UID:
kobvindex_ZLB15051905
Format:
74 Min.
,
Stummfilm
Content:
Originally, it was not intended to be a feature film; this was decided upon after the British Topical Committee for War Films saw the length and quality of the footage brought back by official British war cinematographers Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell from the Western Front. Given what we now know of the scale of loss, with over 19,000 British dead on the first day alone, its scenes of cheering, smiling Tommies heading towards the Front with helmets, guns and shovels hoisted aloft are a jolt to the viewer. As the battle progresses though, faces get more strained, and, controversially, the cost in lives is shown. The first bodies we see in the film are those of two horses; just two of the 375,000 horses that were killed during the war. Then we see the trenches of dead, and the fallen men indistinguishable from the mud in which they lie. Controversially too, the film featured a staged scene of troops going "over the top", though given the unwieldy equipment and limitations of film stocks, scenes of actual close-up action would have been difficult to obtain. Most telling are those few candid moments that break through the mugging and the official line - an affronted Tommy shouldering a German PoW out of the way as he tries to walk past him, and, just a few times, the awful blank expressions in men's eyes that Wilfred Owen described as "an incomprehensible look the blindfold look, without expression, like a dead rabbit's". It is the look of men who have seen something untellable. This is just one reason why The Battle of the Somme has been registered in UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme, formed "to guard against collective amnesia". (Graeme Hobbs, Movie Mail)
In:
The battles of the Somme and Ancre : [Video], North Harrow, [1998], (1998)
Language:
English
Keywords:
Sommeschlacht 〈1916〉
;
Großbritannien
;
Armee
;
Videokassette
;
Videokassette
