dowdyok What a fantastic film. Just watched it today for the first time and am still thinking about it! It captivated me right from the start. It was nice to watch a film from that era which concentrated on the characters lives instead of the war. The chemistry between William Devane and Vanessa Redgrave was wonderful to watch. He is such a watchable actor in everything he does. Richard Gere was as always very charming and played the role with ease. His "love interest" Jean was also very charming and mastered the English accent very well for an American. Her family life gave us an insight into what was expected of young women back then. The locations were beautifully shot and transported me back in time. I could not fault anything about this film and can't wait to watch it again.

Jay Raskin This is certainly not for everybody, but for those who like humanistic romantic dramas, this is a fine film. It basically centers around three American soldiers and the British women they romance while waiting for the D-Day invasion in 1943 and 1944. There is a good re-creation of the atmosphere through costume and props. While nothing much happens for a good deal of film time, it is a pleasant, seemingly nostalgic visit to a certain place and time. John Schlesinger, the director, was a teen-ager during the war years, so remembering it 35 years later he does tend to make it a sad, but pretty and hopeful time.Lisa Eichhorn gives a good solid performance which was nominated for a golden globe award. There are flashes of brilliance in Richard Gere's performance. This was a year before he became a superstar with "American Giggolo." He had really busted out the year before with "Days of Heaven." Here, he doesn't quite have the confidence in front of the camera that all stars have, but he does have a nice boyish sincerity. I didn't care much for William Devane and Vanessa Redgrave. I didn't think their characters were well developed and they gave unusually colorless performances. Wendy Morgan in a smaller supporting role looked quite fetching and stood out. The Costumes by Ken Russell's wife Shirley are wonderful and she was deservedly nominated for an Academy Award for them. She won the BAFTA award for them.This is a romantic, gentle and sweet film. If you're looking for anything deeper, harder or more powerful, you'll probably be disappointed. It is closer to the British Kitchen Sink dramas of the 1960's than it would like to admit.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU In 1979 the nostalgia about the second world war was slightly displaced but could easily be explained by the defeat in Vietnam in 1975 and all the films about the horror this war in Vietnam was. Let's compensate slightly and enjoy WW2 when the Yanks were welcomed (kind of) in Europe and expected to give a good spanking to the Germans, if not the Nazis, or vice versa. But there is no Kwai river in Europe. So let us make it sentimental and evoke the meeting of the Yanks with their distant British cousins in England getting ready for the second front and then the third. So the whole film is given some life with its being centered on the relation between one man from Arizona and one girl from the small city where the Yanks are camping. Possible and impossible passion at the same time, possible in the mind and impossible in the body because of the immense chasm between the two worlds, the two civilizations. It is a little pathetic, and yet probably true. A culture that says the girl of another man is sacred and a woman from another world has to be tamed and introduced with time and in time, not taken and used for a short while and forgotten when departure day arrives. You add to that the difficult relation between some white GIs and the black GIs, plus the impossibility for the other white GIs who are not openly hostile to the black GIs, hence who are not openly racist, to prevent or stop the racist provocation and then fight. Does it make a good film? It would have been good in the 50s. But four years after the defeat in Vietnam it is slightly too romantic and even simplistic to really erase the humiliation of 1975. The film 30 years later becomes slightly too sweet to be digestible. For having lived up to 1965 with GIs in my city and having seen their disruptive presence every Sunday along the embankments of the harbor, alcohol, prostitution, and a few other things of the type, I can testify it was probably a lot more drastic and sinister in England, in war time, waiting for the front, knowing that they may never come back from it. The film then appears idyllic, and in a way weak.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID

bryanac625 I love US history. One of my favorite stories of the past is American soldiers in WWII Britain, so I have always had an interest in this movie, and I've seen it several times.However, I think this movie has always been underrated. It would be great to see one of the classic movie channels like AMC or TCM feature "Yanks," followed by "Saving Private Ryan." Because "Yanks" ends rather abruptly, as the soldiers are on their way to battle (D-Day) and because "Private Ryan" begins with the landing craft approaching the Normandy beaches, these films would be great together.Another reason I applaud "Yanks" is for featuring Black GIs (unfortunately, "Private Ryan" doesn't do this). Is it necessary every American history movie be "multicultural?" Maybe not, but the truth is that some 5000 African-Americans were a part of the Allied effort that put 156,000 soldiers on the Normandy beaches to begin the process of freeing Europe from Nazi tyranny. These men deserve to be recognized, and I'm glad for any film that does that (I also recommend the HBO Original film "The Affair" on this subject). As I said, the movie ends suddenly. It would have been nice if the movie had done a "what happened" epilogue, like we see in "American Graffiti" or "Animal House." Do Matt, Danny and John survive the war? Do Jeanie, Mollie, Helen or the Moretons survive, or are any of them killed by the V-1 or V-2 rocket attacks that came after D-Day? Do Matt and Jean marry? The movie leaves you longing for answers.