Oh! What a Lovely War – 1969 | 144 mins | Musical, War, Satire | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Richard Attenborough‘s first film as a director was this audacious anti-war satirical musical based on the Joan Littlewood/Theatre Workshop 1963 musical Play, adapted from the radio play `The Long, Long Trail’ by Charles Chilton. The critique of the madness and futility of the Great War got misplaced in transition, and novelist Len Deighton ended up removing his name from the credits. The star-laden cast includes Laurence Olivier, John Mills, Maggie Smith, Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud,Kenneth More and Michael Redgrave.

Set in Brighton’s Royal Pavilion and on the West Pier, the unwieldy series of vignettes and splashy 1914-18 musical numbers are often too-clever, sometimes moving, but frequently never effectively reconcile the lampooning of the incompetent General Staff on the English homefront with its sincerity towards the salt-of-the-earth Tommies in France. The film is seen through the eyes of the middle-class Smith family, whose sons all go to war and are senselessly killed.