User reviews

When I heard that this film consisted of about 1/3 newsreel footage, I was expecting the worst. Stock footage blended with studio footage is something you'd find in an MST3k movie; three people in a car driving quickly away from a giant lizard and then cut to a different film grain shot of an iguana in a lab and then back to the car. Oh no, the Iguana is chasing us.

The effect can be jarring, to say the least.

But Cooper, so far as I have heard, actually wrote the screenplay for Overlord with the stock footage he was going to use already in mind, tailoring his script so that the footage actually made sense. The movie is shot so that the switch from studio to stock lighting and film quality is barely noticeable. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's seamless--it does take a little while to get used to, but after the first fifteen minutes or so you don't even notice it.

And that's a good sign, that you have to "get used to" the picture for a little while before you feel comfortable watching it. That's the sign of originality. This is a brooding and slow-paced war film, but unlike other such films it maintains a certain lightness in spite of its weighty subject and so avoids coming off as ponderous. No viewpoints are shoved in your face. Hard questions are asked, yes, but you're given plenty of time to try and sort them out for yourself.

This is a movie you have to be wide awake while watching--it demands your full attention, and if you're not willing to give that up then you're probably not going to enjoy it. Overlord is most certainly not mindless entertainment. It provokes thought, and if thought makes you uncomfortable it's simply not the movie for you.

Fantastic little "war" gem this. Stands to reason why it won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Filmfestival once. We are offered visually very beautiful images of documentary footage from world war 2. In an extremely competent manner this material is mixed into a fictitious story about a young soldier´s life and death as a soldier participating in the famous D-Day invasion (Operation Overlord).Don't expect another Saving Private Ryan or The Longest Day.....Overlord is by far too "experimental" for that.Well, it's really impossible to compare these films, but rest assured Overlord will deliver a very unique war movie experience, like you´ve (probably) never seen it before.

I can safely assume that "Overlord" had an extremely minuscule budget. None of the actors look like professionals, it was all shot in black & white and the film uses lots and lots of stock footage from WWII. Despite my reservations, which I'll get to in a moment, it's awfully good considering the costs.

The film follows a typical sort of soldier, Tom Beddows, from his induction to his landing at the beaches of Normandy. Throughout his story, clips of the preparations for the landing as well as other war footage is inserted...often in the clumsiest and seemingly random manner. Despite this, the story of Tom IS compelling and sucks you in to his life. Worth seeing...especially if you would love to see a decent micro-budgeted picture.

"Overlord" follows the experience of a young soldier from his induction into the army up to his participation in Operation Overlord, the D-Day landings.

Beautifully photographed in black and white, the film weaves archive footage seamlessly into the fabric of the story and captures, not only the look, but the very essence of the period.

Until the closing moments, the protagonist is not involved in any fighting. What we see are the minutiae of life for a young soldier being trained and waiting to go into battle – the marching and military exercises; a trip to the cinema and the local village dance, where he meets his first girlfriend; the eve of battle, when he writes his last letter home, fills in the standard army issue will form, and burns all the private papers which he is not permitted to take into battle lest they fall into enemy hands and give away some information of use to the enemy. These small personal details give the film an emotional depth and a feeling for the times, which most war films made in the post war period fail to do.

There are some who will proclaim this to be a modern classic, a brilliant parable on the realities of war and the effect it can have on the psyche. I cannot agree. Through all of the archive montages of buildings being set on fire, planes flying through the air and squaddies setting out to sea, I was just twiddling my fingers. If I wanted to see old Pathe footage, I would have watched a documentary. But I didn't, so the fact so much of it takes up the meagre 72 minutes running time strikes me as outright lazyness.

Mind you, what's actually been shot for the film isn't too great either, as our too-polite-by-half main character gets enrolled in the army during training scenes that are about 1% as interesting as those in Full Metal Jacket. We then follow his career until D-Day itself, falling in love with a girl at a bar and voicing his disquiet at the conflict in the letters he sends. Problem is, this bloke is as dull as ditchwater, and his fellow soldiers, on the rare occasions they open their mouths, are just a bunch of one-dimensional stereotypes. The most interesting participant here is Tina, the cocker spaniel our young recruit says goodbye to at the start. Someone get that dog a contract.

I can appreciate the use of a bit of celluloid material from back then, to set the scene and give us an idea of what life was like during the period. But here, it monopolises half the length, which is far too much for a product marketed as a movie. And why did they have to choose to follow someone so vanilla in the title role? I was reminded of the film Titanic, where despite the hundreds more enthralling prospects on board, the director opted to show us the lives of the two most tedious passengers. WHY?? By the time his eventual fate is revealed, and has done or said nothing to endear us to him... so, who cares?

