spike milligan my part in hitler's downfall

In Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall, having been stung by a critic who called the biographies unreliable, Milligan wrote, 'I wish the reader to know that he is not reading a tissue of lies and fancies, it all really happened.' This review originally appeared at Film4.The preface anticipates the book will be part of a trilogy years later, the cover of the fourth volume said: 'Don't be fooled this is the last, volume four of the war memoirs.' Ultimately, however, Milligan published seven volumes covering his war service, his first nervous breakdown and reallocation to rear-echelon duties, his demob and early years trying to break into the entertainment industry.

But accomplished performances by an experienced comic cast ensure it rattles along, and since Milligan's own movie acting roles were limited, it's worth savouring his his chaotic comic energy here.

There's no denying that there's a slightness to the film, and the two most pointed moments - the first time Spike sees a dead body, and a long, closing sequence in which the soldiers head off to war - sit slightly awkwardly next to the Carry On-style comedy. Dale, however, does a convincing impression, and Milligan's presence is everywhere in the script, particularly in the form of his free-flowing, slippery wordplay. Milligan himself has a fairly small role as Spike's dotty Dad. The best and funniest of these - soldiers shouting 'bang!' at the point their cannon would go off, had they any ammunition Spike's encounters with Sgt Ellis (Maynard) have the same anarchic, absurdist spirit as Monty Python. Unsurprisingly perhaps, given Milligan's own background as a writer, there's little in the way of plot and the film operates as a series of sketches. Struggling with meagre supplies and the concept of discipline, he learns to fire a cannon with no shells, takes part in a chaotic boxing tournament and ends up captured by a rival regiment during a training exercise. Set at the start of World War II, it follows aspiring jazz trumpeter Terrence 'Spike' Milligan (Dale) as he's conscripted to the Royal Artillery and taken through basic training. For director and co-writer Norman Cohen (who put Alf Garnet on the big screen with 1969's Till Death Us Do Part ) this adaptation followed work on a feature-length version of 'Dad's Army', and preceded a series of Confessions films - a fairly accurate indication of the film's pitch and tone.įeaturing a handful of well-loved British TV actors (Arthur Lowe, Windsor Davies, Bill Maynard and Geoffrey Hughes - later of 'Coronation Street' and 'The Royle Family'), it avoids the bitter satire of the similarly-themed How I Won The War in favour of a knockabout tribute to the British army's cheerful incompetence and have-a-go amateurism. Spike Milligan wrote seven volumes of wartime autobiography, of which 'Adolf Hitler - My Part In His Downfall', published in 1971, was the first.

Spike milligan my part in hitler's downfall