(this blog was begun Sunday night, September 29, 2019)
Tonight I watched a minor masterpiece from Criterion, called "Overlord" (1975). I use the word minor as a qualifier only because the film seems rather unknown. I had never heard of it, though from reading on IMDB I see that it won awards at a film festival or two. It does seem to have disappeared since that time, though, at least until Criterion resurrected it, and oh what a fine job they have done.
"Overlord", directed by a filmmaker named Stuart Cooper, is the story of a young soldier's induction and boot camp training in the English army up to the point of the D-Day invasion of Normandy in World War Two. Cooper uses stock footage of WW2 battle scenes in a way I've never seen before, by blending them seamlessly with the fictional imagery of the story, which was shot by the great John Alcott, one of the all time cinematographers. The artful use of both actual footage and that which was produced for the film creates a feeling of being there, on the ground with the soldiers in the lead-up to battle, that we would not see again in a WW2 film - as far as D-Day was concerned - until the release of "Saving Private Ryan" in 1998.
The movie opens at the home of the protagonist, "Tom", a boy who looks no older than twenty. He is preparing to get on the train that will take him to the military base to which he has been assigned by the British draft board. As Tom packs his suitcase, his father wishes him well in the Stiff Upper Lip way of the English people. Tom looks a bit lost, but resigned to his duty. From the way the scene is portrayed, you can feel feel him losing his youth and his choices in life right there at his doorstep, all because of a war he didn't start, but must fight in to save the existence of his country.
God Bless the English, you know? If it weren't for them, and us Americans, and those pesky Russians, we might not have a world right now. But especially the English, because they were at the front lines in the beginning.
Young Tom, on his way to become a soldier, is an innocent figure. He has no one in his life that he is close to save his parents and his dog Tina, whom he loves dearly (and who would not love a dog named Tina?). When he settles in at boot camp, he is teased a bit by the other enlistees for his lack of experience with women. This aspect is not overplayed though (and he will meet a nice young lass very soon anyway), because of the gravity of the more important matter at hand; the soldiers know an invasion of France is imminent. Director Cooper has chosen to exhibit the dread of being in this situation through careful use of foreshadowing. Brief scenes of the Normandy landing are intercut with the main sequences of the soldiers' discussions in camp prior to the invasion. Even earlier, while he is still on his way to the military base, we are shown that Tom may be having premonitions of his own fate. As he nods off periodically while riding the train, horrific images of battle flash by on the screen. Is Tom dreaming of his future?
At regular intervals, as the film cuts between the narrative and the interwoven scenes of what may lie ahead, we see the English countryside flowing past beneath us in a series of sweeping aerial shots taken from inside various British warplanes. These shots are meditative, and we can imagine the young soldiers flying in a troop transport on their way to the front in France, watching their homeland recede away as the opposing forces of fear and stoicism build inside them. The use of the aerial flyover footage as a hypnotic device gives the film a dreamlike quality, as if what is happening can be something the young men can awaken from.
But of course it is all too real, as Cooper also shows us with amazing and horrific real-time footage of Germany being bombed to smithereens, and also the aftermath of that destruction. It looks like the end of the world, and as I have remarked many times, to me, it is miraculous that anyone survived World War Two, which - from what I can see and have read about - was the most hellish collective experience of mankind in all it's history.
"Overlord" is a war movie - and one of the best and most important WW2 pictures you will ever see - but it's also an Art Film, where the director uses images of war and the preparation for war to get us to think about whether war is an inevitability within the human condition.
Must we fight wars? Could a war be called off if everyone realized suddenly how utterly inhuman war is? Or does the fact of simply preparing for a war and having war in our mindset - as a viable option - make war a necessary evil?
World War Two was certainly necessary, to stop the most evil regime that ever walked the Earth, but perhaps it was meant to be the Last War, even though that has not proven to be the historical outcome.
"Overlord" is a masterpiece of which there are not enough thumbs in the world to rate it with. I cannot recommend it highly enough, it is a must see in every respect and it will get you to thinking about the above questions, and others of your own no doubt. My goodness what a film. ////
Well, it's me again and it's now Monday afternoon. I am headed out to the store, then back to Pearl's as usual. Boy, did that Rams game ever suck yesterday! Them Rams better fix things soon or it's gonna be a long season for them.
But go Dodgers! This is finally gonna be our year, we're gonna win the World Series for the first time since 1988.
Right? :)
See you tonight at the usual time! Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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