War can be many things... but surely it should not send you to sleep? 4/10

I saw Stuart Cooper's 'Overlord' at Seattle's Grand Illusion Theater last summer (before it opened anywhere else in the US) having heard nothing about the movie, and was absolutely floored by it. Its simple story follows Thomas, a young recruit, through his army training until just before he hits the beaches on early morning D-Day, all the while haunted by the spectre of impending death which awaits on Normandy's beaches.

The archival footage which makes up much of the film's most stunning imagery is meticulously chosen and edited; it frequently becomes Tom's dreams and visions of the War as it unfolds, and for the viewer, it is a vision of what WWII was, seen from both German and British sides. Cooper so masterfully situates Tom, an everyman, in visions of the surrounding war, that by the end of this surprisingly short, yet incredibly rich film, the magnitude of the toll the war took on the individuals fighting it becomes overwhelmingly moving.

Many will notice the major influence this movie had on parts of 'Full Metal Jacket' (Kubrick's long time collaborator John Alcott shot 'Overlord,' and Kubrick once commented that the only thing wrong with this movie was that it should have been twice as long). However, 'Overlord' is unique; I've never seen another war movie quite like this. It's a masterpiece of cinematic war poetry, and that it's taken over 30 years to get a release of any kind in the US is really surprising. It certainly holds its own against any of the best movies made about WWII.

If you watched Saving Private Ryan, go and see this film too. It's totally different, but it deals with the personal feelings of a private much better, no battle scenes, just the perfect backdrop about a normal soldier going off to war, knowing what will happen.

"Overlord" is a very good film, but marred by one constantly reoccurring flaw - the editing. The editing is so choppy, so ill-conceived that the film is never allowed to completely get off the ground. The newsreel footage could have been used much more effectively for punctuation as opposed to content. There's so much of it at play here that any new footage seems almost like an afterthought. And for a film whose running time barely tops an hour and twenty minutes, there's quite a lack of dramatic drive behind it. Every time "Overlord" settles into a powerful or gripping sequence (and there are several), five to ten minutes of uninterrupted stock footage breaks up the flow.

Those are the bad points. Now for the good. The acting is the first thing that comes to mind. Brian Stirner plays Tom, the main character. He conveys emotion with such purity, from trepidation to fear to honesty to joy. His face draws you in with its uncomplicated childlike demeanour. The supporting actors are all equally impressive. No one ever feels like anything less than fully real. John Alcott, as far as I'm concerned, is the real star here. His cinematography perfectly mirrors the wartime footage used, but still giving it his distinctly powerful personality. He adds so much to this film. Stuart Cooper brings it all together, but his poor eye for editing sabotages his own best strengths.

This is a very, very good film. But the pacing flaws present throughout make it extremely difficult to get into. If a more linear approach could have been adopted while still maintaining the powerful melancholy poetry of "Overlord", this could have been a great film.

I just saw a screening of this movie and was blown away by it. A simple story told in a "did they film this or is it archival footage" masterpiece. So many movies try to tell a story and piece together bits and pieces of newsreel footage. Woody Allen's "Zelig" and "Forest Gump" put the characters into old newsreel footage. Stuart Cooper created a whole story and filmed new scenes, combined them with archival and newsreel footage to create a haunting and beautiful film. Simple yet telling, the story of one soldier's preparation for WWII and his ultimate participation is riveting. The performances are quiet yet real. The footage found and the new footage filmed are seamless. The director and cinematographer found old German lenses and created the look to match what was filmed back in the 1940's. Criterion and Janus Films are releasing this gem and I hope every serious film lover will go see it. Not seen in the US on the big screen since it was filmed in 1975, now is the time for it to take it's rightful place. With war still an ugly reality and lonely yet brave soldier's giving their life for the country every day, this is a testament and tribute to those who believe in fighting for your country. Patriotism!

Somewhere between the patriotism and sentimentality of "Mrs. Miniiver" and the utter bleakness and hopelessness of this 1975 offering lies the truth about Britain's experience in WW2. Say "Dunkirk" which, without undue nationalistic gush or anti war cynicism, managed to be both stirring and depressing, in equal measure.

