The Americanization of Emily

"The Americanization of Emily is a 1964 American comedy-drama war film written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Arthur Hiller, loosely adapted from the novel of the same name by William Bradford Huie who had been a SeaBee officer on D-Day. Set in London in 1944 during World War II, in the weeks leading up to D-Day, the black-and-white film stars James Garner, Julie Andrews and Melvyn Douglas and features James Coburn, Joyce Grenfell and Keenan Wynn. Both Garner and Andrews consider it their personal favorite of their films. ..."

"I have saved my favorite anti-war film for last. ... The most powerful portion of it is the garden scene, in which Garner and Andrews are talking with Andrews' mother about war. Garner's impassioned soliloquy on the nature of war — with emphasis on the wives and mothers who keep the bloodbaths going by honoring them — packs more wallop than just about any other film."

"Sometimes under the guise of comedy, art is at its most brutally honest. A case in point is this delightful anti-war classic starring Julie Andrews and James Garner as cynical WWII military man Charlie Madison who has rejected the 'nobility' of war. ... Despite, or because of, the brutal honesty this is a genuinely enjoyable film that confronts the issue of how to live free in a world of pointlessly fighting states."