Heartfelt sentiments to the tune of What A Friend we Have in Jesus
Then some gallows humour prior to going over the top
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Plus many of the songs in the film are from the period.
Gallipoli was as the Yanks would say the archetypal clusterfuck with at the senior levels appalling ‘leadership’
Ed
You are entitled to your view.
I think there were many who served who saw WWI as a mistake. Read Barbara Tuchman -August 1914 for example.
I accept that in the 1960s it was a left view, but I chose the clips for ANZAC because the execution of ANZAC was such a benighted mistake and riddled with much of the ‘class’ views OWALW sought to attack.
My grandfather who was in the trenches never saw WWI as a great endeavour. I think as well many of those who wrote about WWI, in particular saw it as the end of an era and a way of life for good or ill.
WWI was futile, although distinguished by much individual heroism.
I use the clips to point up some of the hypocrisy and especially the jingoism, coupled with the waste in human terms.
Interestingly WWI affected the combatants as such, whereas WWII and later conflicts have affected non-combatants much more.
However, each to his own view
Oh What a Lovely War was already very amusing, hell, I’ve even been in a stage production of it myself andf enjoyed myself (and several of the other cast members, but that’s another story) immensely. I can still remember many of the words to the songs (When this lousy war is over; I don’t want to be a soldier, and Fred Karno’s Army (the ragtime infantry), etc and so on.
But is it appropriate for ANZAC day ? It represents a significant re-write of the experience, as it SHOULD have seemed to the people there according to a bunch of reasonably far left anti-war types in the 60′s. But it propagates false memes of what the soldiers of the time probably really experienced, and is polemic rather than truthful, and has been a major influence in the establishment of the perceived experience of WW as an exercise in total futility. Which is, I think, dishonouring something the soldiers of the time probably felt rather differently about.
I know you post these rather whimsically Adam (or rather I suspect you do), your blog; but I don’t (now) like the sentiment behind Joan Littlewood’s piece of theatre, especially not on 25 April.