La Grande Guerre: 1914-1918

This series chronicals the first world war from start to finish. Using first hand accounts(via letters read by voice actors) and rare footage, this documentary is very fair and thourugh. I particularly liked how the makers explained the events of The Great War in the context of history as it related to europe's past and future (WWII). At times, the letters can be quite moving, bringing the viewpoints of unsung heroes and victims as well as political leaders to the forefront in a very personal way.

If you have eight hours to spare and are interested in learning the truth (or as close to it as modern historians can get to it) about World War One, I'd recommend watching the PBS documentary The Great War: 1914-1918. The United States version was given a different subtitle "And the Shaping of the Twentieth Century" which was very apt. The eight-part miniseries showed how nothing was the same after the war, leading the path to modern society and modern warfare. Also, in the American version, there was a different narrator (but how I would have loved to have heard Judi Dench instead!) Salome Jens's voice was quite irritating, and I'm sure Miss Dench would have been much more soothing.

However, there are lots of other voices you'll get to hear. It's a lot of fun to perk up your ears and try to guess who they are. The regulars are Jurgen Prochnow, Michael York (but don't listen for an Englishman...), Leslie Caron, Ian Richardson, Jeremy Irons, Ralph Fiennes, Tim Pigott-Smith, Martin Landau, Malcom McDowell, Liam Neeson, Jeroen Krabbé, Kai Wulff, Rupert Graves, and David Keith. Those who lent their voices to only one or two episodes are Hellen Mirren, Natasha Richardson, Helena Bonham Carter, Rene Auberjonois, Louis Gossett Jr., Timothy Bottoms, Nastassja Kinski, Imogen Stubbs, Jean Stapleton, Jane Leeves, Ned Beatty, Martin Sheen, and countless others. This is an A+ production that was an incredible labor of love for all involved. I couldn't believe the amount of footage that was available (and in good enough quality to use). Although this series mirrors the format of the great Ken Burns documentaries, with historians being interviewed, most of the visuals you'll see in The Great War is actual video footage from the war or the homefront. It's incredible.

It's also incredible to learn the truth that you weren't taught in school. Neither my mother, I, nor my nieces were taught the true nature of the start of WWI. We were taught that Germany was always a bully who wanted to take over the world, and so they started two world wars. That's not what happened! They were merely allies who got roped in, just like all the other countries. The documentary also explained the start of the anti-German propaganda that started during the war, which was really shocking. The series itself still suffered from a bit of lasting western bias; in one notable case, the narrator declared that the French suffered a devastating loss of 400,000 lives after one battle. "German losses were similar." Well, then if they were similar, why wouldn't the narrator declare that both sides suffered devastating losses? Still, my admiration goes out to the creators of this documentary to daring to expose the truth.

True historians might be bored, but the average person will undoubtedly be riveted and shocked. I tried recommending it to my brother by enticing him with a few facts I'd learned. Instead of being surprised as I'd been, he merely finished the stories for me and added even more historical tidbits that even the documentary didn't include! But he's a genius. For the rest of us, we can learn a lot by watching The Great War.

This documentary does a very difficult feat: not simply to tell history as it was but also give the viewer a sense of the Great War and its consequences. The story is so powerful it leaves the viewers shocked and saddened. And that's the only way a documentary about a war should give you - a lesson so that we will never engage in a similar war. Sadly, we often talk about history in a detached and distant way without contextualizing it. That's why this documentary does such a great job. It should not only be rereleased and sold but also mandatory viewing in school. It takes some time to go through all the episodes and linked with discussions after each episode would allow for a highly valuable educational experience.

In going through my decaying collection of videotapes, looking to dispose of as many space-hogging VHS tapes as I can, I came across the VHS tapes I made of The Great War, when the PBS National feed broadcast it on Saturdays in July 2000. Technically great, this four part documentary series looks at World War One through the writings of eyewitnesses and the use of rarely seen film footage (probably from the Imperial War Museum's film archives). In the prologue to the closing episode, War Without End, the narrator reads excerpts from journalist's Stephen Graham's report after touring the battlefields of Europe in 1920. He described the goals of the soldiers from the different warring nations, one goal he said was "a victory for humanity," all ended by what happened at Versailles. Then, Graham wrote that it was "night again in human history, deep night" with a "succession of phantoms stalking" Europe. Recent events, including the bombings in London, show that Graham's stalking phantoms are still with us.

This series makes harsh judgments of many of the protagonists in the war and it does not gloss over the horrors of the war. Footage of a line of soldiers on crutches or using canes, all missing legs, is not the sort of unsettling stuff you usually see in a documentary. The effort that went into this production has had no effect on PBS, which has not rebroadcast the series since 2000 and has let the series VHS 4 tape set(list priced at a high $100.00) go out of print. The website for this series seems to be active, so maybe PBS will license out The Great War for a DVD release. With some effort and using plenty of my time, I transferred my VHS tapes of the series to DVDR. The political climate at PBS now militates against that group of bureaucrats re-releasing an anti-war documentary, even one as well done as 1996's The Great War. If PBS ever shows this documentary series again, it is recommended viewing, though is can be depressing at times describing the horrors of World War One and the incompetence of the government and military leaders then.

--- 28November2008: A British bittorrent index site, UKNova, has for few days more the UK version of this series, 1914-18, in XviD file format. As a member, I downloaded the files. BBC4 showed this series as part of its programming for Ninety Years of Remembrance 1914-1918. Someone transcoded six of the seven parts of this series from these broadcasts, and uploaded them to UKNova. The final episode, Legacy, came from a previous broadcast on UKTV history channel. The Legacy episode upload of the BBC4 version got lost in cyberspace. Having gone through some of the broadcasts, my opinion is that Salome Jens did a much better job as narrator than Judi Dench. Jens' commentary did not attract attention to itself, it sounded like an observer, not a teacher. In addition, the KCET version ended better with two episodes, Hatred and Hunger (E07) and War Without End (E08), not one episode as the BBC did, with Legacy (E07). If Walt Disney can finally release Dr. Syn on DVD, then maybe KCET can pony up the money from contributors to get The Great War on DVD. A grim documentary series on dark events in the world, something we are all too familiar with.

I can't really add to the other reviews. This is one of the best documentaries I've seen, and the best on this subject. It really was a case of lions being led by donkeys. I am including a poem by Wilfred Owen (killed a few days before the end of the war in a meaningless assault) that sums up what happened:

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went, And took the fire with him, and a knife. And as they sojourned both of them together, Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father, Behold the preparations, fire and iron, But where the lamb, for this burnt-offering? Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps, And builded parapets and trenches there, And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son. When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven, Saying, Lay not they hand upon the lad, Neither do anything to him, thy son. Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns, A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son, And half the seed of Europe, one by one.