A Foreign Field

Superb highly believable account of what previous combatants might feel in later life. A counterweight to all the Hollywood dross about WW2. Alec Guinness and Lauren Bacall are particulary good in their respective roles. Challenges preconceptions. Unsettling. Disturbing.

This is a really charming film - simple - cheap to produce and great. There is no way Hollywwod could produce such a film - great actors and it touches your heart. WW2 issues between Brits, Americans and Germans and their teenage love for the French and the realisation that each 'ordinary man' can be an hero. It is about respect and forgiveness. A must see film with no explosions or CGI. We loved it.

Fantastic.

Simple, gentle, nostalgic, genuine, poignant, ageless.

Excellent casting.

Highly recommended, it is a film well worth an hour and a half of your concentration.

My heart sank when I saw in the opening credits that this was from the pen of Roy (Last of the Summer Wine) Clarke. This ever-lasting BBC sit-com holds a treasured place in the hearts of millions but I've always found its blend of whimsy and slapstick a big turn-off. I expected some of the wine to leak into this tale of old soldiers revisiting the WW2 battlefields of northern France and so it proved. The premise is sound and it could have served up a really good movie with humour and poignancy. But Clarke's fantasy style spoils all that particularly when it comes to the Compo-based Amos character played by Alec Guinness, who would have been better off staying at home and polishing his awards. His wide-eyed, open-mouthed portrayal attempts to suggest boyish innocence but he just comes over as incredibly irritating particularly, when he whips out his harmonica which he does at depressingly regular intervals. The movie swings between mawkishness and Hyacinth Bucket-style 'humour'. To be fair, there are one or two laughs but this is generally a flaccid romp in which we, the viewers, find that old grumps are (guess what?) really warm individuals who love each other – and all the world too. What on earth is Lauren Bacall doing here? I'll be she gave her agent hell.

The film was released in 1993 and then long ignored by the BBC who must be stark staring bonkers. THIS IS A GREAT AND MOVING FILM. It starts as the type of comedy that you would expect from the writer, Roy Clarke, best known for the TV series Last of the Summer Wine. Leo McKern is a bluff apparently fool of a Brit, Randolph a fumbly American, both looking for the same French girl they met during the Normandy landings fifty years earlier.

But, and its a huge but, they have baggage, Randolph his up-tight daughter, played by Geraldine Chaplin, and son-in-law and McKern an almost mute brain damaged companion, played to perfection by Alec Guiness. As the drama unfolds they find the long-lost French woman, an admirable unglamorous performance by Jeanne Moreau, and another American, Lauren Bacall also there to visit the war graves. The interaction of the group, their motives for being there and their history make this the most moving of tributes to those who died on the Normandy beeches, highlighted by the superb response of Guinness at the end.