Oh What a Lovely War
Oh What a Lovely War (directed by Richard Attenborough, 1969) Joan Littlewood was a hardscrabble British theatrical producer with a mission to show ordinary people the magic of theatre. To her profound disappointment, her unconventional theatre attracted a middle class audience both in England and abroad.
Ms. Littlewood is best known for Oh What a Lovely War, a play that opened on London’s West End in 1963. Based on the contrast between life in the trenches and the World War I asses who commanded this carnage of British soldiers, I remember, from my seeing the play in December, 1963, that it was a chilling anti-war satire as stark as All Quiet on the Western Front and as satirical as Catch-22.
I recall the use of lantern screens to flash battle images before the audience. As counterpoint massive casualties were projected (hundred of thousands of soldiers dead at the Somme), while the British high command seemed blissfully unaware of the slaughter. The juxtaposition between the realities of the battlefield and the unreal behavior and orders from the generals for yet another massive frontal attack had a chilling impact on me and others in the audience.
For many years the impact of Ms. Littlewood’s play was indelibly stamped in my psyche. Recently I was able to locate a Special Collectors Edition of Oh What a Lovely War. Upon viewing it I felt sad for Ms. Littlewood and how her masterpiece had been glamorized. The movie, directed by Richard Attenborough, is in color with a star-studded cast, including John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Jack Hawkins, Ralph Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave, Maggie Smith, Susannah York, and John Mills.
As the British might phrase it, I found the Attenborough film “over the top.” Using the seaside town of Brighton as the site for family vignettes related to the war and as the at times surreal British generals’ prattling, I felt that the music and the imagery detracted from the starkness that was Ms. Littlewood’s forte.
Attenborough got a lot right: the nature of this ‘game’ between nations that led to World War I; the cynical stupidity of the British general staff; and the gallows humor that kept the Tommies going, when they knew that they were likely soon to be slaughtered to no avail. Among the most compelling of battlefield scenes was the Christmas truce and celebration between British and German soldiers. This recently was the focus of a movie based on Stanley Weintraub’s superb Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce.
Matching savagely funny satire with quiet sorrow, Mr. Attenborough has captured the tragedy of World War I with a large dollop of froth and mirth. I believe that high school and college students would appreciate film clips that range from 1) foreign ministers exchanging banalities as Europe was on the cusp of war; to 2) the contrast between the generals and the soldiers in a war in which millions of human beings were cavalierly sacrificed during the stalemate of trench warfare. These themes are equally topical today.
