A Happening Called World War II

The movie How I Won The War is a cartoon using live actors instead of animation. Director Richard Lester, full of what one reviewer calls “aesthetic consciousness,” props up a group of wooden soldiers who drag a roller across the deserts of North Africa to set up an “advance cricket pitch,” and later reappear under fire in a European village, where they die comic-strip deaths. At all times the personnel let you know they know they’re in a movie, obviously by intention, as is made doubly clear by scenes in which earlier war movies are parodied and newsreels of Dunkirk are worked cleverly into the puppet choreography.

For example: A group of officers is seen in ridiculous costumes. One turns t...