Overlord (1975)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

During the war a young lad is called up and, with an increasing sense of foreboding, undertakes his army training ready for D-day.This docu-drama is a mix of archive footage and a "new" story. This required the film to be shot in black and white, which makes it blend better but also adds a more powerful aesthetic. By 1975, color was quite predominant, but there is just something color cannot do: some of the best images will always be in black and white.The film is beautifully shot by John Alcott, who had previously worked alongside Stanley Kubrick on "2001" (1968) and "A Clockwork Orange" (1971) in a supporting cinematographer role. Shortly after finishing "Overlord", he won an Oscar for Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon". Director Stuart Cooper pointed Alcott towards Hungarian war photographer Robert Capa (who had died in Vietnam in 1954). The result is excellent.

Fantastic, hidden gem of a movie with artistic elements you will only find in very rare 21st century indie films. But this film is more than just artistic, it weaves superb acting with abstract imagery. Cinematography beyond compare. I've never seen anything like this...absolutely stunning black & white with mixed real WWII footage integrated into the movie. And the British Imperial war footage is not the expected randomized grainy short clip montage, in no particular pattern. These film reel shots are crystal clear, HD quality close ups of casualties, airplane machine gun attacks, explosions, bomb runs, fires from aftermath, foot soldiers, vehicles, all in context of the artistic goal, related intimately with the main character's fears, and with greater context of the current and desperate situation the Allies faced in Europe. I highly recommend this work of art for any and all film buffs.

"Overlord" is a very good film, but marred by one constantly reoccurring flaw - the editing. The editing is so choppy, so ill-conceived that the film is never allowed to completely get off the ground. The newsreel footage could have been used much more effectively for punctuation as opposed to content. There's so much of it at play here that any new footage seems almost like an afterthought. And for a film whose running time barely tops an hour and twenty minutes, there's quite a lack of dramatic drive behind it. Every time "Overlord" settles into a powerful or gripping sequence (and there are several), five to ten minutes of uninterrupted stock footage breaks up the flow.Those are the bad points. Now for the good. The acting is the first thing that comes to mind. Brian Stirner plays Tom, the main character. He conveys emotion with such purity, from trepidation to fear to honesty to joy. His face draws you in with its uncomplicated childlike demeanour. The supporting actors are all equally impressive. No one ever feels like anything less than fully real. John Alcott, as far as I'm concerned, is the real star here. His cinematography perfectly mirrors the wartime footage used, but still giving it his distinctly powerful personality. He adds so much to this film. Stuart Cooper brings it all together, but his poor eye for editing sabotages his own best strengths.This is a very, very good film. But the pacing flaws present throughout make it extremely difficult to get into. If a more linear approach could have been adopted while still maintaining the powerful melancholy poetry of "Overlord", this could have been a great film.

This review contains a potential spoiler.In honor of Ken Burns' The War I pulled out the recent DVD release of Stuart Cooper's Overlord to see things from the English perspective Overlord concerns a soldier named Tom from the point at which he leaves home to report for military service to the landing on D-Day. We follow as Tom trains, makes friends and generally waits for his part of the war to start. Shot in black and white to match a great deal of inserted footage from the time this is a soldier's life during wartime English style.Re-released in the US a year or so ago I remember the reviews being nearly perfect and I looked forward to getting the chance to see this "lost classic". Finally watching the film I'm left wondering what all the shouting has been about. Don't get me wrong, its a good film, its just the great one that some pundits, like Roger Ebert seemed to make it out to be.Essentially a film about waiting this film is merely a slice of life for the English soldier on the eve of the great invasion. We watch as Tom and his men are shunted around, we see their training, we see footage of the war from the air, and we watch as the men just wait around. There is more to it than that but for me its an 80 minute march to a foregone conclusion. It great to look at with some stunning sequences of old footage (flights over the countryside and air combat) that looked great on the 42 inch TV in the living room, but the film really didn't have much beyond that. Tom the central character and emotional center is too melancholy and morbid (he's certain he's going to die) that the film seems more incredibly sad if not incredibly distant. Why would any one want to be around him when he seems mostly to sulk and brood, even when he's falling in love with a girl he meets at a dance. The film looks stunning and on a technical level its a masterpiece of combining old with new footage.Clearly we are there, but with a central character such as the maudlin Tom Beddoe its not really a place we want to be no matter how good it looks.A disappointment (its good but not great) thats worth a look.