The Great War

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.

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!

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

In one of my earlier reviews, I wrote at great length of how great World at War is and how it is the apex of ww2 documentaries, delving into almost every single aspect of the war, from Hitler's rise to power, to the german invasion of poland, to barbarossa, d-day, okinawa, iwo jima, dunkirk, and everything in between. This show is basically World at War but for the first war, although because it came earlier, you can argue this was the real trailblazer. It employs many things that would later go on to become a staple of any war documentary worth anything, which includes getting interviews from people that were actually there (even german soldiers are interviewed), using scenes that involve maps that give the viewer a bird's eye view of what the opposing armies are trying to accomplish, the reading of primary sources from the time (like newspapers) and a soundtrack that perfectly fits with what is going on, whether it's sad, heroic, or terrifying. Most importantly, the show covers the entire war from start to finish, and includes the most critical and savage battles of world war 1, including Ypres, Passchendaele, Verdun, the Somme, Belleau Wood, Amiens, Tannenberg, and Gallipoli just to name a few. The series also goes into detail about some of the the first world war's lesser known battlegrounds, such as the german colony in Tsingtao, china, where the japanese fought the very country they would ally with 2 decades later. Just like World at War, the Great War has a stellar narrator, Michael Redgrave. No matter what he's discussing on screen, just the sound of him talking is enough to interest the viewer. To summarize, the Great War is simply a must watch for anybody who likes to study war history, and they shouldn't consider themselves a specialist on ww1 until they see it.

This series is a PRICELESS exercise in archive footage - make no bones about it.

The series is over 10 hours long yet consists almost entirely of archive footage from all the major battles of the war, particularly the Western Front. There is the odd interview with the veterans, well and alive and indeed quite young in 1964, yet the amazing sight is the reel after reel of archive footage. Where did they get it all from? (and why is it NEVER used in any WWI film before or since? - they all use the same few stills and films over and over again).

Countless shots of the Somme battlefields, Belgium, Verdun, and everywhere!

I only chanced upon it in the library, for a cheap rental; but watch this urgently.

Another surprising impression is the sheer modernity of the whole thing - great guns, brilliant filming, great troop movements, even aeroplanes and dog fights. Footage shot from old Sopwith Camels of bomb-drops and stuff like that.

It shows the Middle East fronts, Italy vs. Austria, Romanian fronts, Russian, the whole shebang! Also has a fantastic classical score to accompany it and brilliant narration by Sir Michael Redgrave.