Big War Movie Themes - Geoff Love & his Orchestra

We spent many hours in the car when we were kids and in those days we would listen to music on cassette tape to while away the hours, since there was not much else apart from iSpy books to keep us amused.  In heavy rotation were the entire Sky catalogue and the occasional Christmas present (the embarrassment of listening to Adam and the Ants - S.E.X. - it's on the B-side of Prince Charming -  with my parents both in the car sticks with me).  But one of our favourites, and indeed very popular at the time, was Geoff Love and his Orchestra playing the Big War Movie Themes (1971).  These were all haunting and evocative pieces of classical music and many of them are indelibly written into my memory banks.  Recently I decided that I wanted to hear those specific versions again and bought the album on vinyl (after all, who has a cassette player these days) and sure enough it's still a great listen.

It struck me though, that although I had seen a good number of the films featured, that I hadn't seen them all.  Also, I wondered how well these classic movies stand up when watched with modern eyes some 48 years later.  So I've decided to watch all 12 movies in the order they appear on the album (see the second photograph below) and rate the movie along with it's historical accuracy and depiction of conflict.  With modern offerings like Saving Private Ryan, Letters from Iwo Jima, Band of Brothers and Fury the benchmark for modern war films, it will be very interesting to see how they stand up.

If you want to play along with me then I'll post the next film at the bottom of the review post.  For fun I'll also be noting how much it cost me to get the movie (if I don't have it already) and what medium I watched it on.  I'll be very interested in your own memories and review.

Right - so here we go, first up:

THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957)