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    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1960s
    Movies - 1960s Movies - O 2 Mins Read

    Oh! What A Lovely War (1969)

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    In his first project as a director, Richard Attenborough restaged the First World War on Brighton Pier.

    Oh! What A Lovely War was an ambitious attempt to translate to the screen Joan Littlewood’s history of the 1914-18 conflict. Her Stratford East stage hit combined music-hall songs, diaries and contemporary commentary in a withering attack on the folly of war and the fatuity of the ruling class.

    ohwhatlovelywar

    Attenborough retained the basic structure, anchored in a seaside pierrot show, and opened it out to take in the Victorian splendour of Brighton pier, along with the rolling hills of the Sussex Downs, which stand in for the Western Front.

    The film was full of small miracles of production design: John Mills’ Field Marshal Haig directs the Battle of the Somme from the top of a helter-skelter while the mounting losses are posted on a cricket scoreboard; a member of the representative Smith family (Maurice Roeves) gets on the pier’s miniature railway and leaves for the Front; and at the end of the film the last surviving Smith boy follows a red tape from the trenches to a room where the Armistice is being signed . . .

    Some of the searing quality of the original was smothered by the scale of the production and the roster of stars in cameo roles, among them Ralph Richardson, Laurence Olivier, Dirk Bogarde, Michael and Vanessa Redgrave, and – memorably – Maggie Smith (pictured below) as the raddled old soubrette who lures young men on to the music-hall stage . . . and straight into the welcoming hands of the recruiting sergeant.

    ohwhatalovelywar

    Stephen
    Dirk Bogarde
    Lady Haig
    Phyllis Calvert
    French Colonel
    Jean-Pierre Cassel
    General Von Molke
    John Clements
    Count Berchtold
    John Gielgud
    Emperor Franz Joseph
    Jack Hawkins
    Kaiser Wilhelm II
    Kenneth More
    Field Marshal Sir John French
    Laurence Olivier
    General Sir Henry Wilson
    Michael Redgrave
    Sylvia Pankhurst
    Vanessa Redgrave
    Sir Edward Grey
    Ralph Richardson
    Music Hall star
    Maggie Smith
    Eleanor
    Susannah York
    Sir Douglas Haig
    John Mills
    President Poincaré
    Ian Holm
    Tsar Nicholas II
    Paul Daneman
    Mary Smith
    Mary Wimbush
    Flo Smith
    Wendy Allnutt
    Bertie Smith
    Corin Redgrave
    George Smith
    Maurice Roëves
    Betty Smith
    Angela Thorne

    Director
    Richard Attenborough

    Video

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