Edgar Soberon Torchia Second World War (1939-1945) has been the subject of many films that recount the beginning, the offensives, the European movements of resistance, their survival; stories of troops, battles and personalities; the prisons, intimate dramas the madness, the Jewish experience, the memories and the perceptions of the conflagration and the post-war years. England was one of the most devastated nations and the conflict generated a varied production, from the State financed propaganda to classics as "In Which We Serve" and "49th Parallel". But the farthest the products were from the real events, the more false they got, the more they have been loaded with special effects, without a real feeling of what happened between 1939 and 1945. "Overlord" (codename for the 1944 disembarkation of troops in Normandy) supplies that time distance from the real events with a brilliantly executed idea. The film depicts the training of a young British recruit who will die even before the landing starts: his premonition is exposed from the first minutes. We know that he is going to die in the end, so his preparation, reflections, relationship with other recruits, fleeting romance and movements with the troops, are loaded with melancholy and naivety, to which Brian Stirner's face immensely helps, as he portrays the central role Tom Beddows. Tom is not afraid at all. He is just there because he was recruited, he is going to fight because "he has to" or perhaps he senses that his destiny is in the hands of powerful men who stage wars when numbers do not add up. Therefore, the screenplay by Christopher Hudson and Stuart Cooper (also director, an American filmmaker) contrasts Tom's moments of apparent calm, with footage from the war itself. I confess that I have rarely seen documentary material from different sources so admirably edited into a drama as in "Overlord", and I think the key was the selection of images. Taken from the British Imperial War Museum and a film archive in Germany, the authentic footage of Second World War is impressive. Only once we see human remains, because they prioritized the images of aerial attacks, train and cities under fire, building in flames with firemen all around, advancing troops, cannons, machine guns, ambulances, ships that are sunk (in a moment, Adolf Hitler impassively contemplates the panorama, from a wide airplane window...), all aptly overdubbed. No contemporary visual effects can compare to these sounds and images shot at the time they were happening. And the most remarkable job done is the integration of these shots with the scenes of Tom's recruitment, sometimes calm, other hectic. It is the contrast and the context, what Tom is ultimately going to face. "Overlord" won the Special Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival, but not even the UK recognized its value when it came to handing out its Bafta awards. Hollywood, for its part, had had too good a production in 1975 to award an Oscar to a British film. However, time is the best judge and in 2007 and 2014, digital editions were issued.

tieman64 A little seen war-movie by director Stuart Cooper, "Overlord" traces foot-soldier Brian Stirner's journey from enlistment to expiration. Beginning with a premonition of death, we watch as the young man joins the East Yorkshire Regiment, is put through boot camp, falls in love with a local girl, is thrown into a boat, journeys to France and participates in Operation Overlord, the Allied D-Day landings in France. Here he promptly dies.Roughly fifty percent of "Overlord" is comprised of documentary footage. This stock footage is carefully spliced into the film's central story, which is filmed in a similar gritty, faux-documentary style. The film's cinematographer was John Alcott, who worked extensively with Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick himself praised "Overlord", and reportedly told Cooper that the film's only problem was that "it's too short". Despite the film's faux-documentary style, Cooper's overall tone is surreal, dreamy and almost poetic. It's the bridge between Milestone's "A Walk in the Sun", Marton's "The Thin Red Line", Cornell Wilde's "Beach Red" and later "poetic", "ethereal", "reminiscent-heavy" war movies like Malick's "The Thin Red Line".Unfortunately, "Overlord's" documentary footage is more interesting than its central narrative. This footage - urgent and raw - grants us glimpses of the London Blitz, throws us into bomber cockpits, lets us observe aerial dogfights, fleet rallies and witness various beach landings. Some extended pieces of stock footage, seemingly uninterrupted single takes, are spectacular. Consider one scene in which we're thrown into a bomber and positioned to watch as the aircraft lifts off from an airfield in England, crosses the English Channel, races across the coast of France and then proceeds further inland. Not only is France's close proximity to England appreciated with such shots, but the overall tempo of bombing runs and the scale/logistics of combat.Elsewhere the film's supposedly "sad" ending is wholly clichéd, filled with old tropes tired even in the 1930s (see "All Quiet On The Western Front's" famous "butterfly ending"). In other ways the film resembles Kevin Brownlow's "It Happened Here", a groundbreaking 1964 British war film which also extensively used faux-documentary footage. 7.5/10 – For war buffs only. Worth one viewing.

