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The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968)
Rate:
4
Viewed:
9/17
9/17:
I tried hard to like The Charge of the Light Brigade, but it's a boring picture that flopped at
the box office in 1968.
By the way, what's with the stupid Monty Python animations? What purpose do they serve for the plot? Only if they
stuck to the facts of the battle, it might have come off as an okay film about military blunders. But I shan't
expect much from Tony Richardson whom I regard to be a poor director. Many problems occurred on the set
which are as follows, according to IMDb:
1. Tony Richardson fired a stunt coordinator because of his maniac swordplay that killed several horses.
2. He also fired John Osborne for refusing to rewrite his script because it was too close to the facts as outlined
in the book. (Gee...talk about defeating the purpose.)
3. An earthquake destroyed the hotel that was used for the filming.
4. Famous for starring in Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up, David Hemmings,
a James Spader look-alike, proved to be difficult to work with. He would never reach the same heights again for
the rest of his career.
5. The crew, especially those who played Turkish soldiers, fought verbally and physically with local villagers who
resented their incursion into the area.
6. Tony Richardson's strange mixture of perfectionism and historical flippancy pissed off both of his crew and
advisors.
7. At one point, the director wanted the Guardsmen at the Battle of the Alma to wear blue tunics, thinking they
would look better on screen than the authentic scarlet. He only relented when his military/historical adviser,
Boris Mollo, threatened to resign.
8. While filming the final battle, the soldiers were called away for a NATO war exercise, forcing Richardson to
shoot the scene with a few dozen stuntmen.
9. Rex Harrison was approached to play Lord Cardigan, but a newspaper erroneously reported that George C. Scott
was being cast for the same role. This infuriated King Rex, causing him to drop out of the project. The part went to
Trevor Howard at the end.
10. By the time the filming was completed, it was the most expensive British motion picture ever made, generating
negative press. Tony Richardson refused to screen it for the critics, and he went an extra step further by
insulting them in print as "intellectual eunuchs."
All in all, The Charge of the Light Brigade jumps all over the place with hardly any charge as promised.