This film takes a docu drama approach, with thirty per cent of it stock footage, and like most docu dramas it ends up being rather unsatisfying, watered down versions of both genres. And it strikes me that foreshadowing the main character's death in the very beginning is exactly the wrong approach for director and co scenarist Stuart Cooper to take. It renders the character's actual death on D Day not only anti climactic but unaffecting, as well.

On the plus side I admired the restrained, quiet tone of the love story as well as the restrained, quiet performance of Brian Stirner in the lead. Wonder why he didn't have a bigger career. B minus.

The film follows British soldier Thomas Beddows (Brian Stirner) from his call-up, through basic training, and onto a landing craft off the coast of Normandy during 'Operation Overload', the allied invasion of fortress Europe on June 6, 1944. Though nicely done, the film doesn't add much to the extensive canon of war films that focus on young soldiers' lives from training to 'baptism under fire'. Much of the film's running time is well integrated stock-footage that serves to illustrate the magnitude and the horrors of the war that is flaring outside of Pte. Baddow's limited world rather than to buttress his story (i.e. It is not suggested that what we are 'seeing' is what he is experiencing). There are a number of premonition and dream sequences that interrupt the flow of the story and the ending comes as no surprise considering the overall bleak tone of the film. An interesting counterpoint to the big-budget WW2 epics of the 1960s and 70s.

A young British man Tom Beddoes is called up to war. The film follows his training and then finally landing on the beaches of Frances. There are large amounts of archival footage from both Allies and German sources that are intercut with this fictional character. I really didn't care or buy into the fictional account. The characters are interchangeable and not that compelling. The archival footage is another story. They take up about half of the movie and is rather fascinating. They don't actually connect with the fictional story. They create a surreal mood in the movie. The ending does have a poetic touch. However the fictional story still isn't that compelling.

I caught Overlord on IFC as a programming homage to Jerry Harvey and the Z Channel (thanx to Xan Cassavetes). If you are a WWII buff who loves the History Channel and interesting experimental films you'll enjoy this movie. The stock war footage is so seamlessly interwoven that it is almost a verite experience. I love when you catch something so offbeat and refreshing that you can't believe you had never heard of it before. Do they still make Fresca soda? I need 10 lines to post this. I hope I never encounter a rabid dingo. I wonder if Spielberg has seen this movie. I wonder if Spielberg digs Fresca soda. I wonder if I should've eaten that last mushroom cap.Check it out.

Born from an idea to document some embroidery to commemorate Operation Overlord in World War II, Stuart Cooper's Overlord tells the story of the months leading up to the famed D-Day invasion from the very tight perspective of a single soldier, Tom. Intercut with extensive footage from the Imperial War Museum's archives, Cooper created a dreamlike eulogy to the many nameless soldiers who died so young in service to a fight they seemed to grasp only tenuously. Made in the middle of the uproar against national armed conflict as a result of the Vietnam War, Overlord feels like it simply doesn't belong to the era in which it came. The condemnation of war is too dim, the rage against the injustice of men dying for their nations too absent, and the integration of the newly dramatic footage with the archival footage too seamless to feel like it was made when it was made. Its only indication is the embrace of less traditional narrative forms, telling the story wholly subjectively with little objectiveness to it at all.

The use of archival footage and different dramatic elements is shown integrated extraordinarily well from the get go. After a few moments of footage of Germans waltzing around Europe, in particular Paris, we see an out of focus soldier running towards the camera on a beach until he falls down, shot. The movie then cuts to a young man in a small English town running towards the camera down a little alley towards his house. Without a word, the movie tells us where we are and provides the dreamlike vision that will haunt our main character, Tom, throughout the movie. He knows that he's going to die when he goes to war.

Tom is a quiet English boy, just 20 years old and with little accomplishment yet to his name. His parents and he knows that he could have some kind of future without the war, but it will have to wait for whatever the war has in store. He learns the basics of soldiery in camp, but he never becomes a killing machine. Through the endless marches, hazing, and obstacle courses, he's still a nice boy who can barely talk to a girl. On an evening in town, he goes to the movies and sits next to a sexually aggressive older woman who is free with her hands, eventually scaring him off. He does meet a nice girl at a dance, and they like each other in that quiet English way with shy compliments and kisses with permission. There could be more to their future, but the next day Tom is sent off to another camp to wait out the invasion, invalidating his plans to meet the girl yet again. She appears repeatedly through the end of the film, but only as a vision that the unexperienced Tom clings onto as he gets closer and closer to what he knows will be his death.

