Overlord: Man Versus Machine
By April 16, 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 Went Read more »
- United Kingdom
- 1975
- 84 minutes
- Black and White
- 1.66:1
- English
- Spine #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 & CreditsOpen
Cast
| Tom | Brian Stirner |
| Jack | Davyd Harries |
| Arthur | Nicholas Ball |
Credits
| Director | Stuart Cooper |
| Producer | James Quinn |
| Music | Paul Glass |
| Editing | Jonathan Gili |
| Cinematography | John Alcott |
| Screenplay | Christopher 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
