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.

There were millions of unknown soldiers in WW2 … some heroic … some cowardly … and some downright stupid. Their stories are compelling … plucked from youth and loved ones … sent to faraway places … dealt an unremarkable death … insignificant in the maelstrom. This is the premise of Overlord. It is a good premise for a film, but that alone cannot save this film from the ash heap.Overlord has a huge problem … the simplicity of its plot. The film is about 83 minutes long … of which about half is stock war footage. Seriously, it seemed like they started with the stock and wrote a story around it … which led to a very simple plot. Character development is woefully missing in this film. Furthermore there are parts of the film that do nothing to drive the plot forward and leave you wondering what the heck is this about (note the scene with the French money … talk about a waste of 5 minutes).Overlord is a surreal, meandering, simplistic and often times pointless look at the preparation for the D Day invasion. It specifically focuses on one individual soldier's experience and his sense of futility and doom. It is maudlin … has very little historical context … and uses way too much stock. Finally, it suffers from a downright stupid ending.In honor of those who fought I begrudgingly give this film a 5 but it deserves a 3!

There are some who will proclaim this to be a modern classic, a brilliant parable on the realities of war and the effect it can have on the psyche. I cannot agree. Through all of the archive montages of buildings being set on fire, planes flying through the air and squaddies setting out to sea, I was just twiddling my fingers. If I wanted to see old Pathe footage, I would have watched a documentary. But I didn't, so the fact so much of it takes up the meagre 72 minutes running time strikes me as outright lazyness.Mind you, what's actually been shot for the film isn't too great either, as our too-polite-by-half main character gets enrolled in the army during training scenes that are about 1% as interesting as those in Full Metal Jacket. We then follow his career until D-Day itself, falling in love with a girl at a bar and voicing his disquiet at the conflict in the letters he sends. Problem is, this bloke is as dull as ditchwater, and his fellow soldiers, on the rare occasions they open their mouths, are just a bunch of one-dimensional stereotypes. The most interesting participant here is Tina, the cocker spaniel our young recruit says goodbye to at the start. Someone get that dog a contract.I can appreciate the use of a bit of celluloid material from back then, to set the scene and give us an idea of what life was like during the period. But here, it monopolises half the length, which is far too much for a product marketed as a movie. And why did they have to choose to follow someone so vanilla in the title role? I was reminded of the film Titanic, where despite the hundreds more enthralling prospects on board, the director opted to show us the lives of the two most tedious passengers. WHY?? By the time his eventual fate is revealed, and has done or said nothing to endear us to him... so, who cares?War can be many things... but surely it should not send you to sleep? 4/10

This review contains a potential spoiler.In honor of Ken Burns' The War I pulled out the recent DVD release of Stuart Cooper's Overlord to see things from the English perspective Overlord concerns a soldier named Tom from the point at which he leaves home to report for military service to the landing on D-Day. We follow as Tom trains, makes friends and generally waits for his part of the war to start. Shot in black and white to match a great deal of inserted footage from the time this is a soldier's life during wartime English style.Re-released in the US a year or so ago I remember the reviews being nearly perfect and I looked forward to getting the chance to see this "lost classic". Finally watching the film I'm left wondering what all the shouting has been about. Don't get me wrong, its a good film, its just the great one that some pundits, like Roger Ebert seemed to make it out to be.Essentially a film about waiting this film is merely a slice of life for the English soldier on the eve of the great invasion. We watch as Tom and his men are shunted around, we see their training, we see footage of the war from the air, and we watch as the men just wait around. There is more to it than that but for me its an 80 minute march to a foregone conclusion. It great to look at with some stunning sequences of old footage (flights over the countryside and air combat) that looked great on the 42 inch TV in the living room, but the film really didn't have much beyond that. Tom the central character and emotional center is too melancholy and morbid (he's certain he's going to die) that the film seems more incredibly sad if not incredibly distant. Why would any one want to be around him when he seems mostly to sulk and brood, even when he's falling in love with a girl he meets at a dance. The film looks stunning and on a technical level its a masterpiece of combining old with new footage.Clearly we are there, but with a central character such as the maudlin Tom Beddoe its not really a place we want to be no matter how good it looks.A disappointment (its good but not great) thats worth a look.