King & Country

On a World War I battleground, British soldier Tom Courtenay (as Arthur Hamp) is arrested for desertion, after serving three years in combat. If convicted, the shell-shocked young man will be shot dead. He is assigned a military defense attorney Dirk Bogarde (as Hargreaves) who seems convinced Mr. Courtenay is guilty. However, as the trenches trial proceeds, Mr. Bogarde becomes more sympathetic regarding his client's extenuating circumstances. "King and Country" will either spare Courtenay, or kill him...

Producer/director Joseph Losey does a convincing job with this drama, though it moves somewhat slowly until the end. Courtenay comes across as a shell-shocked man who volunteered for the war, and could no longer do battle after seeing his entire unit wasted away. He's commendable and understandable, and this shows in Bogarde's astute performance. The film's point is easily made, with Bogarde's character effectively leading doubters toward a shattering conclusion. The film, and both men, won award recognition.

******* King & Country (9/5/64) Joseph Losey ~ Dirk Bogarde, Tom Courtenay, Leo McKern, Barry Foster

The last time Britain was a major force in world cinema was in the 1960s; a documentary of a few years back on the subject was entitled 'Hollywood UK'. This was the era of the Kitchen Sink, social realism, angry young men; above all, the theatrical. And yet, ironically, the best British films of the decade were made by two Americans, Richard Lester and Joseph Losey, who largely stayed clear of the period's more typical subject matter, which, like all attempts at greater realism, now seems curiously archaic.

'King and Country', though, seems to be the Losey film that tries to belong to its era. Like 'Look Back in Anger' and 'A Taste of Honey', it is based on a play, and often seems cumbersomely theatrical. Like 'Loneliness of the long distance runner', its hero is an exploited, reluctantly transgressive working class lad played by Tom Courtenay. Like (the admittedly brilliant) 'Charge of the Light Brigade', it is a horrified, near-farcical (though humourless) look at the horrors of war, most particularly its gaping class injustices.

Private Hamp is a young volunteer soldier at Pachendaele, having served three years at the front, who is court-martialled for desertion. Increasingly terrorised by the inhuman pointlessness of trench warfare, the speedy, grisly, violent deaths of his comrades and the medieval, rat-infested conditions of his trench, he claims to have emerged dazed from one gruesome attack and decided to walk home, to England. He is defended by the archetypal British officer, Captain Hargreaves, who professes disdain for the man's cowardice, but must do his duty. He attempts to spin a defence on the grounds of madness, but the upper-crust officers have heard it all before.

This is a very nice, duly horrifying, liberal-handwringing, middle-class play. It panders to all the cliches of the Great War - the disgraceful working-class massacre, while the officers sup whiskey (Haig!) - figured in some charmingly obvious symbolism: Hargreaves throwing a dying cigarette in the mud; Hamp hysterically playing blind man's buff.

The sets are picturesquely grim, medieval, a modern inferno, as these men lie trapped in a never-ending, subterranean labyrinth, lit by hellish fires, with rats for company and the constant sound of shells and gunfire reminding them of the outside world.

The play, in a very middle-class way, is not really about the working class at all - Hamp is more of a symbol, an essence, lying in the dark, desolately playing his harmonica, a note of humanity in a score of inhumanity. He doesn't develop as a character. The play is really about Hargreaves, his realisation of the shabby inadequacy of notions like duty. He develops. This realisation sends him to drink (tastier than dying!). Like his prole subordinates, he falls in the mud, just as Hamp is said to have done; he even says to his superior 'We are all murderers'.

This is all very effective, if not much of a development of RC Sherriff's creaky 'Journey's End', filmed by James Whale in 1930. Its earnestness and verbosity may seem a little stilted in the age of 'Paths of Glory' and 'Dr. Strangelove'; we may feel that 'Blackadder goes forth' is a truer representation of the Great War. But what I have described is not the film Losey has made. He is too sophisticated and canny an intellectual for that.

The film opens with a lingering pan over one of those monumental War memorials you see all over Britain (and presumably Europe), as if to say Losey is going to question the received ideas of this statue, the human cost. But what he's really questioning is this play, and its woeful inadequacy to represent the manifold complexities of the War.

