Overlord (film)

Plot

Beginning with a premonition of his death, the film follows a young everyman through his call up to the East Yorkshire Regiment, his training, his meeting a young girl, his journey to France, and his death on D-Day at Sword. Director Cooper also includes footage of the London Blitz and bombing of Europe to emphasise the events leading up to the invasion and the comparatively short distance between England and France.

Cast

Production

Stuart Cooper had originally intended to make a documentary film about the Overlord embroidery tapestry. As he researched the events of the Normandy landings at the Imperial War Museum he decided on making a film of a young man's journey from call up to coffin.

About half of Overlord is contemporary footage shot for the film, and about half of it is archival footage from British training missions and the invasion itself. Cooper and his cinematographer, John Alcott, tried to create a consistent look when filming the contemporary footage and to this end they employed old Kodak film stock and World War II-era original German 1930s military camera lenses.

The film originally failed to get US theatrical distribution and was only shown there in select screenings and on television. In 2006, the film saw its first US release through Janus Films and in early 2008 a re-mastered edition was re-released in cinemas (on 1 February, with a launch at the Institute of Contemporary Arts) and on DVD (on 3 March) in the UK.

It was released as part of the Criterion Collection in 2007.

Presenting a screening of the film at the 2009 Sydney Film Festival, director Stuart Cooper said that the Imperial War Museum allowed him access to millions of feet of their film including original nitrate negatives. Cooper was also granted access to diaries of soldiers who were present at the landing that he incorporated into the screenplay. Parts of the film were shot at Aldershot.

Reception

Overlord currently holds a score of 88/100 on Metacritic. Roger Ebert gave the film a full four stars upon its re-release, and argued that it "combines its newsreel and fictional footage so effectively that it has a greater impact than all fiction, or all documentary, could have achieved."