King & Country [DVD]

"King and Country" is among the finest of a long lineup of mid-late sixties anti-war films. Based on the play "Hamp", itself an understated and chilling indictment of justice in the field, this Tom Courtenay vehicle speaks with quiet voice and masterful integrity. The story of a simple soldier who lacks the sophistication to fully appreciate his hopeless case of terminal workingclass pedigree, the tone never slips into the world of bleeding heart liberalism or sloganeering. Though overlooked because of bigger and louder films taking on similar themes, albeit with sledgehammer heft replacing anything approaching subtlety, "King and Country" speaks as powerfully today as it did more than thirty-five years ago.

Despite contentious subject matter - a World War One court martial for desertion - and the melodramatic weaknesses of the source material (John Wilson's radio play Hamp and J.L. Hodson's novel Return to the Wood), Joseph Losey's King and Country admirably avoids most of the clichés and preconceptions of its day in favor of something much more even-handed and unsensationalized, and consequently its matter-of-fact approach is much more powerful: indeed, the final moments almost unbearably so. Tom Courtney is the very simple soldier facing a court martial for desertion, carried out almost as an afterthought and certainly as an inconvenience to the officers who have to try him and would rather just forget the whole thing, with Dirk Bogarde the officer who draws the short straw of defending him in the brief proceedings. Nobody really wants him to be executed and no-one really expects he will be: most death sentences were revoked. It's just his bad luck that his court martial comes before an offensive when an example is needed "pour encourager les autres." The ending is, of course, inevitable - it has to be or there is no story - but it's no less powerful for that. If anything, it's more so.

For a filmed play it is ironically in many ways more overtly stark and cinematic than any of Losey's other films, especially for a production that never moves from the soundstage. And what a soundstage - Peter Mullins' sordid ramshackle behind-the-lines set is quite astonishing, making a real virtue of its limited resources, at once claustrophobic and economical but also practical for the intricate camera movements Losey adopts, Denys Coop's naturalistic black and white cinematography putting the artificiality of more recent films like The Trench to shame. There's also an intriguing use of archive photos, including a memorable shot of a deteriorated corpse in the mud slowly dissolving into a shot of mud and rain that seamlessly suggests the corpse fading away into the mud. The brief inserts of home - a live-action shot of a child as posed for a photo, a friend sitting in bed drinking tea, a shot of an old woman sweeping her step - are interesting, if not always successful. Even the harmonica score by Larry Adler (like the director a blacklist victim who fled to the UK) turns the film's extremely limited budget - there simply wasn't enough money for an orchestral score - to the film's advantage.

All too often Bogarde's performances in Losey's films can seem formal and a little cold around the heart, but no such complaints here. Bogarde had a genuine interest in the period (many of his own paintings were WW1 subjects) and while his character is at a social remove from the man he is expected to defend and ultimately execute, there's a real sense that he's invested in both the part and the picture. Tom Courtney, who also stood court martial in Private Potter, is at his best here as the confused, none-too-bright and painfully inarticulate working boy who only gradually begins to realise the enormity and inevitability of what he's up against. And they're well matched by an excellent supporting cast in the officer's mess - Leo McKern, Barry Foster, James Villiers and Peter Copley.

The only wrong note is the over-stylised stage-chorus nature of the scenes with the enlisted men, which Losey unwisely left rehearsing to Vivian Matelon (who also plays the Padre), who treats them like a bad left-wing theatre workshop production: a shame, because their shifting sympathies and often cruel attitudes ring true even if the performance style doesn't. Yet despite those lapses, there's a level of realism that the low budget affords: even the trench rats that thrived thanks to four years of good eating but are rarely dealt with on screen are present and all too convincingly correct. A genuinely great film, it's a more than worthy companion piece to Paths of Glory, and it's a shame that it's now all but forgotten.

This movie would receive 5 stars if it were not for the appalling sound. When will DVD producers realize - it's not just about the picture! The total lack of remastering renders this (and many other movies on DVD) almost impossible to listen to, because of the sound. First you have to turn your TV up to max, and then you have to train your ears to filter out the surface noise and pick out what the voices are saying. This is the real reason why we need subtitles these days - not because viewers are dumb or dialect-illiterate, but because of low grade sound.

Courtenay is excellent, Bogarde smoulders superbly - this ranks alongside its much trumpeted rivals - Paths, Grande Illusion, All Quiet - and probably does a better job in presenting the farce that was World War 1 and which we are still paying the price for today.