Tag Archives: First World War

Oct 30 2022
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, World War One

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) is a terrible movie.

The 1930 original is an exercise in magisterial technique. You watch it and marvel how it was put together.

Whether the technique fits the script – most films fail at this – has always been an issue for your reviewer, and as we’re talking about WWI films, the pointless 1917 (2019) is an infuriating venture into needless aesthetics. 

Sadly, I hated this movie. It was the definition of mawkish and naive, the soldiers wee gullible pups with identikit snarling chops, marching about with big gormless grins on their proposed way to Paris. It was embarrassing to view. NO ONE behaves like this, and indoctrination isn’t that effective.

The score – annoying drums for no reason, interrupting the drama which could have been – was not good at all.

I also found it funny how the teacher looks the exact same as the Wilhelm II verbal-shagger from the Lewis Milestone corker – pathetic!

It’s a truly rubbish movie, a veritable Pick ‘n’ Mix of cliches and embarrassing reworkings of tropes from far superior fare.

I lost a lot of interest in all developments and contemplated my next viewing of Paths of Glory (1957).

Don’t bother with this.

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Sep 20 2021
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Cinema, Film, First World War, Germany, Movie, Movies, Oscars, Uncategorized, United Kingdom, World War One

1917 (2019) irritated me beyond belief.

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Finally got around to seeing this having missed it on the big screen. Netflix would have to make do as it usually does these days. I suppose movies like this demand the theatre experience, but I’m not waiting a decade for a one-off re-release.

Cinema concerning The Great War is understandably not omniscient as affairs regarding WWII are. The former conflict as seen by contemporary historiography (at least on the Western Front) is more static, more simple, with less of a political and civilian dimension. There are exceptions in cinema – Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The White Ribbon (2009), but there are only a handful ever worth watching again.

I couldn’t stand this movie.

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It’s appalling acting from many on display. The main bloke is good but the rest are phoning it in. There are so many annoying cameos from marquee actors who appear merely to boost the star names on the poster.

Bizarrely, it seldom feels like anything is at stake; I wasn’t bothered about any of the developments. One of the bloodiest and destructive conflicts in history is reduced to a bloodless, frankly boring episode which never once feels real or sincere. And as for the ‘one shot’ USP, it’s nothing more than a gimmick. But then a moment happens when it stops being a sequence shot by cutting to black, which negates the so-called perfectionism of the preceding exercise. It’s pointless.

And a lonely French woman makes an appearance, and she proceeds to shelter the protagonist. No cliché unturned.

Stick to Paths of Glory (1957).

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Jan 30 2019
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Britain, Cinema, Documentary, First World War, Germany, Photography, Uncategorized, United Kingdom, World War One

The Great War (1964).

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I finally got around to viewing this epic 26-episode series from 1964. It’s an incredible compendium of WWI in all its participants’ hubris and misguided adventurism, and is majestically narrated by Sir Michael Redgrave (this bloke sounds more Laurence Olivier than Laurence Olivier himself).

This is how to do a documentary – with sweeping scope and intricate detail, no half measures. With terrifying archive footage and an expert use of primary sources read by contemporary actors, as well as interviews with those serving on the military and civilian fronts, it set the benchmark for such works, acting as a precursor to The World at War (1973).

The wonders of the Internet ensure it is free to binge-watch.

 

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Jan 25 2018
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Berlin, Britain, Film, First World War, Germany, Photography, Uncategorized, World War One

The Great War – YouTube channel.

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YouTube is littered with pointless garbage (cat videos, webcam rants, ‘best fails’) that perplexingly garner millions of views; this, however, is one of the gem finds. A week-by-week account of the First World War told in ten-minute (or thereabouts) episodes, what impresses is the sheer volume of research and breadth of detail. As far as I know, the programme makers are not professional historians in the traditional sense or have emerged from the academic field, but everything is painstakingly researched and just as accessible as your weekly Gangnam Style and all that.

Perhaps this is the New History, online sources our breadcrumbs trail to books.

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWar

 

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Aug 22 2017
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Air travel, Edinburgh, First World War, Photography, Planes, Uncategorized, World War One

Edinburgh from the skies.

The sheer technical brilliance of this snap, and the conditions of its making, shouts out pure romance. What a time to be alive. Today we get crappy iPhone images from the window of a Ryanair flight to Lanzarote.

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Alfred G Buckham’s Aerial View of Edinburgh (1920) keeps cropping up in material I’m reading about aerial reconnaissance in the First World War, not as a documentation of that period, but as an example of what some pilots did following the conflict. In this new age of flight, they simply took to the skies and put to good use the skills they honed on the Western Front. It’s what I’d like to imagine Manfred von Richthofen (the Red Baron) would have done had he survived the making of his legend – art superseding war.

Buckham, the first head of aerial reconnaissance for the Royal Navy, captured most of his shots standing up in his plane. He left us with this enduring quote on aerial photographic technique: ‘If one’s right leg is tied to the seat with a scarf or a piece of rope, it is possible to work in perfect security.’

The guy had balls.

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