Overlord
Director: Stuart Cooper
Year Released: 1975
Rating: 2.0
Curious melding of a fictional narrative - about British troops preparing for battle - and actual stock footage from World War II of planes, troops and naval vessels. The problem is that the stock footage is substantially better than the Cooper-shot material, and despite the crisp black-and-white photography (by John Alcott, who worked with Stanley Kubrick) the distinction between the archival footage and flat fictional footage is glaring: a much more emotionally involved film could be made of the former instead of the latter. The Cooper-scripted material tries too hard to be poetic, while actual conflict is anything but. Nice try, but it doesn't work.
