On View : Field of Memories : PBS’ ‘MASTERPIECE’ TALE RECALLS D-DAY WITH A JOURNEY TO NORMANDY

Emotions ran high during the filming of “A Foreign Field,” the latest presentation of PBS’ “Masterpiece Theatre” series. The bittersweet comedy-drama salutes the 50th anniversary of D-day, the June 6 landings by Allied forces on France’s Normandy shores during World War II. Within a year of D-day, the Allies overran Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

Written by Roy Clarke (“Flickers”) and directed by Charles Sturridge (“Brideshead Revisited”), “A Foreign Field” focuses on Cyril, a British war veteran played by Leo McKern. Cyril travels to Normandy with Amos (Alec Guinness), an old friend mentally incapacitated after shrapnel hit him in the head during the landing. Waldo, a brash American (John Randolph), is staying in the same hotel with his daughter (Geraldine Chaplin) and son-in-law (Edward Herrmann). Also quietly grieving at the hotel is a mysterious American widow (Lauren Bacall).

Cyril and Waldo aren’t just in Normandy to remember the invasion, but to find an old flame (Jeanne Moreau), who, unbeknown to them, romanced them both during the war.

Those who worked on the film were moved by the enormity of the loss suffered by the Allies during the invasion. The Tony Award-winning Randolph (“Broadway Bound”) was in the Air Force during World War II, but never saw action overseas. “I was a control tower operator for almost four years in the United States,” he says. During the 1930s, he also volunteered for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade--a group of Americans who fought against Franco’s forces during the Spanish Civil War. “I was turned back because I was the only person earning money in my family,” says Randolph, who was blacklisted in the 1950s by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

“D-day--there was such a fight about opening a second front,” Randolph recalls. “They weren’t doing it in the right place. They were doing it in the underbelly of Italy and a lot of guys got killed. So, the second thing was to do it at Normandy ... the slaughter that took place was inconceivable. I didn’t realize it until I stepped on that soil.”

Randolph hadn’t anticipated how moved he would be at seeing the thousands of crosses and stars of David at the American cemetery at Normandy. “I think I’m pretty tough,” he says. “I lived through all of the blacklist. I lived through everything. I’m not very religious, but I tell you something, when I saw what I saw--it was like a field of snow. It went on and on ...”

Director Sturridge, who was born after World War II, was struck not only by the sheer number of graves, but also “the age on the gravestones and the proximity of all the (death) dates. I think almost everybody died within five or six days of each other. They were all people from the first assault. That ferocity of those early days of the landings of the American Army, as well as the British army, was quite terrifying and very graphically shown by looking at the gravestones.”

Sturridge says the anniversary of D-day has sort of snuck up on the English. “I think D-day is a more confusing anniversary in many ways than next year’s V-E Day, which is the end of the war. D-day represents a great many deaths, and I think it’s the way you see it in the film, a curious combination of celebration and remembrance.”

Though he was in school in England during World War II, Clarke’s memories of the global conflict are strong. “It meant an enormous lot,” he says. “I’ve always been fascinated how very ordinary people can be plucked away from very ordinary existences and shoved into these situations. And they could cope.”

Over the decades, Clarke says, people have grown nostalgic about the war. “Although you hate it at the time, when you look back at these things you remember the good sides of them and they are very powerful. I think this 50th anniversary is well worth remembering.”

“Foreign Field” aired on the BCC last year and will repeat on June 5. The response, Clark says, was very good. He was especially pleased with the reactions of Normandy veterans and their wives who were invited by the BBC to a special screening. “That was the audience I was sweating about. I thought, ‘These are the guys who know, and if I’ve got it wrong, they are not shy on telling.’ Their response was wonderful. That made me feel that though it’s a piece of fiction, there is some truth there, too.”

The film, Sturridge says, also struck a chord with the younger generation who knew little or nothing about D-day.

“It’s one of the peculiarities of film actors,” he says. “I’m thinking of Alec and Jeanne. When you watch them and watch them talking about when they were 18 or 19, we know how they were. ... In 1945, Alec was bouncing up that staircase in ‘Great Expectations.’ We have images of them as young people in a more potent way than our parents or grandparents. We know exactly what (Guinness) was like in 1945, how he behaved. That added a kind of poignancy. The effect of the film on the younger generation was more extraordinary than on the veterans.”

“Masterpiece Theatre: A Foreign Field” airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on KVCR; 9 p.m. on KPBS and KOCE .