When I was boy, in the early 1960s, there were still many Great War veterans alive and living in my village. Some were kind and friendly, some were grumpy. Like everyone else. But they all had one thing in common. They would not talk about it.
very Interesting, when my grandad was young he moved from Ireland to London during the blitz and became a firefighter. He eventually moved back to Ireland, one of the thing's I remember as a child was asking him about it and he replied singing this song. But I would have loved to talk to a WW1 veteran.
As a child my mother told me never to ask my granddad about his time in the trenches. At meal times he always had more trouble breathing, which was due to him being gassed, he also still had shrapnel in his body right up until he died in the mid seventies. I don't think you could ever know what hell they went through unless you were there.
One other point which I would like to make..... Only 'Veterans who weren't there boast and brag about thier experiences. However, to close down the bravado is to say 'Well, I was there' . Silence !!
I remember asking my Grandpa something along the lines of, "Did you kill any Germans in the trenches?" I still remember the look in his eyes. I never asked him again.
Genius. Richard Attenborough was a bloody Genius. This film always leaves me in tears. Please don`t forget these poor souls. Don`t ever forget..........................................
of course, France in particular, is a mass of graves and monuments, from not just 2 World Wars, but many more, from the Franco --Prussian war, Waterloo, and many othe Napolean Wars.
When I was a boy in the 1950s, my dad was secretary of the local branch of the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association. His right arm was blown away in a minefield in WW2. Sometimes I would accompany him to visit old boys in wheelchairs, who had been wounded in WW1. I would just sit and listen to men talking about their respective wars. Remarkably I was 50 when my dad died aged 85. I studied history at university but never read about the wars in depth until after he died, I did not want to disrespect him by disagreeing because there were historians who knew more about policy and strategy then he would have now as a corporal.
No other anti-War film comes near this, not one. In personal memory of Pte.L.L.Griffiths 1/13 Aust.Inf.Btn 1917 and all of his mates .......... Les Griffiths
@@jameshayward5514 I dont get there being a hidden message, I just figure it how I always hear these guys being described, the happy ones, the angry ones, the quiet ones, all had one thing in common, they never talked about the war except to each other.
The message is that we were just men and all the heroic laurels bestowed upon us by civilians are silly but let them think it. We just wanted to live our lives.
And when they ask us, how dangerous it was, Oh, we'll never tell them, no, we'll never tell them: We spent our pay in some cafe, And fought wild women night and day, 'Twas the cushiest job we ever had. And when they ask us, and they're certainly going to ask us, The reason why we didn't win the Croix de Guerre, Oh, we'll never tell them, oh, we'll never tell them There was a front, but damned if we knew where.
Joan Littlewood is the person who created this musical in the East End of London and Richard Attenborough crafted this fine film. Kudos to all involved. Incredibly moving. May people never be forced to have to go to war ever and that goes for everyone on the planet. It must be abolished.
Thanks for reminding us who created Oh What A Lovely War. Attenborough made a wonderful film but Joan Littlewood and her company were the true creators. It’s a masterpiece in my opinion.
@@timwatts9371 But she was against the idea of a Film version, I guess the money persuaded her, but afterwards. she stil complained about Attenboroughs version. Cake and eat it , silly old fool. It was by far the best treatment, with film, there are no restrictions, unlike a stage.
My uncle who died in 1969 was in the RA . He said that every day after the end of the war he treated as a bonus.It was so deadly that hardly anyone expected to survive without an injury. He was artillery so had a better chance of survival.Another was shot through the head at teh second battle of Ypres after a few weeks in the trenches. Aged 19.I have seen his grave in Belgium.
It's far from pointless, if we (England) hadn't fought back in WW1 or WW2 we would all be speaking German now.... I think German is a beautiful language but you see my point x
@@houndsofroses3727 well, if England hadn't fought back during WW1, I'd doubt Germany would care all that much about Great Britain, the German Empire's main concerns were France and Russia, along with a few colonial territories
@@felixargyle8698 But then France would've been crushed, guys if you wanted to stop human conflict then you better go back to the start of humanity. Everything is a snowball effect I mean shit if you wanted to you could trace the splitting of Charlemagne's empire into 3 nations to WW2. everything builds on and what we eventually get is more and more brutal and brutal conflicts.
