Savant's best-friend neighbor in 1968 had this mom that drove him all the way into Los Angeles to see new movies. But it was always mother-son bonding night, so Savant had to stay home and just hear about incredible screenings of 2001 and Ice Station Zebra at the Cinerama Dome from this really inarticulate friend. The Charge of the Light Brigade had been advertised with a splendid poster of a cavalryman with a saber, and promised to be a lavish update of the old Errol Flynn movie.

The neighbor friend was mortified. He'd never seen anything critical of war, armies, or officers like this before, as we'd both grown up on a diet of fables like The Sands of Iwo Jima. Like all red-blooded American kids in denial, he refused to talk about it.

The 1938 The Charge of the Light Brigade was a total historical fantasy that simplified the mire of international competition in the 1850s into an easily-understood story of personal revenge (sounds kinda modern, no?). Dashing hussar Errol Flynn loses his friends to a treacherous warlord in India, Surat Khan, who has the backward notion that loosing total war on foreign invaders in his country is acceptable behavior. Years later, Flynn is in the Crimean conflict, and it's revealed that Surat Khan is now an ally with the Russians on the very same battlefield. Flynn spurs his men on with the news that the evil Khan is their prey, and the Light Brigade rides through shot and shell to overwhelms the enemy. The history was a travesty, but people loved the unquestionably grand cavalry charge, with its hundreds of horses and men tumbling and flying every which-way under cannon fire. The action was fatal to literally dozens of horses, literally, and helped start the first campaign against the mistreatment of animals in movies.

Tony Richardson's 1968 The Charge of the Light Brigade is the antithesis of this, and might be considered an anti-war correlative to Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt: the big studios want a big, flashy rah-rah war movie now, right in the middle of Vietnam? We'll show them a thing or two.

Historically accurate down to the last brass button, the script by frequent Richard Lester scribe Charles Wood (A Hard Day's Night; The Knack ... and How to Get It) is a dissection of British arrogance and pomposity that never would have been tolerated in the later Thatcher years. The loathsome Lord Cardigan thinks the British Empire revolves around his personality, and becomes psychotic at the merest hint of disagreement with his set prejudices. Cardigan considers any officer who's served in India a swine because he can't admit there are real soldiers out there with more experience than he. His Light Brigade is a personal extension of his sexual ego, and he considers his officers' wives, if willing, to be his personal property.

When war breaks out, there's a line of pompous asses demanding high command. Ditzy Lord Ragland puts himself in charge of the whole campaign, when he's incapable of dictating a clear memo. He dislikes young Captain Nolan for idiotic reasons - and is supremely incompetent because he expects battle to be an orderly process with a preordained outcome based upon the fact that he is a gentleman. When a Russian defector comes forward with information, he won't even listen to it.

Raglan's worst screw-up is to place Lord Cardigan under the command of his own hated brother-in-law, Lord Lucan. Each would rather see defeat than see the other succeed: Lucan is a craven coward who refuses to march when ordered, and Cardigan flatly refuses to acknowledge Lucan's authority. The disaster that looms ahead is only too easy to predict.

Unlike the aggrandizing direction of Michael Curtiz, Tony Richardson orchestrates the famous Charge as a blunt and inglorious slaughter. Telephoto shots make the horsemen look crowded and ineffectual, and there are no grand vistas of mighty steeds charging forward - only short shots of very brave men riding into certain death. Our Errol Flynn cognate, the only officer on the battlefield with a notion of reality, is one of the first casualties.

The historians aren't sure why the real Light Brigade advanced into the wrong valley and into the 'jaws of death', and every account, including Rudyard Kipling's poem, has preferred to print the gallant legend. Richardson's scathing condemnation of the military mindset that sees conflict as a glorious arena where issues are irrelevant and legends are all, shows the pretty toy soldiers chopped up like mincemeat under the Russian barrage. Even the Russian cannoneers shake their heads at the waste - the few wounded lancers who breach the Russian lines are quickly slaughtered by overwhelming odds. The final image of the film was surely intended as a 'f*** you' to the late '60s enlistment posters ... the implication being that modern (1968) military politics hadn't improved much.

There's a not-very compelling romance subplot between David Hemmings and his best friend's wife, played by a then-marquee bait Vanessa Redgrave. It provides color and context more than content. The day-to-day running of the Light Brigade is very well presented, from the jolly-good recruiting drive to the petty cruelties and class boorishness that permeate every corner of the corps. The brigade seems to have a barracks for enlisted wives, but they're such a saucy mob, it's hard to tell if it isn't just a glorified bordello. One pointed correlative is the scene where a quaker pacifist's (Andrew Faulds of The Crawling Eye) peace demonstration is broken up by Cardigan on horseback, sabers drawn - much the way soldiers & workingmen would attack antiwar demonstrators in 1968.

One very good aspect, and a reason to see The Charge of the Light Brigade even if you don't care for the subject, are the wonderful Richard Williams animated segments that form the titles and several connecting montages. They're marvellous recreations of period illustrations that establish the nonsense rationale for the English expedition to the Crimea, and provide the most stinging satire in the form of an animated political cartoon: the British Lion sternly dons a Bobby's cap at the sight of poor Turkey being molested by the Russian Bear; the glorification of Victoria's economic paradise is counterpointed with skies full of coal smoke, and children slaving in mines.

An earlier Savant review of It Happened Here recounted the story of young Kevin Brownlow, an assistant editor under Tony Richardson, making a whole feature on the cheap. Here Kevin is now the main editor, and his partner, the military expert John Mollo is on the payroll as well. Mollo's work is particularly grand - the movie achieves the admirable feat of not using the jaunty, dandified uniforms as a cheap route to make fun of the military. Like any army, this Light Brigade is worthy of their red wool and ribbons. But the conflicts in which they're asked to fight are not worthy of them.

MGM's DVD of The Charge of the Light Brigade is a beautiful enhanced transfer of a film that always looked rather fuzzy before, even on laserdisc. David Watkin's soft colors need the extra resolution and definition of 16:9 DVD, and this is the first time I think I've seen it as it should be. There's a trailer, that sells the show as a straight action movie (with Redgrave!). Repeating the key art from the 1997 laserdisc, the cover displays John Gielgud's baleful face alone. His name was probably the only one from the cast that the MGM marketers recognized.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,
The Charge of the Light Brigade rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: Trailer
Packaging: Amaray case
Reviewed: May 18, 2002