The meat.
In the build up to the battle Richardson uses a mixture of close-ups with the soldiers, close up s with the generals and wide-angled shots looking upon the whole valley or down on the soldiers from the generals point of view. The purpose of these wide-angled shots is to give to film an epic feel. These shots also show the distance between the generals and the soldiers making the audience subconsciencely feel the sense of detachment between the generals and their subordinates. When the soldiers are moving down towards the guns the shots alternate between Raglan miles away looking down on the valley, there is a faint sound of a fly in the background emphasising how quiet it is. The shot then suddenly switches to down on the valley floor with lots of noise of the horses galloping. Whilst the soldiers are down there risking their lives richardson shows the general talking flirtaciously to whilst having a picnic up on the hill. Richardson wanted to show us how the upper class looked on war as a sort of spectator sport. Some would go along with a picnic and watch. HE re-enforces this by having Raglan just after an argument with Nolan saying “When people who know what they are doing are running a war it will be acts of murder” this could mean that because they don’t know what they are doing its just a bit of fun with other countries and neither country takes it seriously enough to be considered murder. His aim was to criticise the way in which the british army was run. He shows close-ups of Raglan showing just how old he is. In fact Raglan was over 70 years old and hadn’t been in a battle since waterloo in 1815. Instead of depicting the as heroic and noble he shows it as a complete failure on behalf of the general staff. Richardson obviously does exaggarate the pointlessness of the charge and perhaps overexagerates the uselessness of Raglan and the other general staff to try and produce an interesting epic film amd also uses language that raglan almost certainly wouldn’t have used in order to decay the personality and ingenuity Raglan displays.
The Film however, is similar to the poem in the way the it focuses its criticism on generals but the soldiers are still seen as noble. In the film the battle is the climax at the very end as opposed to the poem where the charge and retreat is the whole thing. The film shows the distance the horses must travel by used a wide-angled shot and we see hundreds of horses ant like slowly moving without a clue what they are riding into and th e poem uses repetition of half a league to give the feeling of the distance and monotony and also gives a sense of how the time goes really slowly when you are riding”into the valley of death”. Then we get lord hoo-har. Saying to lord hee-hoo “this can’t be right” “what choice have we” they are trying to score points against each other. In the poem we immediately get a sense of the dactylic rhythm and also the rhythm echoes the rhythm of horses galloping. “half a league half a league.” The film makes the charge look more noble than the poem. It uses a full 670 horses and men. And has the trumpets blowing and the lances all moving from vertical to horizontal at the same time. The poem however, patriotic as it sounds from the third line down it already stresses the pointssness of it “All in the valley of death”
In the poem the order to charge is a simple “Forward the light brigade! Charge for the guns” making it seem a much more innocent mistake to make when you charge for the wrong guns. The order in the film is a much more complex set of mistakes and showing the incompetence of Generals furthers. It shows that because it took so long to make I simple order Nolan got frustrated and was so excited he pointed to the wrong valley. It also blames the wording of Raglan to Brigadier Airey for the misinterpretation. When Cardinal sees whats wrong he says “what choice have we” to charging in the valley, this is similar to the poem’s infamous line “theirs not to make reply” showing the soldiers had no say in the charge but still couragously went out to die for their country for no reason at all. In the next stanza of the poem it effectively uses repetition again saying “cannon to right of them, cannon to left of them, cannon in front of them” this creates a vivid image in the readers mind that the soldiers of the light brigade were surrounded by cannons. This is represented in the film with a close up shot of a long line of cannon all firing consecutively into the valley on the soldiers. This is a very action packed shot with a fast pace and lots of gun and cannon sound effects is sharply contrasted by the next shot where we are back kup on the hill watching the upper class eat their breakfast in quiet and calm surroundings. This is one of the main differences between the film and the poem as the poem does not mention any other characters apart from “the sixhundred” whereas richardson produces clear images of what the officers were like through closeup shots and dialogue. The camera-work is magnificent allowing us to see the facial expression of the officers and men at the perfect times and also through the tones and pitches of the officers voice can we get to know them well. To give the feel of the cannon firing tennyson uses emotive language, “volley’d and thunder’d” whereas Richardson uses sounds and visual effects.
Emotive language is used again in the next line “stormed at with shot and shell, boldy they rode and well” this works beatifully at getting a vivid picture of soldiers boldly riding to their death being shot from all angles. They “flash’d their sabres bare” showing the russians they had no fear. To get the same effect in the film it is not done with such subtlety or virtuosity. In the film richardson has a shot of nolan being hit by a shell and falling to ground. After this it switches to a close-up of lord cardinal taking part in the charge looking scared stiff and then switches again to a shot of all the soldiers boldly lowereing their lances ready to charge the guns. In consistency with the whole film this is meant to emphasise the uselessness of the people in command. It is similar to the poem in that it doesn’t for one second condemn the actions of the ordinary soldiers who took part in the charge but rather focuses more on the incompetence of the generals than the poem chooses to. The poem states these 600 men remain worthy of honour and tribute today.
The whole poem uses vivid, instinctive and descriptive language throughout. This effectively lets the reader feel and share the experiences the soldiers went through and makes us value their efforts highly and this really is the point of the poem which is the difference with the film where the aim in that is to show why it happened, to express the feelings that these live were totally wasted due to the sheer incompetence of the general staff.
In stanza 5 tennyson again uses anaphora creating an unrelenting sense of assault, at each line our eyes meet the word cannon just as the soldiers met shot and shell at every turn. The film shows the retreat in a bit of a less glorious light. It has close-ups of soldiers limping back on foot, their uniform all torn up and bleeding. Then switches to a wide-angled shot of the whole valley where we see all the soldiers limping back over dead horses and soldiers. This scene successfully expresses the true waste of the charge and the image really sticks with the audience. Next in the film we have another beautifully moving scene, richardson has the general staff all arguing over whos fault it was and blaming each other and it then switches shot to a close up of a really weary soldier staggering back injured and all he can hear is “I will not be blamed” this shot has stuck with me because it is truly effective at showing the incompetence of the general. The obedience of the soldiers is then shown when cardinal comes over to them and although they have just come back from a mistake made partly by him they cheer him and one soldiers who is particularly burnt says “go again sir?” in the final stanza it goes on about how noble and galliant the soldiers are “when can their glory fade” and closes on “Noble six hundred” this is particularly contrasting with the film finishing with a shot of a dead horse being eaten by flies, this could be seen as anything but noble and is intended to be seen as a total waste. These two contrasting things are the most powerful as they are what we leave with. They really sum up the difference between Richardson and tennyson’s interpretations. Richardson portrays the charge as a total waste and shows how the generals were to blame and how badly war was run. Tennyson is showing how honourable and brave the soldiers who took part and not focusing at all on the negatives.
Conclusion
The poem written by tennyson offers the audience of the time a eulogy, people in the 1850’s were much less likely to accept having criticism of their generals than people in the 1960’s. Tennyson was focusing on the nobility of the ordinary soldiers and not pointing the finger at who’s fault it was. Richardson however wrote his film in the 60’s at the time of the vietnam war when people were much more willing to accept critisism of their countries war efforts. He doesn’t criticize the ordinary soldiers but focuses more on the uselessness of the generals and how they don’t have a clue whats going on. Richardson basically says that this complete waste of life could have been prevented had the generals been trained and knew what they were doing. He especially focuses in on Raglan and shows us he was an old incompetent fool who shouldn’t have been anywhere neart a battlefield at his age.