Word: lester
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...basic problem with the film is that the potentially high drama and black comedy are all too often reduced by Lester to a mere vaudeville of the absurd. At times, the kind of war it seems to be attacking is of the class variety. England's upper-crusty Sandhurst snobs are ceaselessly satirized by Crawford and by Michael Hordern as a blimpish colonel obsessed with "the wily Pathan," who claims to understand the working man. "I had a grandfather who was a miner," he muses, "until he sold it." The larger its targets, the more petty grows the film...
...news to anyone anywhere that war is bloody and cruel. What saves Lester's movie from banality is its dazzlingly surrealistic approach and moments of explosively funny comedy-notably, a court-martial scene in the desert that rivals the Red Queen's interrogation of Alice for sheer illogic. In a generally first-rate cast, Jack MacGowran is outstanding as a mad soldier who could have stepped from the plays of Beckett, while Crawford, as the silly subaltern, alternates hilariously between villainy and vanity. Despite its pictorial audacity and quirky humor, the picture is less impressive as a film...
Shortly before How I Won the War opened in Germany, Director Richard Lester attended preview screenings before student audiences in Munich, Berlin and Hamburg. Afterward, he debated the film on the stage with politicians and writers. The results, he remembers, were sometimes quite startling. "One politician began shouting that 'the film is an insult to my English comrades in arms who fought bravely against us, at which point the students in the audience began chanting 'Sieg Heil!' in unison." Such outbursts were the sweet sounds of success for Lester. "Getting these points of view...
...theme and tone, How I Won the War represents something of a departure for Lester, who at 35 is critically regarded as one of the best comedy directors in the business, a camera master of the tour de farce. From his first cinematic success with a pair of Beatle capers, A Hard Day's Night and Help! through The Knack and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, he has operated with a cheerful disregard for time, reality, clarity or sequence. His films, in more ways than one, cut loose...
Although he now lives in a London suburb, Lester was born in Philadelphia, where he entered first grade at the age of three ("I was bright then, and it's been downhill since"). By 22, he had left a director's job at a local television station to tour Europe and Africa on $2 a day, coming to rest later at the BBC. There he was assigned to Peter Sellers' memorable madcap comedy series, The Goon Show, which in spirit at least resembled Lester's later movies. "We did sketches that had no beginnings...