Battle Song

By C.P.

ALL THIS AND WORLD WAR II Directed by SUSAN WINSLOW

One of the absurdly funny things in Mel Brooks' The Producers (1968) was the notion of a musical comedy called Springtime for Hitler. Now that conceit begins to look prophetic. In All This and World War II, viewers are invited in effect to sing along with the blitzkrieg, follow the bouncing ball to Yalta.

The film is a curious collage of war footage, old movie clips and the songs of John Lennon and Paul Mc Cartney. The songs (recorded by pop stars like Elton John and Tina Turner) are affecting in their own terms, but they cannot underscore a subject like war. Too often they are used in glib juxtapositions, as when Japanese planes take off for Pearl Harbor to the strains of Here Comes the Sun.

The nostalgic glimpses of World War II movies -- Casablanca, The Purple Heart, The Longest Day -- are equally disconcerting. The film interweaves clips indiscriminately, as if James Mason as Rommel in The Desert Rats were as valid a reflection of the African cam paign as authentic shots of Rommel himself. Director Winslow's cheapest shot is a reverse-action sequence depicting the German retreat: to the tune of Get Back, Hitler is made to cha cha cha back and forth like the cat in the Purina Cat Chow commercial.

Such treatment is too trivial for those who lived through the period and too misleading for those who did not. What ever else it was, World War II was not a colorful extravaganza designed to send you out of the theater humming. C. P.

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