Film Review: The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968)

The Crimean War (1853–1856) was, by any measure, a strategic triumph for the British Empire. The campaign successfully checked Russian imperial ambitions in the Black Sea, safeguarded British interests in India, and secured the Ottoman Empire as a buffer state. Yet, this victory is overshadowed in popular memory by one of the most infamous episodes in British military history: the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava. Though the battle itself ended inconclusively, the Light Brigade’s disastrous cavalry charge—a result of miscommunication and incompetence—became immortalised through Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s 1854 poem The Charge of the Light Brigade, a work that remains one of the most quoted and anthologised pieces of Victorian literature. Over a century later, the event inspired filmmakers, culminating in Tony Richardson’s 1968 epic Charge of the Light Brigade. Commissioned as the most ambitious and costly recreation of the conflict to date, Richardson’s film sought to dissect the chaos, folly, and human cost of the charge while interrogating the broader societal and military failures that defined mid-19th-century Britain.

The film opens with animated sequences by Richard Williams, blending period cartoons and propaganda to contextualise the war’s origins. Russia’s invasion of the Ottoman Empire, driven by ambitions to dominate the Black Sea, prompted British intervention to protect its Indian colonies from Russian overreach. The narrative centres on Captain Louis Nolan (David Hemmings), a pragmatic cavalry officer with combat experience in India, who contrasts sharply with the aristocratic, privilege-obsessed commanders of the British Army. Nolan’s reunion with his friend Captain William Morris (Mark Burns) and Morris’s wife Clarissa (Vanessa Redgrave) sparks a muted, almost transactional adulterous affair. Their relationship, though strained by Nolan’s restlessness, remains comparatively stable compared to his fraught dynamic with his superiors, particularly the bombastic Lord Cardigan (Trevor Howard), commander of the Light Brigade.

The plot traces the British expeditionary force’s journey to Crimea, highlighting the logistical chaos and disease that plagued the allied armies. The Battle of Alma, an early Allied victory, is undercut by the incompetence of Lord Raglan (John Gielgud), a geriatric commander whose reluctance to pursue a retreating enemy denies the cavalry a chance for glory. The film then shifts to the siege of Sevastopol, where the Light Brigade is ordered to recapture artillery captured by the Russians. Nolan, tasked with delivering Raglan’s orders, misinterprets them, leading the brigade into the “Valley of Death”—a narrow ravine flanked by Russian artillery. The resulting massacre, depicted in visceral detail, epitomises the film’s central thesis: the British military’s catastrophic combination of arrogance, class privilege, and ineptitude.

Tony Richardson, fresh from his Oscar-winning Tom Jones (1963), envisioned Charge of the Light Brigade as a grand historical critique. The project began with playwright John Osborne, a leading figure of the “Angry Young Men” movement, who crafted an early script based on Cecil Woodham Smith’s seminal 1953 history The Reason Why. Osborne’s work, steeped in social realism and leftist politics, sought to expose the war’s absurdities and the British elite’s moral bankruptcy. However, Richardson grew dissatisfied with Osborne’s screenplay, commissioning rewrites by Charles Wood, a former soldier of the 17th Lancers (the regiment involved in the charge). This decision strained Richardson and Osborne’s relationship, marking a turning point in both men’s careers. Osborne, already facing declining influence, never recovered his former stature, while Richardson’s insistence on authenticity clashed with the film’s bloated budget and chaotic production.

The film’s most potent strength lies in its unflinching portrayal of Victorian Britain’s societal rot. Early scenes juxtapose the opulent lives of aristocratic officers—depicted as senile, corrupt, or absurdly out of touch—with the grim realities of enlisted soldiers, recruited from the slums of industrial cities as a means of escaping poverty. These men endure brutal discipline, disease, and neglect, only to be sacrificed in a war driven by imperial vanity. Richardson and his collaborators, influenced by Osborne’s “kitchen sink” realism, frame the Crimean War as a precursor to the industrialised slaughter of the First World War, embodying the “Lions Led by Donkeys” trope that gained traction post-1945. The British command—exemplified by Raglan’s senile indecisiveness and Cardigan’s narcissistic incompetence—is portrayed as criminally negligent, prioritising prestige over strategy.

Despite its ambitions, the film’s narrative suffers from a meandering script that prioritises polemic over coherence. The first half drags, bogged down by irrelevant subplots, such as Nolan’s affair. These elements, likely inserted to pad running time or satisfy Richardson’s personal interests (Vanessa Redgrave, his then-wife, plays Clarissa), dilute the film’s focus. Historical accuracy also takes a backseat to dramatic effect: this includes Cardigan’s bizarre, BDSM-tinged relationship with Fanny Duberly (Jill Bennett, then-wife of John Osborne), the diarist wife of an officer embedded with the army. Nolan’s culpability in the charge is never properly explained, and the battle’s aftermath is underexplored.

The film’s production mirrored the chaos it depicted. Richardson’s perfectionism clashed with Osborne’s creative control, while on-set tensions flared among cast and crew. Filming in Turkey proved logistically nightmarish, with delays, budget overruns, and disputes over the use of Turkish soldiers as extras. The technical achievements—the meticulously reconstructed battle scenes, the pyrotechnics, and the use of authentic locations—were overshadowed by these behind-the-scenes meltdowns. By the time the film premiered, it had become a cautionary tale of artistic hubris and mismanagement, a “disaster” as infamous as its subject.

The film’s technical merits lie in its recreation of the Battles of Alma and Balaclava. Filmed in Turkey’s landscapes that can pass for Crimea, the sequences are visceral and immersive, with sweeping shots of cavalry charges and close-ups of soldiers’ terror. The Alma battle showcases Richardson’s flair for chaos, with soldiers scrambling through mud and smoke, while the Charge itself is rendered with harrowing realism: riders are torn apart by cannon fire, horses collapse mid-charge, and the valley’s acoustics amplify the cacophony of war. These scenes, enhanced by inventive sound design and practical effects, stand as the film’s high points, transcending its narrative flaws.

The cast delivers unevenly. David Hemmings’s Nolan is a sympathetic but underwritten everyman, his charisma drowned by the script’s lack of focus. Trevor Howard, however, is a revelation as Lord Cardigan, embodying the officer’s absurd pomposity and latent paranoia with a blend of menace and farce. John Gielgud’s Raglan is a masterclass in understatement, his trembling hands and hollow eyes conveying the weight of command and impending irrelevance. Vanessa Redgrave’s Clarissa is reduced to a decorative role, while the subplot involving Fanny Duberly feels tacked-on and tonally jarring.

Released during the Vietnam War, Charge of the Light Brigade positioned itself as a critique of military folly, hoping to capitalise on anti-war sentiment. Critics praised its ambition and technical prowess, but audiences largely avoided it, leaving the film to fade into obscurity. Its message—that the ruling class’s incompetence and indifference doom the masses—resonated in theory but failed to engage a public weary of grim war narratives. The film’s failure underscored the challenges of balancing historical epic with polemic, as well as the risks of conflating past and present conflicts without subtlety.

Charge of the Light Brigade is a fascinating but uneven work. Its strengths—visceral battle scenes, incisive critiques of class and power, and standout performances—cannot outweigh its structural flaws or narrative excesses. Richardson’s vision, though occasionally obscured by poor pacing and unnecessary subplots, offers a damning indictment of Victorian militarism and the human cost of imperial overreach. Yet the film’s legacy is overshadowed by its own chaotic production and the historical revisionism it both embraced and undermined. Ultimately, it stands as a fitting cinematic parallel to its subject: a valiant, if doomed, effort to confront the past’s darkest truths.

RATING: 5/10 (++)

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