REVIEW: BATTLE OF THE SOMME

FOREST ARTS, NEW MILTON

This is the fascinating film produced by Imperial War Museums and the First World War Centenary Partnership.

Shot and screened in 1916, it was the first full-length documentary about war, and is now being shown as part of the centenary commemorations of one of the bloodiest battles in British military history.

The battle began halfway through the war on July 1st, lasting for five months, but on that fateful terrible first day, there were 57,000 British casualties.

This controversial film was released in August 1916, and in the following months was watched by 20 million cinema-goers (half the UK population at the time).

It’s a silent movie, filmed in black and white (actually grey and grainy) and fairly crude in its cinematography – most scenes feature horizontal panning; there are no dramatic zooms or graphic close-ups.

Although groundbreaking, (quite literally given the incessant military bombardments of the French countryside) the film is essentially a British propaganda exercise, censoring and disguising military incompetence, emphasising colonial clichés, and designed to reassure and pacify the public back home.

Without sound, there’s no way of conveying the stupefying constant thunderous din. The stench of rotting bodies of men and horses, and the horrific injuries resulting from close-quarter bayonet trench fighting are all eschewed.

Sanitised subtitles announce “Another Successful Advance”; “A Cheery Group Of Waving Tommies”... the tone constantly triumphalist.

As ever, the first casualty of war is truth.

Brendan McCusker