@@houndsofroses3727 The reasons for WW1 and WW2 were very different. You can’t lump them together like that. It was the vindictive reprisals inflicted on Germany at the end of WW1 that were one of the leading causes for the rise of the Nazis.
This movie used to be free to watch on yt. When the platform changed hands it went behind a paywall. Maybe whoever owns the copyrights should re-release it in cinemas. It might knock some sense into the ones who want war.
the men shall never be forgotten, it is our job to make sure of that, people must remember the hell they went through for 4 long years, that is why i reenact, to remember the bravest men in history, those that answered Britannia's call dressed in khaki and with a rifle and those who were conscripted who still fought with everything they had right up until they lost everything and paid the ultimate sacrifice "They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them."
And since many were so young when they were sent to the first world war, some were young enough to be sent again to fight in the second... I cannot imagine the heartache and fear and hopelessness......
Hi I think it's meant to suggest they were non combatants ie not front line troops ......when actually they were!!! ...A very subtle understatement.....by soldiers that suffered terribly ....RIP lads ....
The song is trying to convey the way that men who’d had unspeakable experiences in the trenches would make light of those terrible experiences when they got home.
I've always interpreted that to mean , despite the massive attacks and artillery bombardments , the ground was a sea of mud, and nobody could tell where the 'FRONT LINE WAS' , when ground was won, it was lost again hours later. Unlike WW2, which was fast moving with modern armour etc.
Yes, I think it is a moving way of stressing the pointlessness of war. They were fighting - and dying - but didn't even know where the thing they were fighting for was.
They were saying they were in the rear with the gear. They had never been to the front. If you didn't want to tell yoyr family that you beat a 16 year old boy to death with a shovel for no reason other than he was wearing the enemy's uniform, you said you were in the rear with gear. My father was in WWII. Never spoke once of war. He would speak about fallibg in axwell and breakibg a leg while laying a radio wire. Guarding ammo trains while his leg was healing. Tipping over a red cross truck because they were selling donated cigarettes. But he never spoke of fighting.
This was the typical, left wing view of war. It was, in Europe, a follow-on to the French student riots of 1968. All backed, funded, led by Soviet infiltrators. The intention was to break Europe's support for NATO and its resistance to the USSR. I find the movie so silly, so emotional, so 1960s. Are alk wars useless? Of course not, only those that resisted Marxist hegemony. Movies like this trivialize war. Upon asking, over 90% of European youths today have no clue why WWI was fought. The best book to deal with its cause is " The Origin of Wars" by Donald Kagan. Read his account and then watch this childish movie. Many confuse the battlefield slaughter with the cause of the war. The armies if 1914 were not prepared for the changes in how modern weapons had changed warfare and tactics. One valid criticism was that the armies on the Western Front generals' were incompetent for the new face of battle. Machine guns and rapid firing artillery. made the generals incapble of devising appropriate tactics until 1917. So, for three plus years troops were fed into an inconvlusiveseries of battles.
We are emotional beings, this isn't a left wing view of the war. This is a humanitarian view. Meant to illustrate and emphasize the suffering of the common trench soldier and how they were tricked into joining something so brutally horrid. We know why the war started, we know why so many boys died, we know the outdated tactics not mixing with the modern weapons, and we know that once these soldiers were tricked into enlisting, they were forced into taking their chances over the top or being shot by their own commanders. A lot of these boys hadnt even reached their 20's before they were killed, sacrificed in vain on the alter of their nation leader's ambition, and this movie chooses to focus on that primarily (to focus on the entire war as a whole in a 2 hour movie would probably be imposssible) Obviously any art about war, can not (and should not attempt) to escape political discussion, but to simply look at these complex issues in a "left wing/right wing" context narrows a perspective quite a bit. Look at these issues through the words, art and stories of the people who lived them and the people who attempt to emphasize with them. Nothing in this movie holds any indication of a favorable attitude towards Marxism. It does, however, criticize the systems and people in place that allowed such a horrible event to happen. I don't think that's a particularly Marxist point of view, because I feel like if I lived through any of the shit that these people had lived through, I'd probably hate everyone who made it happen too.
