Overlord (1975) on Netflix
Tom is called up to the East Yorkshire Regiment and trains with other young conscripts. He meets a girl, and as D-Day nears his sense of foreboding grows.
- Netflix2.9/5
- IMDb7.1/103,800 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
Archive footage of the German campaign in France and aerial views of conquered territory open the film. Then Tom, a young man, runs down an English lane to his home. The call-up takes him into the East Yorkshire Regiment, where he trains alongside other young conscripts. He meets a girl. Tom thinks about the war machinery he has become part of and about what the fighting will ask of him, and his foreboding grows as the Allied invasion of Normandy approaches. Scenes shot for the film are woven together with archive material, and the whole film is in black and white.
Cast
- Brian Stirneras Tom
- Sam Sewellas The Trained Soldier
- Harry Shacklockas Stationmaster
- David Scheueras Medical Officer
- Stephen Riddleas Dead German Soldier
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Overlord (1975)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Writing in The Guardian in January 2008, Stuart Cooper said he had originally intended to make a documentary about the Overlord Embroidery tapestry, but was told it would take nine years to review all the footage in the collection, which included dangerous nitrate film stock.
- Cooper spent approximately 3,000 hours in that dark cell between 1971 and 1975, and it was during the archival research that he developed the idea of a dramatized feature about an English soldier seeing his first action on D-Day; letters and unpublished diaries of ordinary soldiers refined it, and Hudson dramatized scenes drawn from them.
- Seventy per cent of Overlord is newly shot footage, filmed in ten days. To match it to the archive material, cinematographer John Alcott scoured England and found two sets of 1936 and 1938 German Goerz and Schneider lenses, then lit the film in keeping with wartime photography.
- The Imperial War Museum and the Ministry of Defence assisted the production in many ways, from help with costumes and props to training actors and a flight by the last operational Lancaster bomber over Bristol.