It's a movie of quiet, human moments told in the footage filmed for the dramatic moments that functions ironically against the violence and destruction of the archival footage. The thing about including archival footage into a narrative film is that there's always going to be a marked difference in how the archival footage looks and how the newly shot footage looks. Cooper and his cinematographer John Alcott went the extra mile trying to make the footage match, but the difference is really about age, not about lenses or film stock. The new stuff simply looks better with fewer scratches and pops. That difference can be a point of derision towards a film that tries to use it straight, but Cooper's choice to go with a dreamlike aesthetic makes the differences in film quality into a strength. It's not a literal connection between the archival footage and our view of Tom with his fellow soldiers, but a poetic one. Watching this right after Ivan's Childhood was pretty much a pure coincidence, but they share a lot in terms of tone, scale, and the use of dreams to tell their subjective stories.

When we see the war footage, or the footage of real World War II soldiers playing cards, or footage of test materials on a beach, we're almost never supposed to think that Tom is right there. There are moments when that happens, particularly when we see an obstacle course in training and when the soldiers lower into the landing craft, but for the most part, they act as context establishing (like with the opening shots of German soldiers and Hitler in Paris) or as Tom's visions. He sleeps on a train and sees himself running up that beach to his death amidst air battles and bombings. It's not that he's literally seeing it out his train window, but that we're experiencing his subjective feelings of the moment as his train takes him closer to the coast and his fateful day. It's that non-objective use of the archival footage that makes it work so well.

The movie's ending is tragic for its inevitability. The unexperienced young man who never really got to know the nice girl he met at that dance dies, not as he had envisioned it, but still, he does die. He knew it was coming, having written of his feelings of his impending death to his parents just before leaving, but being surprisingly calm at the idea. He may have been a tiny cog in a giant machine, but he was still an individual with dreams. That balance between his individualism and his willingness to sacrifice himself for something larger, even if his sacrifice ends up contributing nothing to the overall war effort other than acting as cannon fodder, is the core of the movie's melancholic tone, and it is also probably one of the core reasons that the movie was largely forgotten after its 1975 European rollout that included winning the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, failing to even acquire an American distributor. It's a sad tale, one of the forgotten men in a conflict long ago, but its universality still stands strong.

Overload is an anti-war film and ironically TCM showed it over the Dday weekend, sandwiched between films such as The Longest Day and Battle of Britain. The film shows how a sheltered young man is drafted and turned into a soldier; however, he remains a sheltered young man. There are newsreel type scenes edited into the film, to show the reality of what this young man is facing. The huge war machine is contrasted with this young man's training, and his dreams and fantasies of maturing and developing as an adult. He dreams of falling in love, something he has not experienced. In the end, he is a casualty of war. The random bullet fired in his direction finds a target. Was he needed by the army? What if he wasn't there to be a target for the bullet? Did his service in the army make a difference in the war? The film does not critique England's war against Germany, nor does it critique the Dday invasion. It does show the meaninglessness of many deaths during the war: many soldiers are killed, and have little or no outcome on the war itself. I saw this on a Sunday night in an independent theater, one showing only, sparsely attended, and drove home fighting back the tears. The massive was machine eats up young men and women, and their deaths are pointless, a wastefulness of life. In contrast, The Longest Day and Battle of Britain almost glorify war.

Read some of the reviews as was so hyped up that i was going to see a lost hidden gem of a war movie ( which is my favorite genre ) What i go is a mix of mostly newsreel footage and the most simplistic story about the most uninspiring character possible. Yes it does at the end convey the futility and tragedy of war , but then war is futile and tragic so as in this case it does not take much to convey it stay away unless you are looking for a sleeping pill.

Mixes archival footage of World War 2, with fictional story of a young man getting ready to go off to war. The archival footage, serves as the young man's thoughts and fears about going into battle. Scenes of air raids and bombings are spliced together with the scenes of sitting on the bus, being polite, and just doing normal everything things.

The film ends with D-Day, where our hero is among the first to storm the beach, the point where fact and fiction finally meet. Strange, and bizarre military weapons you have never seen before(the rocket wheel???), the barbed wire removing vehicle, appear throughout as well as amazing Arel footage.

The most unique and effective "war" film ever seen. Like Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence At Owel Creek", for the WW2 generation. It really puts you in the place, not of a soldier, per say, but of a human being, undergoing the process of becoming a soldier, facing the dread, anxiousness, and absurdity, with a solemn dignity, "Im not frightened", he writes to his parents, admitting he is almost certain he is not coming back.