Are you seriously suggesting this movie was funded by the USSR? And you believe WW2 was pointless because it was fighting fascism not Marxism? I studied WW1 at school, and I cannot remember what caused it except a number of disputes over national boundaries, nor what anybody 'won' as a result of it. But I do believe as Brecht said, that 'all war is about money', and in that respect it's usually prosecuted by the powerful and wealthy with the aim of maintaining or increasing their power and wealth, with the poor and powerless putting their lives on the line in far greater number. That seems to be one of the things this movie is pointing out. Call that a Marxist viewpoint if you like, but it was a fact, and largely remains so.
When I was boy, in the early 1960s, there were still many Great War veterans alive and living in my village.
Some were kind and friendly, some were grumpy. Like everyone else.
But they all had one thing in common. They would not talk about it.
very Interesting, when my grandad was young he moved from Ireland to London during the blitz and became a firefighter. He eventually moved back to Ireland, one of the thing's I remember as a child was asking him about it and he replied singing this song. But I would have loved to talk to a WW1 veteran.
As a child my mother told me never to ask my granddad about his time in the trenches. At meal times he always had more trouble breathing, which was due to him being gassed, he also still had shrapnel in his body right up until he died in the mid seventies. I don't think you could ever know what hell they went through unless you were there.
@@soppiest13 i would cry if were you
One other point which I would like to make.....
Only 'Veterans who weren't there boast and brag about thier experiences.
However, to close down the bravado is to say 'Well, I was there' .
Silence !!
I remember asking my Grandpa something along the lines of, "Did you kill any Germans in the trenches?" I still remember the look in his eyes. I never asked him again.
Genius. Richard Attenborough was a bloody Genius.
This film always leaves me in tears.
Please don`t forget these poor souls. Don`t ever forget..........................................
Dave the Bowman never we must teach other generations about them
Totally right. There are some films which are just superb and the odd one or two such as this which are just genius.....touched by God.
Arguably one of the great film endings of all time.
I wouldn't argue
No argument
One of the very few to bring a lump to my throat. Bless 'em all.
the power of all those young men’s voices - overwhelming
When he walks past his mother,and she searches for his cross.chills.
she censed his spirit passing by
"The real war will never get in the books."
-Walt Whitman
What's sad is that the amount of crosses in that field is less than the amount of men who died on the first day of the somme
of course, France in particular, is a mass of graves and monuments, from not just 2 World Wars, but many more, from the Franco --Prussian war, Waterloo, and many othe Napolean Wars.
When I was a boy in the 1950s, my dad was secretary of the local branch of the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association. His right arm was blown away in a minefield in WW2. Sometimes I would accompany him to visit old boys in wheelchairs, who had been wounded in WW1. I would just sit and listen to men talking about their respective wars. Remarkably I was 50 when my dad died aged 85. I studied history at university but never read about the wars in depth until after he died, I did not want to disrespect him by disagreeing because there were historians who knew more about policy and strategy then he would have now as a corporal.
No other anti-War film comes near this, not one. In personal memory of Pte.L.L.Griffiths 1/13 Aust.Inf.Btn 1917 and all of his mates ..........
Les Griffiths
Most powerful ending to a movie I've ever seen and ever will
So beautifully sang & acted. It has me in tears each time I play it
God damn, I think this is the only movie to make me cry, this scene alone could do it.
All those fallen and the result was a “twenty-year ceasefire”, as Foch blasted Versailles.
The hidden meaning of this song is heartbreaking.
It's the solemn vow to suffer in silence rather than ever recall the hell they saw that chokes me up
@@jameshayward5514 I dont get there being a hidden message, I just figure it how I always hear these guys being described, the happy ones, the angry ones, the quiet ones, all had one thing in common, they never talked about the war except to each other.
The message is that we were just men and all the heroic laurels bestowed upon us by civilians are silly but let them think it. We just wanted to live our lives.
One of the big recruitment propaganda posters was a little girl asking her father, "Daddy, what did you do during the war?" to shame men into joining.
This is extra sad because most ww1 vets never spoke about the war ever
And you could hardly get them too
And when they ask us, how dangerous it was,
Oh, we'll never tell them, no, we'll never tell them:
We spent our pay in some cafe,
And fought wild women night and day,
'Twas the cushiest job we ever had.
And when they ask us, and they're certainly going to ask us,
The reason why we didn't win the Croix de Guerre,
Oh, we'll never tell them, oh, we'll never tell them
There was a front, but damned if we knew where.
