Richard Attenborough’s satirical First World War film Oh! What a Lovely War is making its worldwide Blu-ray debut as part of Eureka Entertainment’s Masters of Cinema Series.
Adapted from Joan Littlewood’s 1963 stage musical of the same name, itself a reworking of Charles Chilton’s 1961 radio play The Long Long Trail, the 1969 film marked Attenborough’s directorial debut.
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The film traces the conflict’s progression from the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 through to the Armistice of November 1918, while intertwining the fortunes of the everyman Smith family with performances of popular wartime music, from the recruitment song I’ll Make a Man of You to the airmen’s anthem The Bells of Hell Go Ting-a-ling-a-ling.
Starring Dirk Bogarde, Phyllis Calvert, Jean Pierre Cassel, John Clements, John Gielgud, Jack Hawkins, Kenneth More, and Laurence Olivier, the film earned Attenborough a raft of BAFTA nominations and set him on the path to making A Bridge Too Far, Gandhi and Chaplin.
Extras include:
- 1080p HD presentation from a restoration by Paramount Pictures
- Original English mono audio
- New audio commentary with British cinema scholars Melanie Williams and Lawrence Napper
- Archival audio commentary with director Richard Attenborough
- Your Country Needs You – new interview with film historian Simon Brown on depictions of World War I in British cinema, from The Battle of the Somme to 1917
- Extensive making-of documentary presented in three parts: Welcome to World War I, The Smith Family Album and Keep the Home Fires Burning