Watch The Charge of the Light Brigade For Free

That was an excellent one.

Nice effects though.

How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

A bloody war, the reasons for which seem almost to have been made up after the decision to wage it. There were lies, rumors, and bickering at the top. The Russians might come south and take Turkey, which would threaten the British passage to India somehow. No one seems to have been very clear about the causes. Perhaps it had to do more with national honor during the Victorian period. (This is 1859.) Maybe it had something to do with promotion in the officer corps, with combat experience playing a part. The populace was stirred up by the media and generally seems to have been enthusiastic about the prospect of great battles and great victories. Such a calamity could never happen today.Every movie about war reflects the period in which it was made, and it's interesting to compare this film, made in 1968, with the 1936 version starring Errol Flynn and directed by Michael Curtiz. The earlier film is much more exciting and far less ambiguous. We are good and they are evil. And the evil ones aren't the Russians (who are hardly mentioned) but some fictional tribe of Islamic terrorists. In the 1930s, the Russians had not yet become our enemies and were about to become our Allies.In 1968, the movie was a comment on the widespread anti-war sentiment that was generated by a war in Vietnam whose means and objectives no one seemed able to clarify. Was it really all about "body counts"? Were we really trying to kill more "communists" than they were able to kill our own troops? The controversy continues.The apparently sensible hero of this tale is Nolan, played by David Hemmings, recently arrived from India, where he has known battle, and held in contempt by many of his fellow officers because the Indian Army is a caste subordinate to the British Army.At the top, among the generals and Lords who are running this business, there is rivalry, bitterness, an adherence to ritual, and sloth in making decisions. The three cretins are Lords Lucan, Raglan, and Cardigan. (Two of them are sweaters, aren't they?) The Light Brigade, headed by Cardigan, Trevor Howard, is either given the wrong order or misinterprets the order as received. In any case, he leads the charge up the wrong valley. The causes of this disastrous error are never made explicit. And in fact there is so much confusion that I, at least, was often unaware of who was where and what they were doing.I don't know how closely the film follows the historical record. The story includes a correspondent but it might well have given a small role to George McLellan, an American observer, who later led Lincoln's Army of the Potomac to one defeat after another. Nor do we meet Florence Nightingale on her first trip to a battlefield.Somebody like Nightingale was needed too. Medical practices were appalling. Men died left and right of 19th-century infectious diseases like cholera. The germ theory of disease was not even a theory yet, so surgeons wouldn't wash their bloody hands between amputations.The impression we get is that this is pretty realistic. In most such films, for instance, the horses are taken for granted. Here, without any sentiment whatever, we realize the importance of their care and training.There is little in the way of preaching. Nolan has a couple of pithy apothegms but no speeches about the futility of war. If a war is to be fought, it should be fought by professionals to the death. Lord Raglan, John Gielgud, describes the still unstained battlefield as "pretty" for a visiting lady who happens to be the main squeeze of Lord Cardigan, Trevor Howard. There is a ludicrous scene in which, before having sex, they undo each others' corsets.Humor isn't entirely absent, as far as that goes. Cardigan and Lucan muttering curses at each other under their breath. And Raglan complaining that the statue of the Duke of Wellington that has been temporarily placed outside his office window is blocking the light at his desk. People speak to him of urgent matters but he stands at the window, preoccupied with the presence of that damned heroic statue of the Duke. Howard is a stereotypical blustering, red-faced British officer with mutton-chop whiskers. All the officers appear to shout at the top of their lungs, like DIs at Parris Island. A few ridiculous animated sequences, a la Monty Python, illustrate collective experiences and actually contribute to our understanding of what's up, rather than being a distraction.Violence in its political forms of warfare and terrorism seem so hard-wired into human nature that I fear the solution lies not so much in some vague willful desire for peace but in biology itself. The people who will finally wean us of the desire to kill each other will be not preachers but neurosurgeons.