jupiter-sen Someone gave me the DVD of Overlord at Christmas and I thought it might be interesting for those who browse through these reviews to hear from someone who had a very very very small part in the making of this film, but who was in a position to observe some of the work that went into it. I was a young and inexperienced assistant editor at the time and I was present for much of the editing and completion of the film. We were mainly based in Stuart Cooper's house in Notting Hill- then not so fashionable, and moved later to Twickenham studios. I remember a roving showbiz correspondent putting his head round the door there and asking who was in the film, anyone he'd heard of? I couldn't help him and he withdrew in disgust.Quite rightly, John Alcott is honourably mentioned in reviews and Stuart's commentary for the look of the film and the accomplished matching of old and new. I would also mention Jonathan Gili's contribution, then an editor, who later went on to direct and produce many great and quirky documentaries for the BBC. Jonathan worked with Stuart to construct the rhythm and the blend of the archive and 'live action'. His poetic timing and intrinsic wit added immeasurably to building the motor of the picture, making it purr where it could easily have stuttered. He also shared a sense of perfectionism with Stuart. Paul Glass's score, conjured out of penury of time and money, added a depth and resonance way beyond the means at the production's disposal, and I would draw attention to it. Lastly, but certainly not least, I would mention Alan Bell the sound editor. I will never forget the awe I felt when I stumbled into the dubbing theatre at Twickenham Studios and heard for the first time the all tracks run through of the scenes where bombers are unleashed over darkened cities. Up to then, the archive footage, with which I had become familiar, had been splendid, poignant and distant. Alan's delicacy and imagination combined with the music to turn it into a terrible elegy; for sound editors the brutal and spectacular is sometimes easier, and the more delicate and mysterious more difficult, but Alan managed both. Remember, this was a time before stereo was commonplace and the word digital did not impress. Jonathan is now dead, so is Alan; John Alcott too; and Paul Glass must be pretty senior now.Overlord was made on a shoestring; I seem to remember that a 2CV was used as a camera car for tracking shots, despite John Alcott's cachet. The formality of the mis en scene can be explained partially by this fact. Faute de mieux, it faithfully -and conveniently- echoes the shooting styles of films of the 40s. But in essence the predictable dialogue and selection of scenes of Tom's life were created to mirror the structure of the Overlord and Bayeux tapestries, if I recall correctly. Not startlingly individual, but about ordinary men in extraordinary times. Where Stuart and Christopher Hudson elaborate this is in the dream and premonition scenes and this is a nod to 'film art'- perhaps the new tapestry format! Stuart, I believe, struggled hard, persuading, inspiring and cajoling, to turn the film into something far more ambitious than planned. And the fact that he did so is to his credit.

Polaris_DiB "Overlord" is one of the most disembodied and surreal war movies ever created. It's the story of a soldier, Tom, who joins the British Army, trains, then gets sent to the D-Day Invasion (Operation Overlord) and is promptly shot.What makes the movie remarkable, however, is that it uses stock footage of the war interspersed with original footage, strange and original sound-mixing, and discontinuous editing to trace the soldier's progress of mental states to that moment of clarity right before he dies. Past, present, and future are all collapsed into one moment, and an image that provokes a response earlier has a key relationship with an image that comes later. Death, sexuality, and despair are clumped together as well, creating one of the most artful and poetic works ever made on war--which is important, considering that pseudo-poetic "antiwar" movies are made all the time that often break down into over-indulgent action films. No, this movie shares a lot more with Dziga Vertov's "The Man with a Movie Camera" than "The Sands of Iwo Jima".--PolarisDiB