JohnHowardReid Winner of the 1959 David (Italy's equivalent of the Oscar) Award for Best Film (shared with Generale della Rovere). Winner of the 1959 Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion for Best Film (also shared with Generale della Rovere). Alberto Sordi was voted Best Actor of 1959 for his performance in The Great War by the Syndicate of Italian Film Journalists. The Syndicate also voted Garbuglia's art direction as the best of the year. Nominated for the 1959 Award for Best Foreign Film, The Great War lost to Black Orpheus. COMMENT: For the most thrilling and effective use of genuine CinemaScope, it's hard to go past Mario Monicelli's La Grande Guerra. In this exceptionally lavish recreation of WWI Italian battlefields, Monicelli never allows a single square foot of waste space to appear on his screen. Instead his images are constantly crowded — almost always with men: ragged men, jostling men, cheering men, fighting men, slaughtered men, training men, retreating men, advancing men, hungry men, weary men, stupid men, brave men, victimized men, dead men. Vast columns of marching men are stretched across the screen, thousands often forming just a distant background to the forefront knockabout. Monicelli's idea was obviously to fill his screen to bursting with overflowing action. Somehow he has managed to persuade the producer to open his purse and spend more money on soldiery than Selznick did on Gone With The Wind. Just as the overwhelming hideousness of it all is beginning to lose its power, Monicelli skilfully pulls off a last-minute twist that drives home the film's firmly pacifist message with uncommon force. I'm not a fan of Vittorio Gassman, especially not Gassman in boisterous mode as here — well cast though he may be. But Sordi is ever appealing. Miss Mangano is saddled with a conventional and unlikely characterization which she plays with spirit if not conviction. Folco Lulli effectively repeats his Wages of Fear vignette. Blier's performance seems tired, but the Italian dubbing of his dialogue makes it difficult to judge. The other players are unknown to me, but all these minor roles were credibly cast, with Elsa Vazzoler especially compelling as Bordin's wife and Gerard Herter suitably menacing as the Austrian captain. It's true that the 140-minutes version does seem just slightly too long towards the two-hour mark, though, as said, interest is cleverly lifted soon after. The problem is, what scenes to cut? Those that could easily be removed with little loss of continuity are often the most effective and affecting. Personally, I'd take out Gassman's first long scene with Silvano Mangano — but no exhibitor in his right mind is going to do that!

GrandeMarguerite Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1959, this film deserves more attention from movie lovers all around the world. Some critics regard "The Great War" as Monicelli's finest work - and they might be right. Set in Northern Italy during World War I, of course the film is definitely antiwar. As Monicelli once said in an interview : "I wanted to show things as they were -- as usual, badly conducted and led, and no one wanting to fight, or knowing what they were fighting for." It is history from the point of view of the humble people, with a good deal of irony. Starting as a light comedy, "The Great War" ends on a very poignant note, while it doesn't hide any of the horrors of trench warfare.To me, Mario Monicelli and Dino Risi were the masters of Italian (tragi)comedy back in the 50s and 60s. Their best films (like this one) offer a combination of levity, social criticism and black comedy which is extremely appealing and unique. That said, Monicelli and Risi would never have done such great films without great actors. Here, Gassman and Sordi are a wonderful pair as two army mates caught in a conflict they don't really care about. The film also features beauty queen Silvana Mangano in a small but important part as Gassman's love interest.A classic, unmissable.

Gerald A. DeLuca (Includes spoilers!) THE GREAT WAR stands as one of the essential films exemplifying the "commedia all'italiana" genre, that is, films which while being comedies often have a serious, even tragic undertone. Take our two heroes here, the Roman Oreste Jacovacci and the Milanese Giovanni Busacca (Alberto Sordi and Vittorio Gassman). Caught in the insanity of World War I, this Abbott and Costello duo will do anything to escape danger and responsibility. After being fairly successful at the game, they have the misfortune to fall into the hands of the enemy Austrians, who want to pump them for information. But these two connivers and shirkers, in a rush of untapped patriotism, are unwilling to cause the possible deaths of their compatriots and so will chose or allow themselves to die instead. Circumstances turn cowards into heroes, much in the same way the con-artist played by De Sica in IL GENERALE DELLA ROVERE soars to lofty nobility at the end of that film, completed that same year. Talented director Mario Monicelli has filmed a gritty panorama of the World War I, Italy's first real film on the subject, in which the visuals and the overall "feel" are utterly convincing. The great cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno has captured the same period feeling that is akin to old-photographs-come-to-life that we would see later in his 1963 I COMPAGNI (THE ORGANIZER). Here he works in wide-screen CinemaScope that is especially effective in following movements of large numbers of soldiers in the battle scenes. The music by veteran Fellini-composer Nino Rota is appealing, and we get the songs and popular chants of the era. Silvana Mangano provides feminine interest as a crafty prostitute. This is a major Italian film of the 1950's and it should be far better know

mantus La Grande guerra is one of the underseen, undervalued hordes of sublime European films that never see the light of day.In the 1960s in the centre of London there was the Academy, Oxford Street, Curzon, Mayfair and one of two other cinemas where the delights of the European cinema were on view. I have lived in Oslo since 1990. It is a cinema friendly city, but overloaded with Hollywood rubbish like most Bruce Willis actioners, or Nicolas Cage going for the money and not to expand his substantial talents as he has done in the past.This is not intellectual snobbery, just a cry from the heart about the lack of quality that is so endemic in current films."Crouching Tiger, Flaming Dragon" - I forget the real title is an example of American audiences accepting the quality of non-US movies."Die Hard"-type movies are good only to perhaps release aggression. It shows the typical obsessive need for America to breed only heroes. The villains with the fantastic exception of John Malkovich are usually superb English actors with foreign accents. Alan Rickman in "Die Hard" and Jeremy Irons in one of the mindless sequels.U571, now the most popular film in video shops where I live is such a devasting con-trick. A real piece of history when a British submarine acquired the Enigma decoding machine which made a significant difference for the Allies to get advance information about German war plans. The heroes are American. Sickening. Dramatic licence is one thing, but fraud is another. The event occurred six months before the US even entered the war. These are well-known complaints.Reminds one of the crassness of putting of Warner Bros. promoting "Objective Burma" in the autumn after the end of the war. Depiction of Errol Flynn (unfit for war service) winning against the Japanese military with not one British soldier in sight.Reminds me of the stories of a close friend and veteran of World War II. The US Army using earthmoving machinery to dig trenches when the British had shovels, the often sidelining of American troops due to the prevalence of veneral disease. The stories of British and other troops relieving American positions with a quarter of the manpower.In movies, with the exception of garishly-suited black pimps in stretch limos, the villains in movies and TV series used BMWs, and other European cars, which also were often beset with engine problems. Unlike the perfection of GM, Ford models etc._Don't get me wrong. With the exception of a mad Bellevue, New York psychiatrist I had once Americans are certainly charming, friendly people.La Grande Guerra is one of the thousands of films that ought to be revived every 10 years like a classic Disney feature.