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'Overlord' gets D-Day U.S. release

Long overdue: More than 30 years after it was made, Overlord, with Brian Stirner, center, plays in the USA.

By Mike Snider, USA TODAY

The critically hailed but rarely seen World War II film Overlord gets a timely U.S. launch this month.

Made in 1975 by director Stuart Cooper with the help of the Imperial War Museum in London, the film has been hailed for combining a story with military footage from the D-Day invasion, which unfolded 62 years ago this week.

Overlord's cinematographer, the late John Alcott, who won an Oscar for Barry Lyndon and did The Shining and A Clockwork Orange, experimented with film stocks and used rebuilt German lenses from the '30s. The movie focuses on one young British recruit's story amid the escalating conflict in Europe.

After critic Roger Ebert saw Overlord at the Telluride Film Festival two years ago, his four-star review described it as "a remarkable combination of new and archival footage."

Overlord won a Silver Bear jury prize at the 1975 Berlin Film Festival and played theaters in Europe but was never distributed in the USA, "probably because it was at the back end of the Vietnam War at the time, and it was not the most salient time to bring out a war picture," Cooper says.

The film follows Tom Beddoes (Brian Stirner) as he leaves home with a stiff goodbye from his parents. He trains for combat, kisses a girl at a dance and must burn his personal papers before being transported with the first troops to Normandy for Operation Overlord, the code name for the invasion.

Cooper's original idea was more modest. After training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, Cooper, of Hoboken, N.J., began writing and directing documentaries. The Imperial War Museum enlisted him to do a documentary about a D-Day commemorative needlework project.

Cooper, who played Roscoe in The Dirty Dozen, watched more than 3,000 hours of the museum's 20,000 hours of raw World War II footage.

Soldiers' letters and diaries gave him the basis for a story about an ordinary soldier, Cooper says.

Cooper persuaded museum officials to let him make the dramatic film rather than a documentary. The Ministry of Defense helped with the training and aerial and landing scenes, and Royal Marines are in the cast.

The British side of World War II is well portrayed in Overlord, says the museum's Roger Smither, who assisted Cooper. "There was a feeling this wasn't going to end happily for anybody, and the film captures that."

At a premiere last week at the American Film Institute's cultural center in Silver Spring, Md., Cooper credited the Overlord clips in the film Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004) for getting Overload invited to the Telluride Film Festival.

Current prints are made from a duplicate Cooper sent to Technicolor 30 years ago for a possible U.S. release. A Criterion Collection DVD is planned for 2007.

Cooper, who is now working on a remake of The Old Man and the Sea, says, "This is incredible, a success 30 years later."

Beautifully shot in a rainbow of grey tones by John Alcott -- who the very same year shot "Barry Lyndon," a major candidate for Most Gorgeously Photographed Movie Ever -- "Overlord" was duly complimented by Stanley Kubrick, who reportedly told Cooper "The only thing wrong is it's an hour and a half too short!"

TheGodfather wrote:Haven`t heard of the movie to be honest, but the synopsis sounds really interesting. Might be getting this one

miless wrote:

TheGodfather wrote:Haven`t heard of the movie to be honest, but the synopsis sounds really interesting. Might be getting this one

isn't there a quote from Stanley Kubrick who said that his only problem with the film was that it was an hour too short. (Kubrick had apparently been at a screening of it while shooting Barry Lyndon, as the two films share John Alcott as cinematographer)