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kindkitOverlord, made in 1975, follows Tom Beddoes, a young British soldier, through his training and the preparations for the D-Day landings. It's a low-budget, low-key drama, very much in the British war film tradition although directed by an American, Stuart Cooper. What makes it extraordinary is a use of archival footage unlike anything I've ever seen. It's not only very extensive, aesthetically amazing, and beautifully integrated into the storytelling, it has a point beyond the usual "let's give the film a gloss of authenticity." Tom's personal story is intercut with sequences of air raids and their aftermath, weapons testing, the moving of masses of men and equipment, and so on to give a vivid sense of the hugeness of war, war as machine (as Tom himself calls it), and the smallness of any individual story in comparison.
There are a very few moments where the film gets a little 1970s-arthouse for my taste, but these are small flaws in one of the best war-related films I've ever seen. Overlord is another kind of experience entirely from a bloated, self-congratulatory, Hollywoodized monstrosity like Saving Private Ryan.
It was re-released by Criterion in 2007, and the Criterion disc (which I rented from Netflix) includes some nice bonus material such an informative mini-documentary with two Imperial War Museum film archivists about the film's use of IWM material.
There are a very few moments where the film gets a little 1970s-arthouse for my taste, but these are small flaws in one of the best war-related films I've ever seen. Overlord is another kind of experience entirely from a bloated, self-congratulatory, Hollywoodized monstrosity like Saving Private Ryan.
It was re-released by Criterion in 2007, and the Criterion disc (which I rented from Netflix) includes some nice bonus material such an informative mini-documentary with two Imperial War Museum film archivists about the film's use of IWM material.