This is Brechtian filmmaking at its most subtle. We are constantly made aware of the artifice of the film, the theatrical - the stilted dialogue is spoken with deliberate stiffness; theatrical rituals are emphasised (the initial interrogation; the court scene, where actors literally tread the boards, enunciating the predictable speeches; the mirror-play put on by the hysterical soldiers and the rats; the religious ceremony; the horrible farce of the execution). Proscenium arches are made prominent, audiences observe events.

This is a play that would seek to contain, humanise, explain the Great War. This is a hopeless task, as Losey's provisional apparatus explains, 'real' photographs of harrowing detritus fading from the screen as if even these are not enough to convey the War, never mind a well-made, bourgeois play. Losey's vision may be apocalyptic - it questions the possibility of representation at all - the various tags of poetry quoted make no impact on hard men men who rattled them off when young; the Shakespearean duality of 'noble' drama commented on by 'low' comedy, effects no transcendence, no greater insight.

Losey's camerawork and composition repeatedly breaks our involvement with the drama, any wish we might have for manly sentimentality; in one remarkable scene an officer takes an Aubrey Beardsley book from the cameraman! This idea of the theatrical evidently mirrors the rigid class 'roles' played by the main characters (Hamp's father and grandfather were cobblers too; presumably Hargreaves' were always Sandhurst cadets). Losey also takes a sideswipe at the kitchen sink project, by using its tools - history has borne him out.

Tom Courtenay plays Private Hamp, he is the lone survivor of his battalion having volunteered in 1914 – some three years prior, the rest whittled away by the arbitrary wantonness of war. He has been accused of desertion and is facing a court martial. Under martial law he is allocated an officer to represent him – this falls to Captain Hargreaves (Dirk Bogarde). What follows is the trial set amidst the rain and mud just behind the allied front line.

Courtenay plays the gullible soldier to a tee, he is basically an innocent lad who is probably suffering from PTSD or shell shock as it was sometimes referred to back then. Bogarde who was always exceptional plays the officer class perfectly with palpable changes in his attitude as the case unfolds. There is also a magnificently pompous portrayal of a disinterested Medical Officer from Leo McKern who steals the scene.

This was made in 1964 and was done for a shoe string budget – that apparently it never made back and that was despite winning awards and being critically acclaimed. However, recent renewed interests might just get this hidden treasure of British cinema some of the wider recognition it so richly deserves – massively recommended

"King and Country" was made 50 years after the outbreak of the First World War. At a time when most film-makers might have been expected to pay tribute to the men who fought and died in that conflict Losey, perhaps not unexpectedly, chose a different tact, This is a film about a British private on trial for cowardice when, in fact, what he was suffering from was battle fatigue. The soldier is Tom Courtney and the officer charged with defending him is Dirk Bogarde. It's a depressing, small-scale affair, (by comparison, Kubrick's "Paths of Glory" is positively an epic), very wordy and very well played by everyone. It may not be the best thing either Losey or Bogarde ever did, (though Courtney has seldom been better), but it's a bold and honorable film nevertheless. Unfortunately, the grimness of it's subject means it's seldom revived but it is worth seeking out.

"King & Country," directed by Joseph Losey and released in 1964, is an unrelenting look at war. The World War I drama concerns a young soldier (Tom Courtenay) who is being tried for desertion. It's evident that, after his whole battalion was lost, that the boy was shell-shocked. A Captain Hargreaves (Dirk Bogarde) is brought in to defend him.

The film has actual photos of dead bodies from the London War Museum throughout the movie. The setting is freezing cold, wet bunkers with lots of mud. The men have been jaded to death and suffering and at times act brutally.

The end of the film is particularly awful, that's the only word I can think of. Not awful as in it's a bad movie, but awful in the situation.

Tom Courtenay does an excellent job as a wide-eyed young man who really doesn't realize what he did or what may happen to him as a result; Leo McKern turns in an excellent performance as a no-nonsense officer. Dirk Bogarde is wonderful as the captain who goes to the mat for his client and comes up against a cruel system that seems to have no understanding of or compassion for human frailty.

Lots of gross stuff in this movie - imagine actually having to endure it. Excellent directing job by Losey, and a thought-provoking film that you won't forget quickly, even though you want to.