The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968)
Country: GB
Technical: col/scope 141m
Director: Tony Richardson
Cast: David Hemmings, Trevor Howard, John Gielgud, Vanessa Redgrave, Harry Andrews, Jill Bennett
Synopsis:
A young officer returns from India and joins the 11th Hussars under Lord Cardigan. However, antipathy is mutual and he is seconded to the War Office under Lord Raglan. When the Crimean War breaks out, he leaves with the expeditionary force for the Black Sea, and, having pointed his senior officers in the wrong direction, takes the first hit at the battle of Balaclava.
Review:
An interesting $8 million failure, Richarson's film, which more or less spelt the end of Woodfall Films as a serious player, is endowed with witty animations in the style of newspaper cartoons of the period, follows the events leading up to the charge with scrupulous efficiency, and, to be fair, puts much of its budget up on the screen. On the debit side, the script approaches a Tom Jones-style puerility (particularly in the number of officers given speech impediments to exaggerate their foppishness), loses its way at times in an unnecessary dalliance to justify Vanessa Redgrave's presence, and has a rather awkward sense of narrative line. The over-arching thrust is clearly to satirise the state of the army at the time, in a way no doubt inflected by anti-war, anti-imperial sentiment consequent on the Vietnam war and Suez. Captain Nolan's argument that war needed to be taken seriously as a struggle to the death, and the implicit criticism that the professionalisation of the army was long overdue, or that the seeds of Gallipoli etc. were all too visible sixty years earlier, are well taken.
Country: GB
Technical: col/scope 141m
Director: Tony Richardson
Cast: David Hemmings, Trevor Howard, John Gielgud, Vanessa Redgrave, Harry Andrews, Jill Bennett
Synopsis:
A young officer returns from India and joins the 11th Hussars under Lord Cardigan. However, antipathy is mutual and he is seconded to the War Office under Lord Raglan. When the Crimean War breaks out, he leaves with the expeditionary force for the Black Sea, and, having pointed his senior officers in the wrong direction, takes the first hit at the battle of Balaclava.
Review:
An interesting $8 million failure, Richarson's film, which more or less spelt the end of Woodfall Films as a serious player, is endowed with witty animations in the style of newspaper cartoons of the period, follows the events leading up to the charge with scrupulous efficiency, and, to be fair, puts much of its budget up on the screen. On the debit side, the script approaches a Tom Jones-style puerility (particularly in the number of officers given speech impediments to exaggerate their foppishness), loses its way at times in an unnecessary dalliance to justify Vanessa Redgrave's presence, and has a rather awkward sense of narrative line. The over-arching thrust is clearly to satirise the state of the army at the time, in a way no doubt inflected by anti-war, anti-imperial sentiment consequent on the Vietnam war and Suez. Captain Nolan's argument that war needed to be taken seriously as a struggle to the death, and the implicit criticism that the professionalisation of the army was long overdue, or that the seeds of Gallipoli etc. were all too visible sixty years earlier, are well taken.
Country: GB
Technical: col/scope 141m
Director: Tony Richardson
Cast: David Hemmings, Trevor Howard, John Gielgud, Vanessa Redgrave, Harry Andrews, Jill Bennett
Synopsis:
A young officer returns from India and joins the 11th Hussars under Lord Cardigan. However, antipathy is mutual and he is seconded to the War Office under Lord Raglan. When the Crimean War breaks out, he leaves with the expeditionary force for the Black Sea, and, having pointed his senior officers in the wrong direction, takes the first hit at the battle of Balaclava.
Review:
An interesting $8 million failure, Richarson's film, which more or less spelt the end of Woodfall Films as a serious player, is endowed with witty animations in the style of newspaper cartoons of the period, follows the events leading up to the charge with scrupulous efficiency, and, to be fair, puts much of its budget up on the screen. On the debit side, the script approaches a Tom Jones-style puerility (particularly in the number of officers given speech impediments to exaggerate their foppishness), loses its way at times in an unnecessary dalliance to justify Vanessa Redgrave's presence, and has a rather awkward sense of narrative line. The over-arching thrust is clearly to satirise the state of the army at the time, in a way no doubt inflected by anti-war, anti-imperial sentiment consequent on the Vietnam war and Suez. Captain Nolan's argument that war needed to be taken seriously as a struggle to the death, and the implicit criticism that the professionalisation of the army was long overdue, or that the seeds of Gallipoli etc. were all too visible sixty years earlier, are well taken.