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From jukebox Svengali to music-hall Artaud, the Richard Lester situation. "I liked it better when he was a comedian. He wasn't very funny but I liked it better." His Majesty's Brigade of Musketeers and the asinine young lieutenant (Michael Crawford) leading them during World War Two, boot camp to North Africa to the Rhine. Rotund cuckold (Roy Kinnear), baggy-pants screwball (Jack MacGowran) and tenacious deserter (Jack Hedley) round out the regiment, the Oswald Mosley enthusiast (John Lennon) serves tea. "Thank you, sir, for not holding fascism against me." Setting up a cricket pitch is the mission, casualties along the way simply press on painted head to toe in bright colors, veddy proper zombies in red and blue and green. The blustering colonel (Michael Hordern) crawls out of an overturned jeep, meanwhile an unlucky corporal moans about the pain from bloody stumps to a mirage of his missus. "Run them under the cold tap, luv." Absurdism is the language of the jerky-flippant-angry vaudeville, asides and pratfalls mashed with jingoistic slogans and newsreel footage in a most scattered collage. Officers trade bubblegum cards, bayonet deaths follow crummy puns, camouflage make-up becomes Jolson-style blackface. "It's important to raise a laugh on the battlefield," exclaims the reporter amidst explosions as if broadcasting a rugby match. Godard mordancy (Les Carabiniers) is emulated and Lean spectacle (The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia) is skewered, when in doubt Lester cuts to a pair of biddies watching the movie in the theater. The chill at the end of the farce is a prematurely wizened boy grimly savoring lies along with biscuits. "Ah, well. What you doing next?" "I hear there's this Vietnam thing coming." Nichols' Catch-22 learns nothing from the mess. With Lee Montague, Karl Michael Vogler, Ronald Lacey, James Cossins, Ewan Hooper, and Alexander Knox.
--- Fernando F. Croce |