What if you gave a war and no one noticed? This sixties favorite, about the vagaries of war, sanity in insane times, and the usefulness of carrier pigeons, is a satire whose wit is almost defied by its dreamy pace. In WWI, Alan Bates is a Scottish private, Charles Plumpick, an ornithologist in his better moments, now unaccountably sent to a French village to defuse a ton of explosives set by the Germans to explode at midnight. The townspeople have evacuated, leaving the streets and shops to the inmates of the insane asylum. The lunatics prove more endearing and, finally, more enduring than the folks who forgot about them. They adopt Private Plumpick as their king. A mix of the Felliniesque (costumes, acrobatics, and ubiquitous animals), the Monty Pythonesque (especially in its view of Scottish military overreadiness), and the Jakubiskoesque (naked man with birdcage), see it for its open-faced, irretrievable innocence. (JB)