Thank you for that
Joan Littlewood is the person who created this musical in the East End of London and Richard Attenborough crafted this fine film. Kudos to all involved. Incredibly moving. May people never be forced to have to go to war ever and that goes for everyone on the planet. It must be abolished.
Thanks for reminding us who created Oh What A Lovely War. Attenborough made a wonderful film but Joan Littlewood and her company were the true creators. It’s a masterpiece in my opinion.
@@timwatts9371 But she was against the idea of a Film version, I guess the money persuaded her, but afterwards. she stil complained about Attenboroughs version. Cake and eat it , silly old fool. It was by far the best treatment, with film, there are no restrictions, unlike a stage.
someones cutting onions in my room
Today on the 11th hour on the 11th day...war ended
Lest we forget on this 100th anniversary of the armistice of WWI.
you mean the war to end all wars ?
@@woltewsit ended nothing.
The genius of Richard Attenborough! An astonishing and unforgettable ending which brings the awful reality of war home
What a magnificent and sad ending
I remember seeing this film when I was a child and shall never forget this ending.
@@RUSTYVELOX It gave the impression the entire earth was covered with those crosses.
crowe bobby it kind of was
This is an incredibly moving song. It is beautifully understated.
When I think about WW1, I imagine a soldier in shell shock who is trying to scream and cry but can't even do that.
Like a sleep paralysis dream but in real life
that was how King George VI ‘s speech therapist came to prominence, apparently, helping men to ‘find their voice’
My uncle who died in 1969 was in the RA . He said that every day after the end of the war he treated as a bonus.It was so deadly that hardly anyone expected to survive without an injury. He was artillery so had a better chance of survival.Another was shot through the head at teh second battle of Ypres after a few weeks in the trenches. Aged 19.I have seen his grave in Belgium.
My Grandad was a gunner, too. First AIF, died 1968. Never joined ex-soldiers clubs or anything like that, just wanted to forget the whole thing.
We will always remember them
Ive just cried
Lest.....we forget
God bless them all for their sacrifice and bravery always listen to the poet for the poppy fields in Flanders every night when I go to bed
Brought tears to my eyes.
The sadness of all those young men lost in this futile war. Why! Why! Why.
oh what a lovely war
Lest we Forget the fallen ones who fought in the world's most deadliest war.
That was... powerful.
This final scene leaves me in tears every time....what a pointless act war is!
It's far from pointless, if we (England) hadn't fought back in WW1 or WW2 we would all be speaking German now.... I think German is a beautiful language but you see my point x
@@houndsofroses3727 well, if England hadn't fought back during WW1, I'd doubt Germany would care all that much about Great Britain, the German Empire's main concerns were France and Russia, along with a few colonial territories
@@felixargyle8698 But then France would've been crushed, guys if you wanted to stop human conflict then you better go back to the start of humanity. Everything is a snowball effect I mean shit if you wanted to you could trace the splitting of Charlemagne's empire into 3 nations to WW2. everything builds on and what we eventually get is more and more brutal and brutal conflicts.
@@houndsofroses3727
The reasons for WW1 and WW2 were very different. You can’t lump them together like that. It was the vindictive reprisals inflicted on Germany at the end of WW1 that were one of the leading causes for the rise of the Nazis.
Simply brilliant. No more words needed.
This movie used to be free to watch on yt. When the platform changed hands it went behind a paywall. Maybe whoever owns the copyrights should re-release it in cinemas. It might knock some sense into the ones who want war.
the men shall never be forgotten, it is our job to make sure of that, people must remember the hell they went through for 4 long years, that is why i reenact, to remember the bravest men in history, those that answered Britannia's call dressed in khaki and with a rifle and those who were conscripted who still fought with everything they had right up until they lost everything and paid the ultimate sacrifice "They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them."
if that doesn't move you nothing will!
The bells.
It's sad how their sacrifice was rendered pointless with the botched peace treaties. Twenty years later another world war broke out.
And since many were so young when they were sent to the first world war, some were young enough to be sent again to fight in the second... I cannot imagine the heartache and fear and hopelessness......
They all died for nothing. Twenty years later it would happen again. And at least twice as many people died the second time if not more.
What do they mean by 'There was a front but damned if we knew where'?
