How I Won the War
| How I Won the War | |
|---|---|
DVD cover for How I Won the War
(John Lennon on cover) |
|
| Directed by | Richard Lester |
| Produced by | Richard Lester |
| Written by |
Patrick Ryan (novel) Charles Wood |
| Starring |
Michael Crawford John Lennon Roy Kinnear Jack MacGowran Michael Hordern Lee Montague Karl Michael Vogler |
| Music by | Ken Thorne |
| Cinematography | David Watkin |
| Edited by | John Victor-Smith |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | United Artists |
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Release date
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18 October 1967 (UK) 23 October 1967 (US) |
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Running time
|
109 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
How I Won the War is a black comedy film directed and produced by Richard Lester, released in 1967, based on a novel of the same name by Patrick Ryan. The film stars Michael Crawford as bungling British Army Officer Lieutenant Earnest Goodbody, with John Lennon (in his only non-musical role, as Musketeer Gripweed), Jack MacGowran (Musketeer Juniper), Roy Kinnear (Musketeer Clapper) and Lee Montague (Sergeant Transom) as soldiers under his command. The film uses an inconsistent variety of styles—vignette, straight–to–camera, and, extensively, parody of the war film genre, docu-drama, and popular war literature—to tell the story of 3rd Troop, the 4th Musketeers (a fictional regiment reminiscent of the Royal Fusiliers) and their misadventures in the Second World War. This is told in the comic/absurdist vein throughout, a central plot being the setting-up of an "Advanced Area Cricket Pitch" behind enemy lines in Tunisia, but it is all broadly based on the Allied landings in North Africa in 1942 to the crossing of the last intact bridge on the Rhine at Remagen in 1945. The film was not critically well received.
The main character, Lieutenant Goodbody, is an inept, idealistic, naïve, and almost relentlessly jingoistic wartime-commissioned (not regular) officer. One of the main subversive themes in the film is the platoon's repeated attempts or temptations to kill or otherwise rid themselves of their complete liability of a commander. In fact, with dead-weight heavy irony, while Lieutenant Goodbody's ineptitude and attempts at derring-do lead to the gradual demise of his entire unit, Goodbody survives, together with one of his charges who finishes the film confined to psychiatric care, and the unit's persistent deserter. In a heavy macabre device, each deceased soldier is replaced by a sort of living toy soldier, represented by an actor in brightly-coloured World War II uniform whose face is obscured by netting, underscoring Goodbody's lack of adult connection with his duties.
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