Word: richardson
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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This last idea is the uncontroversial theme of Tony Richardson's new film, The Charge of the Light Brigade. Like the book on which it is based (Cecil Woodham-Smith's The Reason Why), the film begins by depicting a stratified and deluded English society, and then moves swiftly on to the Crimea, where the stratification and the delusion find their ultimate projection in an insane battle on an unearthly field...
...England to which Richardson devotes the first half of the film is a frightful place. All of the outdoor scenes in England were shot in cloudy weather, and through the grey obscurity emerge ghastly relics of an earlier, pre-industrial age. Richardson presents a society where the past oppresses the present. Near the beginning of the film, we are shown a huge equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington being drawn through the misty streets of London like a pagan idol. They've had it made, and now they don't know where to put it, someone explains. The statue...
...BRITISH army which Richardson depicts is one where command is based on wealth rather than merit, and army life is ruled by absurd traditions and savage discipline. This is the army of which Lord Cardigan (Trevor Howard), the man who was to lead the charge of the Light Brigade, is the symbol: the film's Cardigan is a cantakerous old fool who purchased his command, and squandered it with the evil courage of a suicide-victim...
...film is being billed as a kind of epic-satire, and this kind of excess is the staple of satire. But to satirize history is absurd. A historical film can only try to depict and explain; satire is meant to correct, and history cannot be corrected. For this reason Richardson is at his worst when he attempts to satirize the Victorian establishment, and unfortunately, he attempts this rather often...
MONDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9-11:30 p.m.). Exodus (1960). Part one of Otto Preminger's version of Leon Uris' novel about the Israeli war for independence. Stars are Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, Ralph Richardson, Lee J. Cobb and Peter Lawford. Part two: Tuesday...