“How I Won the War,” released on DVD over four decades after its theatrical debut in 1967, is notable for two reasons. First, it’s the only film that Beatle John Lennon appeared in without his fellow band mates in tow, and second, it’s a liberal, anti-war film that was reamed by Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times and Bosley Crowther in the New York Times.

Lennon plays a bit part as a soldier under the command of British lieutenant Earnest Goodbody (Michael Crawford), whose incompetence continually dwindles his troops as they fight the Axis in North Africa and Europe.

Director Richard Lester, the man behind Beatles films “Help!” and “A Hard Day’s Night,” splices grainy, tinted documentary footage into his film, but detracts from the weight of this footage through gag comedy and an apparent lack of direction throughout.

Charles Wood wrote the screenplay, though it’s hard to understand what he wrote exactly. The dialogue is spoken so fast that with the British accents it’s nearly impossible to understand. And the storyline is mashed and incoherent, seemingly without a purpose or end-point in sight.

I think the acting is good, I think, but I couldn’t really tell since I didn’t know what the actors were saying. Lennon’s pretty funny, but his character is a prankster, whose gags are immature and childish. (more…)

A Los Angeles Times article I read recently made me chuckle. It began by wearily tossing an exhausted barb at the 3-D phenomenon sweeping Hollywood: “With sighs of relief, critics last week took off their Polaroid glasses and looked at a couple of old-fashioned, two-dimensional films.” The big-screen photography of one of those pictures drew particular attention, with one critic noting that “It gives reality a true third dimension. . . the kind of 3-D you cannot get with mechanical tricks or by any other means except a rich comprehension and ingenious mastery of the visual storyteller’s art.”

Well, let me fess up. I read the article recently, yes — but in a fifty-year-old copy of the Los Angeles Times. The paper was dated May 6, 1953, and the two-dimensional film being praised for bucking Hollywood’s push towards 3-D was Shane.

It was a time when TV was cutting deeply into movie profits, and studios were scrambling to win back the wandering eyeballs of America. Cinerama, an ambitious, three-projector widescreen extravaganza, debuted in New York in the fall of 1952, with its test film This Is Cinerama garnering front-page fanfare and great acclaim. Bosley Crowther, the Roger Ebert of his time, gasped that it gave the audience “the same sensations. . . felt on that night, years ago, when motion pictures were first publicly flashed on a large screen. . . People sat back in spellbound wonder. . . as though most of them were seeing motion pictures for the first time.” In a single evening, the development of all-new expansive formats had become a fait accompli, and studios immediately began looking for ways to capitalize on the buzz. (more…)

The casting of Robert Montgomery (1904–1981) in They Were Expendable was uncommonly appropriate. The suave, handsome actor made his name in debonair romantic comedies throughout the 1930s, but like John Ford he didn’t wait until America was dragged into war before enlisting. In 1940, fired up by the life-and-death struggles raging in Europe, he abandoned his M-G-M contract, went to France, and volunteered as an ambulance driver. Only a few weeks went by before he had it shot out from under him — one film magazine of the era reported (or perhaps exaggerated) that he narrowly avoided capture with the help of a French priest, and escaped the country mere hours before it fell to the Germans.

Back in the states he enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserve, and over the next three years served in many capacities before finding his way to the Pacific theater, where he met John Bulkeley and became his executive officer. Montgomery commanded a PT boat in many battles, and eventually headed up to Normandy as an operations officer for a destroyer squadron. While preparing for D-Day, he remembered later, “I saw Bulkeley on his PT Boat and waved to him. There was another man on the bridge with him. I had no idea then it was Jack Ford.” (more…)