39-40, la guerre des images

An opportunity wasted.

A documentary on the first 10 months or so of World War II, from Germany's invasion of Poland until the fall of France. Told through the lens of German, French and British (and, to a lesser extent, Finish) newsreels, it shows how the war was portrayed on the different sides.

The premise of this documentary intrigued and excited me. Seeing how the propaganda machines of the three main combatant nations show the progress of the war and contrasting this with actual events - sounds like a great idea. At the very least, Marketing 101 for nations at war with the potential to be a great study into wartime propaganda.

However, for the most part, this documentary doesn't deliver on that premise. Yes, we have some fairly rare newsreel footage - the kind of footage that doesn't get shown in most war documentaries because it is just propaganda, or told from the loser's side. This is a massive plus.

There is no compare-and-contrast, however. The footage often covers disparate events. Most of the footage, in fact, covers the passive, "phony war" period, so all we see is troops preparing themselves for war, and hardly any reports on actual battles. The biggest slice of action prior to the Battle of France was the German invasion of Norway, and that gets one mention on the British side and none on the German side.

So, Marketing 101 this is not.

Moreover, the narration is hardly objective or interesting. There's a cynicism and smartarseness about the narration which really doesn't help the documentary.

Overall: mildly interesting, but could have been so much better.