Overlord (Criterion Collection)
by Stuart Cooper
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Brian Stirner, Davyd Harries, Julie Neesam, Nicholas Ball, Sam SewellDirector: Stuart Cooper
Cinematographer: John Alcott
Writer: Stuart Cooper
Editor: Jonathan Gili
Producer: James Quinn
Writer: Christopher Hudson
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 83 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-04-17
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of Overlord (Criterion Collection)
Movie Review: hanging by a thread
Summary: 5 Stars
A singular narrative of one soldier's story as he preps for the upcoming June 6, 1944 D-Day invasion British style - Overlord. From induction through basic training up to heading into Normandy on the landing craft we get an inside looking out surrealism. Our protagonist Tom Beddows is an everyday Englishman who explores his dismal destiny as that hour draws ever near.
In 1975 Stuart Cooper directed a captivating vision using years of research, data/files, back catalogs, news reels, stock footage from all factions of war correspondents, a lithe script, troops, military equipment, and flying craft to splice, thread, forefront, and backdrop - all from the Imperial War Museum to add substance and sustenance to his story. A daunting task that ushers a unique look at war and it's ramifications from all sides especially those leading to initial engagement. As the machinations of allied forces collect and gather on the southernmost British Isles we see how minor but essential the individual players become.
To flush out this one common, innocent youthful man, one who was but a boy a few days before and drape this historically world/history changing event we have to awake from his dream and challenge a stark reality, a finality, an invocation, and eulogy of uncommon valor. Asking the hard questions, would we all be so brave or shame ourselves cowardly? What price freedom at any cost? Does purging our demons resurrect our heavenly host? Does a truly and lasting peace lie within our grasp?
Beautifully shot in pristine black and white, then intricately woven with addition historical footage - Overlord. In the telling of one, we speak of and to us all. This is the battle won on the inside. The battle won before we ever start. Poetically, a memorable mark in the celluloid reels of cinema. Much more than a war film.
Summary of Overlord (Criterion Collection)
Seamlessly interweaving archival war footage and a fictional narrative, Stuart Cooper's immersive account of one 20-year-old's journey from basic training to the battle front lines at D-day brings all the terrors and isolation of war to its viewers with jolting authenticity. Overlord, impressionistically shot by Stanley Kubrick's longtime cinematographer John Alcott, is both a document of WWII and a dreamlike meditation on man's smallness in a large, incomprehensible machine.To borrow a phrase from Film Comment editor-at-large Kent Jones, "unjustly forgotten and now happily resurrected" is the best way to describe Criterion's superb DVD release of Stuart Cooper's Overlord. Relatively unseen since its European theatrical release in 1975, this moody, well-crafted meditation on one soldier's preparation for battle employs a remarkably seamless combination of fictional narrative and amazing World War II footage from the archives of England's Imperial War Museum. While this "reel + real" technique is relatively common, director Stuart Cooper (an American filmmaker working in England) applied meticulous archival research to ensure that the documentary footage was logically and authentically integrated with his fictional narrative (cowritten with Christopher Hudson) to lend convincing verisimilitude to his simple, straightforward story of a young British soldier's anxious days prior to joining the front line in the D-Day Invasion of Nazi-occupied France (a.k.a. "Operation Overlord"--June 6, 1944). Haunted by a premonition of his own death, Tom (Brian Stirner) goes about his pre-battle business as any soldier would (including a touchingly sweet romance with an equally shy British girl, played by Julie Neesam), and as Overlord progresses, we see how the individual soldier is gradually absorbed into the massive machinery of warfare. Brilliantly filmed in black and white by Stanley Kubrick's frequent cinematographer John Alcott, Overlord succeeds as a thought-provoking study of war from intimate to epic scales, in addition to being an impressive technical achievement that's stylistically connected to the experimental narratives of the 1970s, yet still firmly rooted in the nobility of British war films from the 1940s. --Jeff Shannon
On the DVD
As always, the Criterion Collection did extensive research to provide Overlord with a wealth of informative supplements. Director Stuart Cooper and actor Brian Stirner share the DVD's feature-length commentary, and Overlord's historical context is thoroughly explored, beginning with "Mining the Archive," in which the Imperial War Museum archivists provide background history on the archival footage that director Stuart Cooper so carefully integrated into his narrative. "Capa Influences Cooper" is a photo essay in which Cooper explores the influence of legendary war photographer Rober Capa on the visual and emotional content of Overlord, and this emphasis is further supported by "Cameramen at War," a newsreel tribute to wartime photographers and newsreel cameramen, featuring some of the Imperial War Museum's most spectacular footage from World War II. "Germany Calling" is an amusing example of archival propaganda (produced in 1941 by the British Ministry of Information and briefly excerpted in Overlord) which ridicules Hitler's Nazi regime by synchronizing Nazi rally footage so a silly British melody. "A Test of Violence" is Stuart Cooper's 1969 short tribute to the bleak, war-themed paintings of Spanish artist Juan Genov?s; it was this film that led Cooper to create Overlord. Also included is Stirner's dramatic reading of journals by two Scottish D-Day soldiers whose experiences parallel those of Stirner's character in Overlord; the film's original theatrical trailer; and a 30-page booklet with an Overlord essay by Kent Jones, a short history of the Imperial War Museum, and excerpts from the Overlord novelization by Cooper and cowriter Christopher Hudson. --Jeff Shannon
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