The Great War

I first saw this series when it was repeated by the BBC in the early Seventies on Sunday afternoons. I watched several of the episodes with my grandmother whose beloved brother died at the Battle of the Somme. It is one of the main reasons that I am interested in the First World War, why I became a historian and why I take groups of schoolchildren to the battlefields every year. After years of claiming it was 'out of date' and 'unshowable' the BBC have released it on video/DVD and shown it on TV on Saturday evenings. As I started to watch the first episode the hairs on the back of my neck stood up-the portentous music,Sir Michael Redgrave's melifluous narratiion, the superbly literate script by John Terraine and Correlli ('Bill') Barnett, the archive footage (even if much of it is used out of context)-it was all as I remembered it. This series provided the blueprint for many others, especially 'The World at War'. It is a timeless classic which should be seen by anyone with the remotest interest in history or a moving story superbly told. Interestingly the series was masterminded by John Terraine and, as such, embodies the then unfashionable 'revisionist' view that not all the generals (especially Field Marshal Haig)were blundering idiots who sent men cruelly to their deaths but were limited by the available technology into fighting grim attrition battles as the only means of victory. This now pretty much the academic orthodoxy-40 years after this classic series was made!

I have just been reading other peoples reviews on this series,and found them very interesting.I was born in 1964 the year this series was put together,i remember it was shown in the late sixties i must have been about 4 or 5 years old,i wouldn't have remembered it when it was first shown obviously.My father used to watch this programme religiously,him being a Korean war vet and his own father being a WW1 vet, he was hooked on this series,the scenes in this documentary used to really frighten me as a child i remember leaving the room and i wouldn't come back in until i heard the haunting music at the end,i still remember some of them horrific images today.When they re showed this series a couple of years ago it didn't seem no where near as bad,I'm pretty sure they cut a lot of photos and a lot of footage out which they may have found a bit to horrific for todays audience,as i can still see some of the horrific images they showed back in the sixties,i wont go into detail,but if any one watched this series back then I'm sure they would agree.Before this series was re shown ,they made a documentary about the making of this series,and it turns out they had to pay a lot of money for most of the footage they got hold of,especially the Russian footage as Russia was Communist then,so the programme ended up going well over their budget.Also they had problems with finding reliable veterans,as a lot of old men they interviewed,from one of the film crews accounts were a bit loopy,one chased a female interviewer around the room,and a lot of the old men just couldn't talk about their experiences when it came to it,some broke down and some got angry.So the men you see portrayed in this series were the ones that could talk about their experiences and give accurate accounts in a calm manner.In all this is a very good series it totally covers the events of WW1,it explains the war from the beginning to the end.Oh yes the unknown soldier you see at the beginning opening credits is from an Ulster Regiment,most probably from the Somme.As a lot of people wonder who he is.

In the early 1960's the BBC had a very talented production team that had come together to make a nightly 'magazine' feature called 'Tonight'. They somehow became part of a project to create a series about the First World War (then still known by some people as the 'Great War').

Something of this magnitude had never before been attempted in Britain. It required a great deal of painstaking research and assembling still photographs and archive film from all over the world. More to the point, at this period, a large number of the participants were still alive and could be interviewed - the series is a priceless exercise in 'oral history'.

The principal historical consultant and writer was John Terraine, the foremost military historian of the time, and Michael Redgrave was engaged to speak the narration.

The series appeared in 1964, when I saw it as a child. It was an outstanding success, and spawned a rather weaker sequel, 'The Lost Peace'.

Then, for reasons best known to themselves, the BBC sat on the tapes. Some isolated episodes were sometimes shown at the Imperial War Museum in London, but the series was largely forgotten.

However, it has recently been re-released in its entirety as five double video packs. It should not be confused with any other series of a similar title - this remains the original and the best!

Even though it was nearly 40 years old and in Black & White "The Great War" immediatly grabbed my attention with its music,truly shocking images and excellent narration.

The start alone would be worth a "10" score,showing a British soldier staring blankly beside a German Officers gruesome corpse whilst that haunting,bombastic music plays."The Great War" as it was known before before that other War is a Brilliant and Intelligent series about the First World war that certainly does not hold back.As i said some of the images are truly shocking with film footage of British,French and German dead shown through-out the series,yet this is vital in showing the futility of war and in particular,"The Great War itself." Certainly some of the images you see in this series you will not be able to forget forexample even though i saw the "Gallipoli" over 6 months ago i can still remember the ending showing a British or ANZAC soldier with his head in hands whilst the credits rolled and the sublime score brought the episode to an end.Also the pictures of Lancashires Landing from the same episode are equally hard to forget even though they were just drawings.I can honestly say that Music,Imagery and Narration has never been used together so well,not even in "The World at War"

On the negative side,Propaganda footage was used far to often and was easy to spot(just look at the angle the camera was facing) as was some of the same footage. Also British High Command seemed to get off rather lightly in "The Somme" episode.Because although Haig and Rawlinson should certainly not take all of the blame it annoyed me that they didnt recieve any critcism and the 'inexperience' of the British army was often highlighted as the main problem as far as that battle is concerned.Also of the interviews with those that fought in the war,i didnt think there was enough ordinary British soldiers to give their opinion and to many 'Cut-glass' accented men.Nothing against those men,just i dont think it was a fair representation,regardless of how they speak.

But my complaints are certainly minor and i would advise anyone with an interest in the First World war to watch this or buy the DVD.

The title sequence of THE GREAT WAR opens with an allied soldier leaning over a cross . The camera quickly pans down a pile of dead bodies then slowly pans left onto a British Tommy , the horrors of war plain to see in his eyes , and all the while doom laden music music plays in the foreground. It`s impossible through words to describe how effective this is , it`s shocking , disturbing and heart wrenching and if this is the title sequence just think how brutal the rest of the documentary is ?

I first saw THE GREAT WAR in 1974 when it was broadcast on Sunday afternoons but for some reason the BBC decided not to broadcast it again until 2003 almost 30 years later . Everyone talks about how great THE WORLD AT WAR ( Which often turns up on British network TV every few years ) is as a documentary but I can`t help thinking this is actually the greatest documentary involving war . Perhaps its greatest strength is that it shows the effect of the conflict throughout the entire world . There is a tendancy for British and Commonwealth historians ( Most notably John Laffin ) to lapse into accusations of incompetence on the part of the British military leaders or even into self sorrow as to the needless slaughter of young British men but as THE GREAT WAR shows this needless slaughter isn`t unique to Douglas Haig . Britain lost 800,000 servicemen while the French lost 1,200,000 while the Germans lost even more while the Russians lost 2,000,000 dead . Would anyone consider the German offensive at Verdun in 1916 as a success for Germany? So the strategic disasters by the British at the Somme and Ypres were in no way unique and the documentary does point out that proportionaly the British suffered higher casualties during the March 1918 offensive by the Germans than they had on the first day of the Somme

If there`s a problem with the documentary then it`s maybe just too informative , it`s impossible to take in all the facts and figures at first showing . Thank gawd for the video recorder where you can tape each episode and slowly assimilate the information ( And the horror ) on screen . There are one or two other flaws like as has been mentioned clips being shown out of context with someone mentioning the day American troops arrived in Britain but instead of American Doughboys on screen it`s clearly British Tommies , but this would be unforgivably pedantic if I described it as a criticism since this is probably the greatest documentary made about any war

I`m afraid I must finish this review with a criticism of the BBC: Their scheduling of this masterwork on BBC 2 was disgraceful with breaks in transmission lasting several weeks whenever it clashed with its sports coverage . Something this superb should have been shown at peak time on BBC 1 at the same time every week