At last it's on a DVD. I'm fairly sure I'd only seen this once before just now. That must have been in 1970. That's 43 years ago, and it had stayed with me ever since, though I'd forgotten the exact details. What I vividly remembered was the towering performance of Nicol Williamson, as a soldier teetering on the edge of a lucid, semi-rational insanity.
Isn't it interesting how brilliantly written and brilliantly acted low-budget films are so often far more memorable than most of the overblown mega-busters hyped to the skies. So many economically made masterpieces fit this minimalist category: Reservoir Dogs, The Duellists, Breaker Morant, Hard Times, Blood Simple, High Noon, Man for All Seasons. Those films seem one hundred percent real, not phony. Nothing beats quality; certainly not demented over-expenditure.
One or two of the reviewers in this site don't seem to have the faintest idea of what they'd been watching. The Bofors gun is not near-obsolete --- it's amazingly still in service, one of the finest ever examples of Swedish weaponry design and engineering. Quote from Wiki: "The gun remains in service as of 2013, for instance as main armament in the CV 90, making it both one of the longest-serving artillery pieces of all time as well as most widespread". Naval gun on the Atlantic? He cannot be serious; he must be joking. However, at the time the action takes place it was felt that all weaponry had been made obsolete, by the H-bomb. Not so, of course.
Since I'd joined the British Army of the Rhine as a two year National Serviceman in 1956 I knew precisely what was being shown here. Everything was dead accurate, down to the way we wore our berets, exactly horizontal round our heads, patted down and shaped to the skull, ribbons tucked in out of sight at the back. These are almost always shown wrong and sloppy in other films of the British military of this era, and it's extremely irritating. Also the NAAFI, the way the orders were barked, the swanky marching, commands to slope and order arms, stand at ease, stand easy. I picked up from Michael Lepine's slightly inaccurate booklet, which came with the DVD, that RSM Brittain, the legendary Coldstream Guards drill-master, drilled these actors, and he obviously did an outstanding job. Jack Gold, the director, confesses in an accompanying interview that he managed successfully to evade doing National Service himself.
One of the factors adding to the decline of Britain in the post-war period was the abolition of National Service. This two year period of training for every able-bodied British male was an invaluable formative element in uniting the country to its common benefit and advantage. It provided youths with skills, discipline and positive experience instead of letting them slide into becoming unemployed yobs, thieves, criminal gang members and dope addicts.
But this play isn't about National Service, in spite of what Lepine says. O'Rourke was a Regular. Since he is going to celebrate his 30th birthday in 1954 by committing suicide, he must have joined the army in about 1942, and served in WW2 as well as Korea and no doubt elsewhere. The play seems in fact to be a clinical study in post-traumatic stress disorder, much as that might surprise its author, McGrath. Excellent. Nine stars.
Isn't it interesting how brilliantly written and brilliantly acted low-budget films are so often far more memorable than most of the overblown mega-busters hyped to the skies. So many economically made masterpieces fit this minimalist category: Reservoir Dogs, The Duellists, Breaker Morant, Hard Times, Blood Simple, High Noon, Man for All Seasons. Those films seem one hundred percent real, not phony. Nothing beats quality; certainly not demented over-expenditure.
One or two of the reviewers in this site don't seem to have the faintest idea of what they'd been watching. The Bofors gun is not near-obsolete --- it's amazingly still in service, one of the finest ever examples of Swedish weaponry design and engineering. Quote from Wiki: "The gun remains in service as of 2013, for instance as main armament in the CV 90, making it both one of the longest-serving artillery pieces of all time as well as most widespread". Naval gun on the Atlantic? He cannot be serious; he must be joking. However, at the time the action takes place it was felt that all weaponry had been made obsolete, by the H-bomb. Not so, of course.
Since I'd joined the British Army of the Rhine as a two year National Serviceman in 1956 I knew precisely what was being shown here. Everything was dead accurate, down to the way we wore our berets, exactly horizontal round our heads, patted down and shaped to the skull, ribbons tucked in out of sight at the back. These are almost always shown wrong and sloppy in other films of the British military of this era, and it's extremely irritating. Also the NAAFI, the way the orders were barked, the swanky marching, commands to slope and order arms, stand at ease, stand easy. I picked up from Michael Lepine's slightly inaccurate booklet, which came with the DVD, that RSM Brittain, the legendary Coldstream Guards drill-master, drilled these actors, and he obviously did an outstanding job. Jack Gold, the director, confesses in an accompanying interview that he managed successfully to evade doing National Service himself.
One of the factors adding to the decline of Britain in the post-war period was the abolition of National Service. This two year period of training for every able-bodied British male was an invaluable formative element in uniting the country to its common benefit and advantage. It provided youths with skills, discipline and positive experience instead of letting them slide into becoming unemployed yobs, thieves, criminal gang members and dope addicts.
But this play isn't about National Service, in spite of what Lepine says. O'Rourke was a Regular. Since he is going to celebrate his 30th birthday in 1954 by committing suicide, he must have joined the army in about 1942, and served in WW2 as well as Korea and no doubt elsewhere. The play seems in fact to be a clinical study in post-traumatic stress disorder, much as that might surprise its author, McGrath. Excellent. Nine stars.