Overlord (1975 film)

Overlord is a 1975 black-and-white British war film written and directed by Stuart Cooper. Set during World War II, around the D-Day invasion ('Operation Overlord'), the film is about a young British soldier's experiences and his meditations on being part of the war machinery including his premonitions of death. The film won the Silver Bear - Special Jury Prize at the 25th Berlin International Film Festival.[2] “Overlord is not about military heroics; on the contrary, it is about the bleakness of sacrifice”, Cooper said.[3]

Overlord
Directed byStuart Cooper
Produced byJames Quinn
Written byStuart Cooper
Christopher Hudson
StarringBrian Stirner
Davyd Harries
Music byPaul Glass
CinematographyJohn Alcott
Edited byJonathan Gili
Release date
  • 1975 (1975)
Running time
84 minutes [1]
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

Plot

The film opens with footage taken by the victorious German Army at Dunkirk and aerial shots, including Adolf Hitler surveying conquered territory from a plane. Cut to the interior of a landing craft on D-Day, filled with as yet unidentified characters, young soldiers. A blurry image of a soldier running, alone, and falling, shot dead, dissolves to a man running down an English lane to his home. This is Tom, and the film follows this young everyman through his call up to the East Yorkshire Regiment, his training, his meeting a young girl, his journey to France, and his death on D-Day at Sword.

Cast

[4]

Production

In an 18 January 2008 article he wrote for The Guardian to coincide with the film's re-release, Stuart Cooper described at length the creation of this film. He originally intended to make a documentary about the Overlord Embroidery tapestry.[3] Cooper was told that it would take 9 years to review all the footage in the collection, which included dangerous nitrate film stock. He wrote that after narrowing his selection, “I spent approximately 3,000 hours in that dark cell between 1971 and 1975... It was during the archival research that I developed the idea of a dramatised feature film about an English soldier who sees his first action on D-Day, interweaving the archive footage to expand and tell the story. More research in the museum's document section - reading letters and unpublished diaries of ordinary soldiers who saw action in the first wave of D-Day - refined the concept...The film archive controlled what historical events our soldier's story would encompass. Once that was established, (Christopher) Hudson was able to dramatise some wonderful and totally original scenes extracted from diaries and letters of real servicemen.”[3] The Imperial War Museum and the Ministry of Defense assisted the production in many ways, from help with costumes and props to training actors to a flight by the last operational Lancaster bomber over Bristol.[3]

Seventy percent of Overlord is live action, shot in 10 days.[3] The rest is archival footage, from British training missions to the invasion itself, as well as captured German film. Cooper and his cinematographer, John Alcott, tried to create a consistent look when filming the contemporary footage. “After Alcott examined (the pristine nitrate negatives), we decided to film Overlord on period lenses. Alcott scoured England and found two sets of 1936 and 1938 German Goetz (sic) (correct spelling is Goerz) and Schneider lenses. Alcott then applied a lighting style in keeping with the war photography.”[3]

Cooper also includes footage of the London Blitz and bombing of Europe to emphasise the events leading up to the invasion and the comparatively short distance between England and France.

Overlord originally failed to get US theatrical distribution and was only shown there in select screenings and on television (including a run on California's Z Channel which was highlighted on the acclaimed 2004 TV documentary film Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession).[5][6] In 2006, the film saw its first US release through Janus Films and in early 2008 a re-mastered edition was re-released in cinemas (on 1 February, with a launch at the Institute of Contemporary Arts) and on DVD (on 3 March) in the UK.

It was released as part of the Criterion Collection in 2007.[7][8]

Reception

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film received an approval rating of 90% based on 20 reviews, with an average rating of 8.04/10.[9]

On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 88 out of 100 based on 8 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[10] Roger Ebert gave the film a full four stars upon its re-release, and argued that it "combines its newsreel and fictional footage so effectively that it has a greater impact than all fiction, or all documentary, could have achieved."[11]

Jonathan Rosenbaum, on the other hand, said the film was "an interesting failure" criticizing the sincere yet clichéd story integrating with a remarkable selection of newsreels.[12]

References
  1. MUBI
  2. "Berlinale 1975: Prize Winners". berlinale.de. Retrieved 11 July 2010.
  3. Cooper, Stuart (18 January 2008). "A camera instead of a rifle". Guardian. Retrieved 16 August 2009.
  4. TCM.com
  5. "Z Channel: Overlord". YouTube. Retrieved 19 July 2018.
  6. "Film Montage from "Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession" (2004)". YouTube. Retrieved 19 July 2018.
  7. The Criterion Collection: Overlord by Stuart Cooper
  8. Amazon listing
  9. "Overlord (1975)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Retrieved 12 September 2018.
  10. "Overlord [re-release] Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 12 September 2018.
  11. Ebert, Roger (1 June 2006). "Overlord Movie Review & Film Summary (2006)". Retrieved 1 September 2016.
  12. Chicago Reader
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