How I Won the War

A unjustly forgotten gem by veteran director Richard Lester (of Help! and A Hard Day's Night fame), this movie, while set in WWII is a general critique of all wars and thus it was correctly perceived to relate, in reality, to the growing US participation in the Vietnam war and not well received when it came out.

Using his trademark cinematography, Lester portrays the actions of a group of unwilling reservists lead by over-eager and completely "green, green, green" Lt. Goodbody (Michael Crawford), who sees an officer career as the means to overcome the limitations of his working-class background. They get entangled in the plan of a British commander to have a cricket field constructed behind the German lines immediately before the Second Battle of El Alamein, for Field Marshal Montgomery to stumble upon after the anticipated Allied breakthrough as a sign of the ubiquitious presence of all things British, so that the officer may brownnose Monty.
The musketeers portrayed are an array of classic soldier stereotypes, like Gripweed (John Lennon), the cynic, looting, covert supporter of Fascism, Clapper (Roy Kinnear), the jolly fat horny fellow, Sgt. Transom (Lee Montague), the gruff second-in-charge whose competence compensates for his superior's ineptness, Juniper (Jack MacGowran), the backstabbing comedian, Drogue (James Cossins) who knows that he will die in North Africa and Jack Hedley who wants to fight, but simply cannot do it.
Also appearing is WWI veteran Lt. Col. Grapple (Michael Hordern) as psychopathic officer who blathers incoherently about the 'wily Pathan' and fucking the desert and who manages, on those occasion where the troop meets him, to get them into all sorts of trouble, and Karl Michael Vogler as Officer Odlebog, who, referring to the Nazi's atrocities, does not "know anything about it... it was terrible!" and various other characters typically seen in movies dealing with war.
Killed soldiers return as generic, blind, silent troopers painted all over in one color, gear, rifles and all.

Comedian scenes are seamlessly mixed with stark shots, including archival footage, showing actual scenes from WWII. The end of the movie wraps up the subject nicely, featuring Grapple leading his tanks over the Rhine "to Moscow!", a punch at Vietnam by an anonymous soldier, a few lines by John Lennon's character on the futility of war from a soldier's view and a post-war middle-class Goodbody as a comment on history being written by the winners.

One exemplary, notorious bit of dialogue - between staff officers in kinky pants swapping bubblegum cards:
"I want 'School Bombing'!"
"We know what you want, Toby."
"I want 'School Bombing', I do!"

"I believe I have made a genuinely pacifist film. It is an anti-war film, of course, but it is also a film against war films. I wanted to show war without kicks, the opposite of the conventional tank opera. There is no single statement in it that I do not believe to be to the right purpose. I am totally responsible and, if it goes wrong, there is only me to blame, But if I fell under a bus tomorrow, this is the film I'd want to be judged by"
(Richard Lester)