that blends actual documentary footage into the film, the haunting music, etc., ad gloriam. All I can say is that this film affected me far more deeply than the above-mentioned film and it's images will stay with me much longer that anything Spielberg spent millions on to create.

I can safely assume that "Overlord" had an extremely minuscule budget. None of the actors look like professionals, it was all shot in black & white and the film uses lots and lots of stock footage from WWII. Despite my reservations, which I'll get to in a moment, it's awfully good considering the costs.

The film follows a typical sort of soldier, Tom Beddows, from his induction to his landing at the beaches of Normandy. Throughout his story, clips of the preparations for the landing as well as other war footage is inserted...often in the clumsiest and seemingly random manner. Despite this, the story of Tom IS compelling and sucks you in to his life. Worth seeing...especially if you would love to see a decent micro-budgeted picture.