| The Virgin Soldiers | |
|---|---|
.jpg) British quad poster by John Stockle | |
| Directed by | John Dexter |
| Written by | John Hopkins John McGrath Ian La Frenais |
| Based on | The Virgin Soldiers byLeslie Thomas |
| Produced by | Leslie Gilliat Ned Sherrin |
| Starring | Lynn Redgrave Hywel Bennett Nigel Davenport Nigel Patrick |
| Cinematography | Kenneth Higgins |
| Edited by | Thelma Connell |
| Music by | Peter Greenwell |
Production companies | High Road Productions Open Road Films |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release dates |
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Running time | 95 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
The Virgin Soldiers is a 1969 Britishwarcomedy-drama film directed byJohn Dexter and starringLynn Redgrave,Hywel Bennett,Nigel Davenport,Nigel Patrick andRachel Kempson.[1] It is set in 1950, during theMalayan Emergency, and is based on the 1966novel of the same name byLeslie Thomas.
In the film's 1977 sequel,Stand Up, Virgin Soldiers[2] Nigel Davenport repeated his role as Sgt Driscoll.
Private Brigg is a soldier sent to Singapore during theMalayan Emergency along with a squad of naïve new recruits. There he falls for Phillipa Raskin, the daughter of the regimental sergeant major.
A young and uncreditedDavid Bowie appears briefly as a soldier escorted out from behind a bar.
The Virgin Soldiers was the 17th-most-popular film at the UK box office in 1969.[3]
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "The Virgin Soldiers remains firmly rooted in the tradition of British Forces Comedy. The jokes, which make up most of the script, revolve round the obvious bawdy themes of service life, and the sexual encounters are presented in what is almost aCarry On fashion ... All this is made even more surprising by the occasional lapses into a tone of portentous seriousness. ... It may be unreasonable to expect of John Hopkins (scripting from an adaptation, with 'additional dialogue' to boot) that his screenplay should have attained the same level of prickly intensity which is present in so much of his television work, but one hardly anticipated that he would turn out something as utterly conventional as this. There are some lively performances, especially from Lynn Redgrave, and the atmosphere seems authentic enough; but overall it is difficult not to feel thatThe Virgin Soldiers is really nothing more than a kind of monstrous mating of [1956] andThe Family Way [1966 ]with a bit ofThe Long and the Short and the Tall (1961) thrown in for foul measure."[4]