![]() ![]() The film also uses a lot of period colloquialisms such as, "My cherry-bums!" and "All this swish-n-tits has made me randified!" and "You tell that stew-stick of a brother-in-law, that Brudenell to fetch off!" Wonderful, though some first time viewers may have difficulty understanding exactly what has just been expressed. It takes its rightful place along side "Barry Lyndon" and "The Duelists" as among the most successful period recreations. Hairstyles and uniforms and sets are rendered in exquisite detail. And England of the mid-nineteenth century is beautifully recreated here. Yet Richardson is never judgmental rather he takes a Kubrickian detached point of view, allowing the viewers to observe the era and its foibles/morals and judge for themselves. Indeed the only decent individuals portrayed are either destroyed or trampled under foot by events and/or the arrogant stupidity of their superiors. Throughout the film which is satiric and misanthropic in tone, the lower classes are shown to be stupid, ugly, and easily led, while the upper classes are shown to be stupid, beautiful, and utterly incapable of leading. These animated sequences which appear throughout the film to forward the exposition are both wonderfully inventive and wickedly delicious. Instead of calling for deliberations and a halt to the madness that must inevitably lead to war, the press is shown whipping the British nation into war frenzy. This is also one of the few films to hold the media, in this case the English newspapers of the time, accountable for their actions. Using animation in the style of the Victorian newspaper caricaturists, during the opening credits, the film quickly details the events that led up to the war. In that sense the film is universal as well as timeless. The greater the calamity, the greater the need to lie or glorify, for always the dead must count for something. The film was made at the height of America's involvement in the Vietnam War and it is an implicit critique of that conflict and war in general in that all countries regardless of time and place indulge in the pastime of National Lying. And he is unsparing in his condemnation of the culture that could glorify so unmitigated a disaster as Balaclava. Richardson depicts the insanity of the Crimean War and Victorian society's glorification of militarism with a death's head sense of humor which makes the horrors of the conflict all the more potent. And these three stooges thoroughly deserve the censure of history, for never were the lives of six hundred brave men thrown away more senselessly than with the charge of the Light Brigade. ![]() And hard as it is to believe, Richardson's film actually tones down the absurdities of the three principle figures responsible for the debacle at Balaclava. Both book and film are a debunking of the Tennyson poem. ![]() First, it should be noted that Tony Richardson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) is not a remake of the Errol Flynn classic adventure film of 1936 rather it is based on the Cecil Woodham-Smith work of military history, "The Reason Why". ![]()
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