Overlord (1975) [The Criterion Collection #382]
DVD9 | ISO | NTSC 16:9 (720x480) | Scans + Booklet | 01:23:03 | 7,49 Gb
Audio: English AC3 1.0 @ 192 Kbps + Commentary track | Subs: English SDH
Genre: Drama, War, Art-house | 2 wins | UK
DVD9 | ISO | NTSC 16:9 (720x480) | Scans + Booklet | 01:23:03 | 7,49 Gb
Audio: English AC3 1.0 @ 192 Kbps + Commentary track | Subs: English SDH
Genre: Drama, War, Art-house | 2 wins | UK
Seamlessly interweaving archival war footage and a fictional narrative, Stuart Cooper’s immersive account of one twenty-year-old’s journey from basic training to the front lines of D-Day brings all the terrors and isolation of war to life with jolting authenticity. Overlord, impressionistically shot by Stanley Kubrick’s longtime cinematographer John Alcott, is both a document of World War II and a dreamlike meditation on man’s smallness in a large, incomprehensible machine.
IMDB
Criterion
DVDBeaver
The use of stock footage has been a staple of the movies, especially war movies, since the beginnings of the cinema, but in Overlord, whose title is a reference to the code name for the Allied invasion of Europe, Stuart Cooper raises it to an art form. After culling through thousands of hours of footage that was taken by various military filmmakers (both Allied and German) throughout World War II and archived in the Imperial War Museum, Cooper constructed a short, but powerful film that seamlessly mixes the archival footage with a fictional narrative tracing the path of a young British soldier from his home to the beaches at Normandy.
However, the real achievement of Overlord is not so much the ability of Cooper and his editor, Jonathan Gili, to match the archival footage with the new footage by cinematographer John Alcott, who that same year shot Stanley Kubrick’s lush tragedy Barry Lyndon. Rather, it is Cooper’s ability to intermingle the two sources of imagery to create a persistently dreamlike atmosphere; despite having completely different sources, the film’s documentary footage and expressive fictional footage are all of a piece–both realistic and surreal. Overlord is replete with the traditions of the war genre, from the training montage, to the homosocial camaraderie of the troops, but its most powerful moments take place deep within the young soldier’s dreamworld, where he imagines conversations and encounters that haunt the build-up to the Allied invasion, giving this massive, historical moment an everyman emotional charge.
The young man is named Tom, and he is played by Brian Stirner, who at the time was an unknown (Cooper insisted that the main character not be played by a recognizable actor). He is a simple and modest person, perched (as are so many soldiers) on the threshold between boyhood and manhood. He has an inviting face and a genial persona, which immediately sets up the fear that we are watching the slow destruction of innocence. There are hints of his possible death in a recurring slow-motion image of a soldier in full sprint being shot down, but it is not clear exactly who this victim is and whether it is a premonition of the future of a symbol of the necessary evils of war.
Because Overlord was made partially to celebrate the 30th anniversary of D-Day, it is not a one-note antiwar missive, but neither it is a rah-rah celebration of military prowess. Instead, Cooper suggests the realities of war without making any overt moral statements. His use of the archival footage is particularly compelling here because it evokes such contrasting emotions. Images of bombs dropping from the bellies of planes have an almost poetic rhythm, a montage of military/industrial build-up can’t help but create a sense of both admiration and dread, and the first-person shots of planes shooting up supply-carrying trains gives you a vertiginous video-game rush that is countered by on-the-ground footage of burning buildings and the occasional, brief shot of charred German corpses. It is both exhilarating and nauseating, and the fact that Cooper and his coscreenwriter Christopher Hudson derived much of their screenplay from actual journal entries reinforces the idea that such divergent responses are not at all uncommon.
The emotional thread of the story is drawn out in a romantic subplot in which Tom meets a young woman (Julie Neesam) at a dance in the small town where his unit is stationed. They have a sweet, slightly awkward exchange at the dance and then go for a chaste walk in which they both suggest more attraction than they’re willing to engage at that moment. They promise to meet again, but then Tom’s unit is called out, which ensures that any future exchanges will take place only inside the young man’s mind. Cooper gives us two scenes in which Tom and the girl reunite in the realm of his daydreams, which creates a sensation of such universal loss and sadness that the unexpected and cruelly ironic conclusion on the sands of Normandy takes on a heightened sense of tragedy.
Although Overlord shared the Silver Bear at the 1975 Berlin Film Festival, it quickly sank from memory when it failed to get a U.S. distributor and was all but forgotten until it was resurrected at the 2006 Telluride Film Festival. I doubt it will be forgotten again.James Kendrick, Qnetwork
Overlord – Criterion Collection is a fascinating film, an historical curiosity of indie cinema that's been rescued from obscurity by DVD. Stuart Cooper recreates one soldier's inner struggle by melding archival footage from WWII with a fictional narrative, creating a kind of cinematic alchemy that brings a freshness to the D-Day story. Criterion has rewarded this effort with a package that reaches the high water mark for DVDs, coupling a clean transfer with truly excellent bonus features. While I did find Overlord a little slow, the presentation itself elevates the standard, and so, the Overlord – Criterion Collection disc is Highly Recommended.
Edition Details:
• Audio commentary featuring Cooper and actor Brian Stirner
• Mining the Archive, a new video featuring Imperial War Museum film archivists detailing the war footage used in the film
• Capa Influences Cooper, a new photo essay featuring Cooper on photographer Robert Capa
• Cameramen at War, the British Ministry of Information’s 1943 film tribute to newsreel and service film unit cameramen
• A Test of Violence (1969), Cooper’s short film about Spanish artist Juan Genoves
• Germany Calling, a 1941 British Ministry of Information propaganda film, clips of which appear in Overlord
• Journals from two D-day soldiers, read by Brian Stirner
• Theatrical trailer
• 30-page liner notes booklet with essay by critic Kent Jones, a short history of the Imperial War Museum, and excerpts from the Overlord novelization, by Cooper and Christopher Hudson
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