Search - Return of the Soldier on DVD

Tristan B. (TristanRobin) from NEW HAVEN, CT
Reviewed on 11/13/2010...

Sensitive, well-crafted and well-acted film.

With the likes of Alan Bates, Glenda Jackson, and Julie Christie, it was a pleasant surprise to discover, midway through the film, that it was Ann Margaret whose performance was really capturing me. Sans her usual glamour treatment, every thought and emotion is visible as it crosses her face and eyes.

I had never heard of this film - somehow it just slipped by me - but I'm so glad that it was recommended to me. I'll watch again - and even again. It's a lovely play - a tragedy really - with no histrionics or melodrama...just good old fashioned story-telling and fine acting.

1 of 1 member(s) found this review helpful.

Glenda Jackson at her finest

City Of Evanston | EVANSTON, IL United States | 11/01/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This film had limited distribution when released and the HBO

video was not around long. The dvd is most welcome. Alan Bates

portrays a shell shocked soldier during World War I. His family

fears that if he gets his memory back his life will never be the

same. Glenda Jackson portrays Margaret, his first love, and the

only person Bates remembers. She gives one of her finest

performances. In an ugly raincoat and an even uglier hat she still

manages to be more attractive than the beautifully coifed and

dressed Julie Christie who stars as Bates wife who wants him to

get his memory back.. Ann-Margret also turns in another fine

performance. Many thanks to Trinity for putting this out on

DVD."

Not Full Screen as Advertized

Nathaniel L. Harper | Anchorage | 09/22/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"When I read that this DVD was "full screen" I opted to rent it rather than buy it. If you care about the film as I always have, you'll be pleased to know that the "Tinity Home Entertainment" transfer is excellent and in WIDESCREEN."

Haunting ... even without a Ghost ... Comments by Michael Ca

Michael Calum Jacques | UK | 06/24/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Directed by Alan Bridges, this exquisite yet disturbing 1982 film which was not released in the USA until February, 1985, is a reasonably faithful adaptation (the screenplay is by Hugh Whitemore) of Dame Rebecca West's 1918 novel of the same name. This, West's first novel, has been adapted for the stage, too, by John van Druten, ten years after its first publication. West is known for a variety of other prose works (including critical studies of Henry James and D.H. Lawrence) and, of course, for her liaison and subsequent ten year long (1913-23) partnership with H.G. Wells, following the latter's partial disclosure of his libertine sexual views in his work `Marriage', 1912.



As far as the cast of the film is concerned, the hugely successful triumvirate of Alan Bates, Julie Christie and composer, Richard Rodney Bennett (yes, all key factors in John Schlesinger's 1967 remarkable adaptation of Thomas Hardy's `Far from the Madding Crowd') return here; fans of Bennett will be enthralled by the brooding, spell-binding soundtrack ferrying many of this composer's atmospheric hallmarks. This score conspires perfectly with the subtle, understated cinematography and with the poignant silences, which result from Bridges' admirably discrete direction of the film.



Each member of the cast is somewhere between competent and excellent; they all handle the delicate nature of their characterisation - and of the plot - rather well. It is in no way an action film; it explores the daunting filial, social and emotional implications of mentally paralysing brain damage inflicted by the most bloody and unjustifiable of conflicts; World War I. Emotional, class, and ethical issues become interwoven in an `inextricable whirl' of tensions, conflicts and values. The film will `speak' in different ways to different individuals, dependent, this reviewer suspects, upon each viewer's personal disposition and `conditioning'.



Alan Bates plays the aristocratic army officer, Chris, who has his memory `frozen' at a certain stage of his past through suffering a form of shellshock in the trenches, meaning that he no longer is able to either recall or even recognise his wife, Kitty, Julie Christie, but does vividly remember a previous fiancée, Glenda Jackson, now a married teacher living humbly yet, apparently, also contentedly. The cast includes Ann-Margret, Frank Finlay and Jeremy Kemp.



Probably not a film to be watched whilst enduring a `night of the soul' experience, or the like, but a film which I can specifically recommend as a sensitive adaptation of a hugely challenging novel, well ahead of its time in 1918 and one which now, perhaps just as much as then, begs us to assess the real, tangible, and life-throttling cost of a `war with no reason'.



Michael Calum Jacques (aka Mike MacKinnon, former radio presenter)"