Overlord

Stuart Cooper

United Kingdom

1975

84 minutes

Black and White

1.66:1

English

Watch Film for $5

382

Synopsis

Seamlessly interweaving archival war footage and a fictional narrative, Stuart Cooper’s immersive account of one twenty-year-old’s journey from basic training to the front lines of D-Day brings all the terrors and isolation of war to life with jolting authenticity. Overlord, impressionistically shot by Stanley Kubrick’s longtime cinematographer John Alcott, is both a document of World War II and a dreamlike meditation on man’s smallness in a large, incomprehensible machine.

Cast

TomBrian Stirner
JackDavyd Harries
ArthurNicholas Ball

Credits

DirectorStuart Cooper
ProducerJames Quinn
MusicPaul Glass
EditingJonathan Gili
CinematographyJohn Alcott
ScreenplayChristopher Hudson and Stuart Cooper

Disc Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Stuart Cooper
  • Audio commentary featuring Cooper and actor Brian Stirner
  • Mining the Archive, a new video featuring Imperial War Museum film archivists detailing the war footage used in the film
  • Capa Influences Cooper, a new photo essay featuring Cooper on photographer Robert Capa
  • Cameramen at War, the British Ministry of Information’s 1943 film tribute to newsreel and service film unit cameramen
  • A Test of Violence (1969), Cooper’s short film about Spanish artist Juan Genoves
  • Germany Calling, a 1941 British Ministry of Information propaganda film, clips of which appear in Overlord
  • Journals from two D-day soldiers, read by Brian Stirner
  • Theatrical trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: A new essay by critic Kent Jones, a short history of the Imperial War Museum, and excerpts from the Overlord novelization, by Cooper and Christopher Hudson

From the Current

Overlord: Man Versus Machine

by Kent Jones Apr 17, 2007

Few national cinemas have confronted the issue of preparedness for war with the creative vigor that England’s has displayed. Thorold Dickinson’s Next of Kin (1942), Alberto Cavalcanti’s...

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Available Editions

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DVD

1 Disc

SRP: $39.95

Criterion Store price

$31.96