Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) on Netflix
The Smiths, a working-class family, enter Brighton's West Pier and buy tickets from General Haig. The family's five boys are drawn into the trenches of the First World War.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.0/103,581 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes75%
Trailer
Plot summary
In a fantasy pavilion on a pier, foreign ministers, generals and heads of state stride across a great map of Europe, restating the remarks they made in public, while a photographer hands two red poppies to Archduke Ferdinand and his wife and takes their picture. Several of the rulers are on friendly personal terms and hesitate to take up arms. Emperor Franz Josef, misled by his foreign minister, declares war on Serbia; Tsar Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm II find themselves unable to halt their nations' mobilization schedules; Germany's move into Belgium forces Sir Edward Grey to act, and Turkey joins the Central Powers. The Smiths, a working-class family, buy tickets at Brighton's West Pier from General Haig, and the young Smith men are swept along by a military band and a chorus line into military life.
Cast
Show all 20 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Oh! What a Lovely War (1969)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- For the film's closing war cemetery, Richard Attenborough said 16,000 white crosses had to be hammered into individually dug holes because the soil was hard; the number was fewer than the deaths in a single battle, and the true toll would have needed the scene repeated more than 1000 times.
- The Beatles were interested in making an anti-war film, and at Bertrand Russell's suggestion Paul McCartney met the producer Len Deighton about the band portraying the Smith family; in the end it was not possible to arrange their appearance.
- In an attempt to shame people he thought were claiming credit for things they had not done, Len Deighton decided not to be listed in the film's credits, a gesture he later described as "stupid and infantile".
- Veteran organizations complained to the Toronto Star about an advertisement for the film that showed cemetery crosses, and the paper later ran the adverts without that image.
- James Rado, one of the original writers and creators of Hair, said at a Google Talks event that Oh! What a Lovely War was what made him want to work on a musical dealing with war.
