The Voice of the Battalion

Sometimes I'm surprised by the films that stick with me. But ever since I first saw 1960's Tunes of Glory, I've often found it coming to mind. Particularly Alec Guinness' character. I often find some line from him coming to mind as he maintains his bombast and high spirit in the face of John Mills' micromanaging. I suppose it may be in part due to the loops of wasteful bureaucracy built into Japanese English education that I often hear Guinness' Major Sinclair saying, "What the Hell."

So I watched it again. I tend to remember it more as a comedy though Wikipedia quite rightly calls it a "dark psychological drama". As amusing as Guinness is, his recurrent line, "Have ye no teeth? Then smile, laddie, even under King's regulations that's allowed," is slightly vicious, at least tenacious.

But he'd have to be, wouldn't he? To be a successful soldier in the field. That's something I forgot to mention when I was talking about The Punisher a few days ago. The soldiers that choose to wear his symbol often do so as a display of viciousness to the enemy. Arguably, to do any job successfully, to be passionate about it, is to show your desire to do the job goes above and beyond your adherence to the cold letter of the regulations.

But then for someone like John Mills' Colonel Barrow, the regulations are everything. His reply when Sinclair tells him one man was the battalion's best heavy weight before a debilitating war wound is only to observe that the man shouldn't wear his hat cocked.

As the film progresses, it becomes clear that Barrow's zealous attention to the book is a very bad method of self-treatment for the lingering trauma from his experience as a war prisoner. His vulnerability becomes clear when Dennis Price cold-bloodedly manipulates him.

Somehow, I totally forgot about Dennis Price and Alec Guinness co-starring in the brilliant Kind Hearts and Coronets. But this is a very different kind of film, almost from another universe.

I noticed the film was restored by "The George Lucas Family Foundation". Again, the Star Wars purchase money is being well spent, What a gorgeous place this battalion calls home.

Tunes of Glory is available on The Criterion Channel. Here's my review from 2020.