How I Won the War

1967 ""There's been some marvelous advances in surgery, thanks to war!""
5.5| 1h49m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 23 October 1967 Released
Producted By: Petersham Pictures
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

An inept British WWII commander leads his troops to a series of misadventures in North Africa and Europe.

Genre

Comedy, War

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Director

Richard Lester

Production Companies

Petersham Pictures

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How I Won the War Audience Reviews

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.
Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.
Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
fedor8 No, this not a "lost gem", as some reviewers excitedly proclaim. Far from it."How I Won the War? I Bored Them to Death". Main deficiency: a very boring movie. Another deficiency: the gags are practically all unfunny. It's a typical 60s British comedy; good cast, but an atrocious script. Well filmed, though; visually it's pretty decent. However, good for only one or two chuckles. And it was more like a hopeful chuckle, sort of like "I hope this is a sign that something genuinely funny is coming up soon". "How I Can Bore You" would be a more appropriate title. Very disappointing.A little word about John Lennon, for all you left-wing Lennon fans. (The music is great, hence that's not the issue here.) Lennon was a working-class kid with very little education and even less natural intelligence. His pathetic attempts at "spiritual contentment" - or whatever he used to call it - with that charlatan of an Indian guru sect-leader, plus his marriage to the even bigger charlatan, the totally talent-free Yoko Ono, prove this without an iota of a doubt. He was a very gullible person, what Americans would call "a sucker". But if that isn't enough, his meddling in international politics proved that he had also completely lost his mind by the time he left "The Beatles" and the 70s arrived. Drugs? Too much fame going to his head?He was also a stark-raving hypocrite, as most "do-gooders" are. All that the world's do-gooders care about is their fame and their image; after all, they have huge EGOS to feed. An example... Michael Caine, in his autobiography "What's It All About?", relates the following episode from the mid-60s when he met Lennon. They were in a luxurious French hotel, desperately looking for a bathroom. All the bathrooms were taken. So John went to a room and urinated from a window. Caine saw him and said angrily that John had stained the curtains. And what was John's reply to this? "They're rich. F*** 'em." Of course, the fact that he himself was rich at that point (not to mention later) was of no consequence. Because if someone had decided to stain HIS curtains, in HIS home with urine or excrement, I guess he would have blown his top, screaming injustice. And he'd probably have called the police. The "pigs". Yes, he was so anti-authority, except of course when he needed them to serve HIS little purposes. Just another "do-gooder" hypocrite..."All we are say-ing, is give peace a chance". If peace is responsible for "heroes" like Lennon, then I'm all for war.For my review of "Imagine", go to: http://rateyourmusic.com/collection/Fedor8/To make this IMDb's most unpopular comment ever, please click "No" below.
editor-133 It has been reviewed; it has been explained. For almost forty years now this movie has been a mystery to a vast audience because the viewers and reviewers miss the obvious: "How I Won The Won" is comedy. When one has the opportunity to enjoy this movie one will find that the director and writer worked well together to bring us a movie that one can enjoy again and again. Much like "Duck Soup" thirty-four years earlier made a mockery of the Great War, "How I Won The War" mocks the "good" War (The Second World War.) Richard Lester's directing style brings this movie to his audience in a similar way that Brecht brought "The Three Penny Opera" to his stage audience. Lester has an ability to force you to laugh at times when you wished you hadn't laughed. Now circa 2005, it is a movie that has been re-discovered for its vitality and its humor. Let yourself go, relax and enjoy a classic movie experience.
shakeyjim Very "good" anti-war movie from 1967. I wish I would have seen it back then, I probably would have been even more "virulent" in my peace feelings.Of course that would have made me much more likely to be a felon!
Patrick King Maybe true heroism is less than heroic. "How I Won the War" is a very funny movie that in its own surreal way depicts very real and less than heroic motivations for war. The setting is North Africa and Europe during WWII. The insinuations of absurdity could be any place and any time. Aptly portraying the soldiers is a cast that includes a young Michael Crawford playing the group leader -- bumbling, patriotic, and self-possessed of a desire to be rewarded. Roy Kinnear competently plays the jolly and slightly addled, clear-thinking (albeit mumbling) realist. Michael Hordern is the Blimpo commander with the proverbial blinkers on, never letting his men down when it comes to providing them with exhortation. There is also John Lennon who renders a very capable job of portraying a naive pessimist (perhaps a reflection of his feelings at the time about his role as a member of another group). No one ever really dies in this movie; they merely change colors. And in the end, the entire experience of war is capsulated into a home movie. Look for Alexander Knox playing an American general.