How I Won the War (1967)
Country: GB
Technical: col/1.66:1 109m
Director: Richard Lester
Cast: Michael Crawford, Lee Montague, Jack MacGowran, John Lennon, Michael Hordern, Karl Michael Vogler, Roy Kinnear
Synopsis:
Captured at Arnhem, a British officer reflects with his German opposite number over his training and North African mission to establish a cricket square behind enemy lines.
Review:
Like some overstretched Monty Python item, Lester's film epitomised the Sixties tendency for manic self-indulgence (Casino Royale, After the Fox, What's New Pussycat?). Its text is an impossibly wordy condemnation of public school privilege and officer class incompetence, ending with the vaguely minatory affirmation that because we won the war it is business as usual on those counts. Why it fails where ...If (1968) succeeds, in spite of relatively lavish production values, is because it is as undisciplined as the world it depicts (fatal error). It is as if a bunch of undergrads had been given a camera and some equipment and told to make an anti-war film in the BBC sandpit, except this is Almería and MGM were rather hoping someone would pay to see it.
Country: GB
Technical: col/1.66:1 109m
Director: Richard Lester
Cast: Michael Crawford, Lee Montague, Jack MacGowran, John Lennon, Michael Hordern, Karl Michael Vogler, Roy Kinnear
Synopsis:
Captured at Arnhem, a British officer reflects with his German opposite number over his training and North African mission to establish a cricket square behind enemy lines.
Review:
Like some overstretched Monty Python item, Lester's film epitomised the Sixties tendency for manic self-indulgence (Casino Royale, After the Fox, What's New Pussycat?). Its text is an impossibly wordy condemnation of public school privilege and officer class incompetence, ending with the vaguely minatory affirmation that because we won the war it is business as usual on those counts. Why it fails where ...If (1968) succeeds, in spite of relatively lavish production values, is because it is as undisciplined as the world it depicts (fatal error). It is as if a bunch of undergrads had been given a camera and some equipment and told to make an anti-war film in the BBC sandpit, except this is Almería and MGM were rather hoping someone would pay to see it.
Country: GB
Technical: col/1.66:1 109m
Director: Richard Lester
Cast: Michael Crawford, Lee Montague, Jack MacGowran, John Lennon, Michael Hordern, Karl Michael Vogler, Roy Kinnear
Synopsis:
Captured at Arnhem, a British officer reflects with his German opposite number over his training and North African mission to establish a cricket square behind enemy lines.
Review:
Like some overstretched Monty Python item, Lester's film epitomised the Sixties tendency for manic self-indulgence (Casino Royale, After the Fox, What's New Pussycat?). Its text is an impossibly wordy condemnation of public school privilege and officer class incompetence, ending with the vaguely minatory affirmation that because we won the war it is business as usual on those counts. Why it fails where ...If (1968) succeeds, in spite of relatively lavish production values, is because it is as undisciplined as the world it depicts (fatal error). It is as if a bunch of undergrads had been given a camera and some equipment and told to make an anti-war film in the BBC sandpit, except this is Almería and MGM were rather hoping someone would pay to see it.