Oh! What a Lovely War: Richard Attenborough

The great tragedy of Richard Attenborough's Oh! What a Lovely War isn't that it isn't remembered more fondly than his 1982 epic Gandhi. The true tragedy is that the film loses its focus and maintains only a fraction of its potential greatness. The film, based on the 1963 stage musical, has one of the most brilliant takes on World War One that has ever graced the cinema: a musical where the songs are revisions of real pieces sung by historical soldiers and the plot summarizes the war via allegorical characters. The opening scene, set in a fantastical version of Brighton's West Pier, has individuals representing entire countries act out the opening of the war: two actors representing the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife are given red roses and fall to the ground dead when all of the countries come together for a picture. Then the other actors arrange themselves on a giant map of Europe as "the game begins." But here's the film's main problem: it focuses much of its run-time on the Smiths, a nondescript British family who are pulled into the war. I can understand wanting to portray the horrors of the First World War as it was experienced by everyday British citizens, but the film is at its best when it deals with sweeping historical moments: Maggie Smith appears as a sultry music hall star who seduces hapless young men to join the Army when the War lasts longer than it was intended, the War itself is depicted as a carnival midway where soldiers collapse and die on merry-go-rounds, and, in my favorite moment of the film, near the end a delegation of American soldiers invade Brighton Pier to the tune of "Over There" and snatch the battle plans away from the incompetent British officers. Though I'm aware that the Smith's are allegories in their own way, focusing on them was like if George Orwell had devoted several chapters in Animal Farm to a random farmer living next door to Manor Farm. If the film had devoted itself solely to the major metaphor of the war as a midway attraction being organized by ignorant, stubborn, nationalistic aristocrats, then Oh! What a Lovely War could have gone down as one of the best war films of the 60s.

8/10