From David’s autobiography, Was Clara Shuman a Fag Hag?
The preparation for the Lodz Festival in 2004 was the first time I’d thought to give a non-flippant answer to the question “What are your favourite films?”
They are of course the four anti-war pictures, and favourite for no reason other than what they are about. How I won The War is perhaps the best. Charles Wood and I certainly think it is Richard Lester’s best. He chose Charles Ryan’s book because he couldn’t get the rights to Catch 22 (which, oddly enough, I ended up doing as well). In it Michael Crawford leads a platoon of soldiers through World War II getting one of their number killed in each campaign.
Contemporary wartime black and white newsreels were cut together with our own material and the completed scene was then tinted a specific colour (Dunkirk – yellow, Arnhem – blue and so on). Instead of disappearing, the dead soldiers keep their places in the platoon, never speaking, and each in battle-dress dyed the colour of the scene in which he was killed.
How I Won the War is a black comedy film directed by Richard Lester, released in 1967. The film stars Michael Crawford as bungling British Army Officer Lieutenant Earnest Goodbody, with John Lennon (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.
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
Editing by John Victor-Smith
Studio Petersham Pictures
Distributed by United Artists
Release date 18th October, 1967 (U.K.)
Running time 109 minutes
Country United Kingdom
Language English
