TV Reviews : ‘Field’: Poignancy Immersed in History

Before the public’s attention and imagination settle on Normandy in two weeks, before the hordes descend on the French beaches and villages, “Masterpiece Theatre” steps back and dramatizes a touching pilgrimage by a group of disparate travelers forever changed by the D-day landings 50 years before.

“A Foreign Field” is fiction immersed in history, a funny, lovely, poignant movie, full of rich characterization and a graveyard visit, a convergence of old warriors from Omaha Beach that will leave you limp.

And what a cast! Sir Alec Guinness, Lauren Bacall, Jeanne Moreau, Leo McKern, John Randolph, Geraldine Chaplin and Edward Herrmann cross paths in a sleepy resort hotel overlooking the bluffs of the quiet Normandy seashore. Half of them D-day veterans, they have come from America and England to remember, to tramp the fields and walk the hedgerows where their buddies died--a sublime odyssey that’s part pathos, part comedy and part epiphany.

Bacall, in an unexpectedly muted performance, will stop your breath. Guinness, as a beribboned hero rendered childlike by old shrapnel wounds, is almost Pan-like, magically playing his harmonica and wandering off to his own tune.

Written by Roy Clarke and directed by Charles Sturridge for the BBC, “A Foreign Field” could turn out to be the most moving of all the Normandy footage about to rain down upon us.

* “A Foreign Field” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15, and at 8 p.m. on KVCR-TV Channel 24.