Overlord cannot easily be place as either a pro or anti-war film. The situation of a gentle, very boyish, nice guy being sent off to the worlds most violent and dangerous conflict in all it's history (he takes a copy of "David Copperfield" with him, so he will have something to read.), is absurd, but it's not handled for irony. There is a scene, where two soldiers are off for R&R and they stumble across a theater, where a young girl is being forced to sing, by her mother in practice for some kind of competition. When the soldiers enter, the mother demands she sing again, though the daughter is even more shaken by the unexpected audience. She sings, and about halfway through the soldiers walk off, in disgust or discomfort, the mother still begging them to stay and listen.

Do the soldiers want to fight? No more than this girl, wants to sing,but for mother and mother country, they both do their share. The reason to watch this film, is because it contains none of the usual images and ideas we come to expect from war and anti-war films. Englad took tremendous beating during World War 2, for years sending their sons to stem,the rising tide of Nazism, inching ever further across the sea between them. Overlord, is thus not the story of heroic victory, or the horrors of war, it's the story of the guy who got sent out, the day-after he made a date(from his level of excitement, maybe his first),and who will probably not be making it back...

That this film is not better known than all the jingoistic crap that came out of Hollyweed about WWII is nothing short of a crime. Many thanks to TCM and Criterion for making this gem more available. A word of warning to the viewer. There are no huge battle scenes, no stars, no digital effects, no big overblown music, just a simple tale of a soldier inducted into the army prior to D-Day, and the tragic outcome. And I'm not giving anything away. One knows from the first moment what the end will be. Everything about this film is superb. The acting by a cast of unknowns, the realistic script and dialogue, the brilliant cinematography that blends actual documentary footage into the film, the haunting music, etc., ad gloriam. All I can say is that this film affected me far more deeply than the above-mentioned film and it's images will stay with me much longer that anything Spielberg spent millions on to create.

Someone gave me the DVD of Overlord at Christmas and I thought it might be interesting for those who browse through these reviews to hear from someone who had a very very very small part in the making of this film, but who was in a position to observe some of the work that went into it. I was a young and inexperienced assistant editor at the time and I was present for much of the editing and completion of the film. We were mainly based in Stuart Cooper's house in Notting Hill- then not so fashionable, and moved later to Twickenham studios. I remember a roving showbiz correspondent putting his head round the door there and asking who was in the film, anyone he'd heard of? I couldn't help him and he withdrew in disgust.

Quite rightly, John Alcott is honourably mentioned in reviews and Stuart's commentary for the look of the film and the accomplished matching of old and new. I would also mention Jonathan Gili's contribution, then an editor, who later went on to direct and produce many great and quirky documentaries for the BBC. Jonathan worked with Stuart to construct the rhythm and the blend of the archive and 'live action'. His poetic timing and intrinsic wit added immeasurably to building the motor of the picture, making it purr where it could easily have stuttered. He also shared a sense of perfectionism with Stuart. Paul Glass's score, conjured out of penury of time and money, added a depth and resonance way beyond the means at the production's disposal, and I would draw attention to it. Lastly, but certainly not least, I would mention Alan Bell the sound editor. I will never forget the awe I felt when I stumbled into the dubbing theatre at Twickenham Studios and heard for the first time the all tracks run through of the scenes where bombers are unleashed over darkened cities. Up to then, the archive footage, with which I had become familiar, had been splendid, poignant and distant. Alan's delicacy and imagination combined with the music to turn it into a terrible elegy; for sound editors the brutal and spectacular is sometimes easier, and the more delicate and mysterious more difficult, but Alan managed both. Remember, this was a time before stereo was commonplace and the word digital did not impress. Jonathan is now dead, so is Alan; John Alcott too; and Paul Glass must be pretty senior now.

Overlord was made on a shoestring; I seem to remember that a 2CV was used as a camera car for tracking shots, despite John Alcott's cachet. The formality of the mis en scene can be explained partially by this fact. Faute de mieux, it faithfully -and conveniently- echoes the shooting styles of films of the 40s. But in essence the predictable dialogue and selection of scenes of Tom's life were created to mirror the structure of the Overlord and Bayeux tapestries, if I recall correctly. Not startlingly individual, but about ordinary men in extraordinary times. Where Stuart and Christopher Hudson elaborate this is in the dream and premonition scenes and this is a nod to 'film art'- perhaps the new tapestry format! Stuart, I believe, struggled hard, persuading, inspiring and cajoling, to turn the film into something far more ambitious than planned. And the fact that he did so is to his credit.