Near-perfect. Worth at least 9 but gets 10 stars because of the miserable 6.6 it's given on this site, compared with the 1936 Errol Flynn fantasy which gets 7.1. Richardson's film is quite brilliantly written, superbly acted, masterfully directed. The only flaws occur because of minor budget constraints, and these never hamper a genuine dramatic production. Great work is timeless. It is memorable, it improves with each viewing, it grips and seizes the attention. It has something to say, and says it excellently well. The characters are compelling. In this case the atmosphere of the time it is set in, mid-19th century Europe, is evoked with such realism and precision that it deserves nothing but applause. It is highly inventive, and some may find these inventions, such as the Punch cartoonery annoyingly quirky. I thought it astoundingly effective. Richardson seems to have introduced an autobiographical element by apparently identifying with Nolan's involvement with his adored friend's wife, played by Vanessa Redgrave, and introducing a fictional subplot. I found this also fascinating, especially since the film was made very shortly after, or perhaps during, Richardson's divorce from his own real-life wife Vanessa Redgrave. Richardson died of AIDS. A very creative, powerful and exceptional piece of film-making, like most of this director's other pictures.

The Charge of the light brigade (version '68), is a movie that has a bad reputation because of it's historical truth. One of the greatest, if not the single greatest military blunder in British military history, a fruitless and suicidal "charge" into the South Valley of the Balaclava battlefield with frontal assault of light cavalry on Russian artillery which decimated the Light Brigade during their "charge", is portrayed in all it's "glory". Childish and irresponsible behavior of the upper classes, who were playing war with lives of their man, constant bickering among them, envy and egos galore, set the stage for a typical 19th century conflict. And this truth can't be helped. It could have been made into a silly caricature of history, but it wasn't and many people consider that a failure.The acting is great, and the cast is "cream of the crop" of British actors of those days. Tony Richardson with his "heavy hand" didn't harm the pace or the narrative, and this dissection of British society in 1850's is done well. I haven't seen the 1936 version, but I recommend this one warmly, to anyone who likes history, famous battles, and classic cinema.

Sometimes man is prone to reach for the stars, like Icarus he flies too high and falls short of his intentions. And, essentially this is what appears to happen in this story. Tony Richardson creates an ensemble of who's who of top British actors (in the 1960s), creates epic sets, and uses a massive amount of film, but the fundamental problem is that the thread of the story is not well bound into a cohesive narrative.Richardson tries to show us too much. It's as if he's spent so long setting up the scenes that he wants to show us how clever he was by showing everything. Part of this is to show how messy, chaotic and unglamourous war is, but if ever a director was to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut it would appear to be the case. One other reviewer has remarked to this extent, and I couldn't agree more. Some scenes are shot without dialogue, but would be tighter, more effective with a simple line and less lingering shots, for example when some of the men are dying of dysentery Hemmings gives his water can to a fellow cavalryman, he goes to drink from his canteen and then throws it away in disgust, which leaves the viewer uncertain if Hemmings character was worried about dysentery (and knew of the water born bacteria he might catch), or was disgusted that his men were dying so horribly before they even got to fight. But it is as if Richardson at every turn is holding your head and saying "here are the horrors of war, here is the unglamourous finish of men, look and look till you can look no more", but by the end you can't care about the characters, the soldiers or cavalry. They all appear to be such unbalanced and largely unsympathetic characters that you rather feel they get what they deserved. Generally film does history rather badly, distorting events, character and narrative to suit it's own purpose. I'm sure that happens here, so don't be surprised, but I think that Richardson in the end bites off more than he can chew. He doesn't manage to distill the story that he's trying to tell, instead shows more and in the end dilutes the story.While the film has flaws there are things to be got out of the film. The dialogue appears to use the Victorian parlance, the sets, costumes and visuals are sumptuous (for the time), and shows much of how the Western armies operated at that time. Apparently Richardson decided that the critics would not be allowed to see a preview of the film for the reason that he did not think them intelligent enough to understand it. If this is the case, then why did he think that the viewing public at large would be better situated to appreciate it. I guess Richardson knew that his film was a lumbering historical epic from which he was incapable of pulling a strong story, the morass of historical detail bogging it down. Sad, but a glorious failure. Much like the story told.