In an interview on the DVD to one of his personal triumphs, The Party, director Blake Edwards says he decided to make that film after finishing another project that wasn’t very successful. Here is the one that wasn’t very successful, but it’s sure a great-looking widescreen print on Blu-ray.
What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? is one of the mildly satirical, mostly slapstick WWII comedies that came out in the spate of ’60s war dramas. A lot of movies were about special teams with difficult assignments, and many of these adopted at least a partly insubordinate tone about ragtag misfits, such as Steve McQueen’s character The Great Escape or the cast of The Dirty Dozen. The ideas are that regular officers are incompetent and war is hell, but rugged individuals can have a grand time. No movies were mentioning Vietnam yet (The Green Berets was 1968), but the shadow of its restless, unspoken presence looms dimly.
Edwards had pioneered the modern WWII comedy with Operation Petticoat, a success beyond all reason, and here he applies himself to the Allies’ 1943 invasion of Sicily, depicted with sweeping footage of legions of soldiers assaulting the coast of California. Captain Lionel Cash (Dick Shawn), a spit-and-polish by-the-booker with no combat experience, is assigned to lead a weary platoon in capturing a strategic village. The jolly Italian army captain (Sergio Fantoni) is happy to surrender, but first the town must have its festival — a lengthy, loud, frantic setpiece anticipating The Party.
One complication and crossed purpose leads to another, and soon the soldiers are staging a fake battle for a newsreel camera, as directed by loosey-goosey Lt. Christian (James Coburn), and then the German army shows up to take everyone prisoner while one Major Pott (Harry Morgan) wanders the underground catacombs losing his mind. There’s also much sexy business with the mayor’s daughter (Giovanna Ralli) and roles for Aldo Ray, Carroll O’Connor, Leon Askin, and Vito Scotti.
As always, Edwards knows how to stage a widescreen gag. This has much falling into fountains, as Peter Sellers did at the beginning of A Shot in the Dark. One scene where Cash falls over a balcony into a fountain anticipates a late gag in The Party. For that matter, all these Edwards films were scripted by William Peter Blatty, who also later wrote Edwards’ WWII movie Darling Lili, which has a funny scene of falling off a roof, so maybe it was Blatty’s bag. Yes, this is the same Blatty who would create The Exorcist and prove himself a very interesting director with the criminally underseen The Ninth Configuration and Exorcist III.
At just over two over-plotted hours, What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?, like its Yankee army, wears out its raucous welcome. It’s at best mildly amusing, and it catches hold of a good idea when drawing a parallel between directing a movie and directing a war (far in advance of Wag the Dog), but it’s never as giddy and bouyant as it seems to imagine it is. Evidently the public concurred, because the statistics indicate it took a bath at the box office, and probably not in a fountain. This is partly because Fernando Carrere’s Italian village set accounted for most of a huge budget. Henry Mancini’s march-oriented score isn’t among his greatest, though it throws in a love song heard on a scratchy record.
The only extra is what looks like a TV trailer in lousy shape.