Hi I think it's meant to suggest they were non combatants ie not front line troops ......when actually they were!!! ...A very subtle understatement.....by soldiers that suffered terribly ....RIP lads ....
The song is trying to convey the way that men who’d had unspeakable experiences in the trenches would make light of those terrible experiences when they got home.
I've always interpreted that to mean , despite the massive attacks and artillery bombardments , the ground was a sea of mud, and nobody could tell where the 'FRONT LINE WAS' , when ground was won, it was lost again hours later. Unlike WW2, which was fast moving with modern armour etc.
Yes, I think it is a moving way of stressing the pointlessness of war. They were fighting - and dying - but didn't even know where the thing they were fighting for was.
They were saying they were in the rear with the gear. They had never been to the front. If you didn't want to tell yoyr family that you beat a 16 year old boy to death with a shovel for no reason other than he was wearing the enemy's uniform, you said you were in the rear with gear. My father was in WWII. Never spoke once of war. He would speak about fallibg in axwell and breakibg a leg while laying a radio wire. Guarding ammo trains while his leg was healing. Tipping over a red cross truck because they were selling donated cigarettes. But he never spoke of fighting.
Immigrants couldn't understand this. You have to be British.
So many christian cross meaning there so many who died during ww1 makes me sad
He died.
Wow, how amazing. As if *no one* figured it out...
I think I could figure that out myself thanks
Hehe they’re stepping on the graves :)
This was the typical, left wing view of war. It was, in Europe, a follow-on to the French student riots of 1968. All backed, funded, led by Soviet infiltrators. The intention was to break Europe's support for NATO and its resistance to the USSR. I find the movie so silly, so emotional, so 1960s. Are alk wars useless? Of course not, only those that resisted Marxist hegemony. Movies like this trivialize war. Upon asking, over 90% of European youths today have no clue why WWI was fought. The best book to deal with its cause is " The Origin of Wars" by Donald Kagan. Read his account and then watch this childish movie. Many confuse the battlefield slaughter with the cause of the war. The armies if 1914 were not prepared for the changes in how modern weapons had changed warfare and tactics. One valid criticism was that the armies on the Western Front generals' were incompetent for the new face of battle. Machine guns and rapid firing artillery. made the generals incapble of devising appropriate tactics until 1917. So, for three plus years troops were fed into an inconvlusiveseries of battles.
We are emotional beings, this isn't a left wing view of the war. This is a humanitarian view. Meant to illustrate and emphasize the suffering of the common trench soldier and how they were tricked into joining something so brutally horrid. We know why the war started, we know why so many boys died, we know the outdated tactics not mixing with the modern weapons, and we know that once these soldiers were tricked into enlisting, they were forced into taking their chances over the top or being shot by their own commanders.
A lot of these boys hadnt even reached their 20's before they were killed, sacrificed in vain on the alter of their nation leader's ambition, and this movie chooses to focus on that primarily (to focus on the entire war as a whole in a 2 hour movie would probably be imposssible)
Obviously any art about war, can not (and should not attempt) to escape political discussion, but to simply look at these complex issues in a "left wing/right wing" context narrows a perspective quite a bit. Look at these issues through the words, art and stories of the people who lived them and the people who attempt to emphasize with them.
Nothing in this movie holds any indication of a favorable attitude towards Marxism. It does, however, criticize the systems and people in place that allowed such a horrible event to happen. I don't think that's a particularly Marxist point of view, because I feel like if I lived through any of the shit that these people had lived through, I'd probably hate everyone who made it happen too.
Are you seriously suggesting this movie was funded by the USSR? And you believe WW2 was pointless because it was fighting fascism not Marxism? I studied WW1 at school, and I cannot remember what caused it except a number of disputes over national boundaries, nor what anybody 'won' as a result of it. But I do believe as Brecht said, that 'all war is about money', and in that respect it's usually prosecuted by the powerful and wealthy with the aim of maintaining or increasing their power and wealth, with the poor and powerless putting their lives on the line in far greater number. That seems to be one of the things this movie is pointing out. Call that a Marxist viewpoint if you like, but it was a fact, and largely remains so.
Pabu May..... I think you need to get out more..... You're a bit full of it...
Finally, the worst take of all time
@@catherinewillmore I like the movie, but the creator of the musical was in fact a member of the communist party for many years