Another movie about an ordinary guy drafted to be cannon fodder in World War II, undergoing boot camp, having a tentative romance (with a more assured character played by Julie Neesam), and sent off to battle? Another movie about D-Day ("Operation Overlord" was the code name for the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944)? Even in 1975, these questions must have occurred in regard to the theatrical release of "Overlord." Except for its ending, the story of Tom Beddows (Brian Stirner, "All Creatures Great and Small") is very predictable. I've seen it told many times on screen for those being thrown into various wars.

What is notable about "Overlord" is that this stereotypical (or prototypical?) individual narrative is spliced together with wartime documentary footage housed in the Britain's Imperial War Museum. The documentary footage that was three decades plus old and what Stuart Cooper shot of Private Beddows looks very similar (grainy for one thing). I know that any scenes with Pvt. Beddows were shot in the 1970s (by  John Alcott, who became Stanley Kubrick's cinematographer), but often these continue settings from the archival documentary footage, including D-Day footage. Indeed, the 70s staged scenes sometimes seem more documentary than the artistic documentary scenes.

As IWM staff Anne Fleming  and Roger Smither note in a 23-minute bonus feature titled "Mining the Archive," the wartime cameramen were intent on aesthetically pleasing compositions, even when under heavy fire. In recalling a photojournalism piece in LIFE by Robert Capa, Cooper also notes that Capa's concern for surviving D-Day did not keep him from composing shots and attempting to capture images of dramatic moments. (Capa's famous image of a Loyalist at the moment he was shot during the Spanish Civil War had a particular influence on the movie, as Cooper explains. See the DVD box picture.)

A 15-minute Ministry of Information documentary "Cameramen at War" from just after the end of WWII shows how cameras were rigged onto bombers and triggered to begin filming by direct connection to releasing bombs. Cooper cuts from the fireworks display of bombs falling and exploding on the ground as seen from above with documentary footage of firefighters and collapsing buildings, so that the audience sees the consequences of exploding bombs, not just the pictorial patterns that look almost beautiful, and in the case of a ship being sunk on a shimmering sea outright beautiful.


Plot spoiler alert

In addition to the seamless blending of 1970s and 1940s footage, "Overlord" is different from most other war movies in that its protagonist does not survive D-Day. He has heavy premonitions that he won't, including visions of falling like Capa's Spanish Loyalist. Tom is shot before he even stands up to charge out of the landing craft onto Sword Beach. After showing Tom's instant death, Cooper juxtaposes film of the successful landing with casualties (mostly living ones) being shipped back to England. The operation was a success, but many soldiers died before getting onto the sand. (Many drowned, weighted down with equipment and sent forth into water over their heads.) Triumphalism is very muted in "Overlord," which shows a very ordinary young man going through extensive training who is cut down before having any chance to be brave. In this, I think "Overlord" is unique, not just among WWII Everyman movies, but among war movies set in any war.

End plot spoiler alert


The most poignant scene is when the soldiers throw anything personal they still have onto bonfires. The most comic is a Nazi-mocking parody Tom sees in a movie theater (as a predatory woman or drag queen is accosting him) in which footage from "Triumph of the Will" was edited to "The Lambeth Waltz" with film of Hitler and Storm Troopers going backward intercut with the going forward film. The whole short film is included as a bonus track.
And there is a commentary track, and a 30-page booklet, and "A Test of Violence, a short 1969 film about Spanish artist Juan Genovés (whose work isolated scenes of police violence) made by Cooper, that brought him to the attention of the Imperial War Museum staff who wanted to make a feature film using some of the rich archival trove of documentary footage. And there is an audio bonus feature of  Stirner reading diary entries by Sergeants Robert McCosh and Finlay Campbell that were drawn on by Cooper and Christopher Hudson used in fashioning the screenplay.

I think that too much extraneous (to Tom's story) war documentary film is included and Tom's character coulda/shoulda been more developed — though that might mute his feeling the he is a "a machine that gets bigger and bigger while we get smaller and smaller until there is nothing left" and our recognition of the cost of even "good wars." And he is soldered into the war machine before he has had much chance to grow up.

The audio (mono) remastering is clear and the visual remastering (supervised by Cooper) aimed to show what the movie looked like in 1975,


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©  2008, Stephen O. Murray

See my list of what I consider the best WWII movies focusing on combatants (to which I should add "Home of the Brave," which I think of as a Korean war movie since it shows a racially integrated (albeit not smoothly!) platoon).

And for what I think are the best Korean war movies (a category I attempted for 4+ years to get included hereon) see
www.associatedcontent.com/article/433688/the_korean_war_on_dvd.html?cat=40

Tom is endearingly, irremediably English for Barbara's writeoff and there is enough that is striking for this to be a good movie for CaptainD's. Certainly, it's a great DVD, even for Criterion. And not just black-and-white, but the 1970s parts were shot on film stock and through cameras matching the 1940s parts for my Isinga memorial writeoff.

Recommended:
No

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