So many people say vintage music is creepy. But to me, especially with the beautiful vocals and instrumental of this one, they feel nostalgic. Even though I never lived in this age.
Great film poor history. There is a great deal of ignorance here about the Great War. A lot of the attitudes in the comments reflect nothing more than modern opinion. Go watch the Peter Jackson documentary.
One of the only poems to ever make me cry. So many young men lost their lives needlessly.. Generations of men wiped out because of politicians and their bullshit. Forcing young men to run into machine gun fire should've been a war crime. Some may even consider Rupert one of the lucky ones as he passed peacefully before he reached the front. His younger brother died after being at the front for just 19 days.
The connection was that Belgium DID stop the Germans - and my great grandpa earned two Chevalier de l'Ordre de Léopold, with Oak Leaves (the Belgian VC) doing so. The Allied lines held, as the Germans went further and further west, trying to turn the flank, in what was called the Race to the Sea, and eventually faced what was left of the Belgian Army, defending what was left of Belgium, from the highest ground in the Yser Valley, the railway embankment from Nieupoort to Furnes. Captain Louis Nestor Guiot commanded the western half of the line, and held them long enough for the King, commanding in the field, to get the sea sluices blown, turning Flanders into the uncrossable sea of mud. I had a hand in the film, finding the WW1 battledress uniforms, and taking my first salute as the greenest 14 year old cadet ever. A message went the other way, I now realise: now, as then, the youngsters learn to kill, and die.
My parents took me to see this when I was far to young and I hated it because none of it made sense. I watched it again, on video, many years later and thought it one of best criticisms of war ever made. The humour fades into ridiculous naivety and the horror is highlighted by the lunacy of the kings and generals. I watch it once a year and it never fails make me smile and cry. A masterpiece.
As a fourteen year old, I took my first salute from the cast, supposedly for finding the uniforms. It was only when I was actually doing a Staff Officers' job forty years later that I realised there was a message going the other way, then as now, it's the young who die.
You get some men who know the truth but the ones sitting in the offices don’t care life to them is cheap they don’t give a dam unless it’s them cowards
Such a shocker but unfortunately things have never changed still the same x Then they had the cheek to not accept shell shock for these soldiers who fought to save us x
They say the Great War it was a tragic war they recruited young boys thinking they would be hero’s but sent them to their deaths poor souls young men babies at 17 years old such a horrible thing to do waste of young loves they knew it would end like it did no respect for lives poor innocent boys and men war what is it good for absolutely nothing but hatred and violence x
It demonstrates so impeccably well how Homo sapiens is a despicable though efficiently evolved species of killers, and mass rapists and destroyers and marauders, that it is so easy to whip-up support for mechanised death on a huge scale, by the drum beat of war, intermixed with a blunt and momentarily intoxicating and cynically engaged eroticism. Women, who ought to be the guardians of life-creativity and life-protectivity and peace and nurture, are no less susceptible to this intoxication, this clarion and indeed suicidal call for destruction of the evil enemy. The creatures who threaten her homeland, her children. The same creature as ourselves, but dressed in the psychotic and distorting projections from our subconscious psyches. What a charming and inspiring and angelic species we are! Now in the latest generations we come blessed and armed with putrid phallocratic nuclear missiles, a plant-destroying patriarchal capitalism, and imminently with the rampant insanity of freely operating so-called "Artificial intelligence" machines. Mechanisms programmed from the dungeon-swill of clever but stupid young men's psychopathic and generally paranoid subconscious minds, and which will take one glance at us, conclude we are a rival for the planet's resources, and exterminate us, and probably most other life-forms on the planet. Truly a triumph of maleness, men and masculinity and patriarchy. Love, andrea
Mister Pat Malone upon the continong, Was fighting with the Irish fusiliers. One night in the camp he rose to sing a song, And all the Tommies greeted him with cheers. Said Pat: I'll sing a song about our gallant fighting men. Although we've had a tussle with the Germans now and then, Are we downhearted? NO! Then let your voices ring And all together sing. Are we downhearted? NO! Not while Britannia rules the waves. Not likely! While we have Jack upon the sea, And Tommy on the land, we needn't fret. It's a long, long way to Tipperary, But we're not downhearted yet! With a Frenchy girl Pat toddled out one night, And arm in arm they strolled, you may depend, Till a dozen pals all sang out with delight: Hello! Hello there! Who's your lady friend?" Said Patrick, I don't know her name, but listen here old pal, If this is what they give us with the Entente Cordiale. Are we downhearted? NO! Then let your voices ring And all together sing. Are we downhearted? NO! Not while Britannia ...
Thank you so much for showing even the humble goats helping comfort weary soldiers. I wish you had shown Sergeant Billy. He was a goat from Saskatchewan Canada and went with his soldiers all the way to the front, survived and even went home again. There is a wonderful children's book about him, titled Sergeant Billy, the goat who went to war. He was stuffed and is preserved in a small war memorial museum in Broadview SK.
This movie used to be free to watch on yt. When the platform changed hands it went behind a paywall. Maybe whoever owns the copyrights should re-release it in cinemas. It might knock some sense into the ones who want war.
