New World War One Documentary: A Must See!

Watchdog

Watchdog

Member
Joined
Apr 6, 2013
Messages
12,511
Reaction score
32,351
There is a new and exciting documentary about World War One now. You may read about it by clicking here. And here.

It's titled They Shall Not Grow Old, and it was put together by director Peter Jackson, using over 600 hours of film from the British War Museum.

And he didn't just use the film. Jackson and his crew restored it in a way that simply amazes me. Parts of the film are so clear, you'd swear it's modern day film with 21st Century actors playing the parts. It isn't.

The official trailer will give you a better idea of the film than anything I could say about it.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHYRfukHToc[/ame]
 
Register to hide this ad
As of late....

...I've seen some WWI and similar vintage films lately on some documentaries, usually on Youtube, that are very clear and naturally colored. It IS amazing.

I'll definitely be on the lookout for that one.

I hated it when Turner garishly colorized all of those classic movies, but this stuff is great.

Many documentaries that they make on the same subject show pretty much the same stuff, but every once in a while you hit one that is in more depth.

I just saw a doc on Stalin called 'Apocalypse' that had amazing footage and detail about Stalin that had Trotsky, Lenin, Beria, Molotiv and other big players and also from regular people, soldiers and all with pictures and written memories. There was a good bit of family detail, children and wives. (His daughter called Beria "Uncle Beria"...shudder) This was the best one I've seen. They even had a clip of them preserving Lenin's body for display. Easily the best one I've seen
 
"I hated it when Turner garishly colorized all of those classic movies, but this stuff is great."

Back in the 80s when Turner was colorizing some of the old B&W classics, he came in for a lot of criticism. But I thought the results were very pleasing. It was just a shock to some people to see films like "Casablanca" in color because no one had ever seen it that way before and it just didn't look "right" to them. I think the History Channel had that series "WWII in Color" where they cleaned up and colorized a lot of B&W combat footage taken then.

A good many old movies shown today on TCM have been restored to look as good (or better) now as they did when first shown in the 1920s and 1930s. It was only a few months ago when TCM had a Harold Lloyd festival (all silent B&W films) and showed four or five of his 1920s comedies. The B&W visual quality was amazingly good, like they could have been filmed today. Sharp, good contrast, and no scratches or speckles. And none of the jerkiness associated with the old silent movies. Action was smooth and realistic.
 
Last edited:
I’m looking forward to this as well. It is playing in one theater 40 miles from me on Dec 17th - I’ll be there just to see this on the big screen.
 
For the price of the ticket ($15) I'm mulling over whether I want to go see it or wait for it to become available on video and buy it instead.
 
A good many old movies shown today on TCM have been restored to look as good (or better) now as they did when first shown in the 1920s and 1930s. It was only a few months ago when TCM had a Harold Lloyd festival (all silent B&W films) and showed four or five of his 1920s comedies. The B&W visual quality was amazingly good, like they could have been filmed today. Sharp, good contrast, and no scratches or speckles. And none of the jerkiness associated with the old silent movies. Action was smooth and realistic.[/QUOTE]

There was nothing wrong with the original B&W silent films, the problem that makes them look so bad if unrestored is that old film deteriorates terribly unless stored perfectly (tons of old film has been lost to this problem). The reason they look jerky is that they were made to to run at a different fram per second speed.

With modern restoration process and spped conversion they can be shown just the way our grandparents and great-grandparents saw them originally.
 
I'm not a fan of altering original material, but I know that is a losing battle. In fifty years, all the footage will be CGI and only archivists will see the original prints.

The best WW1 documentary is the British documentary from 1960s in 26 episodes. One of the reasons I think it such a good documentary is the fact that the opening sequence highlighted decomposed bodies. It really began each episode with a feeling of revulsion, along with the opening music, which is disturbing as well. Narrated by Michael Redgrave.

It's available on YouTube. Here's episode 3:

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CMp3ioIEto[/ame]
 
Over the weekend I watched a National Archives narration of the restored print of On the Firing Line With the Germans, which was an American film shot by mid-West journalists who traveled from the USA to the Netherlands, to Germany, and then to Poland (at the time part of Russia). With the US neutral when filmed in 1915, the mid-west population of German descent was the target audience, and the film did very well until it was pulled out of theaters in March of 1917, a month before we declared war on the Central Powers.

I don't think I could watch the entire thing (108 minutes) without the commentary. I don't have patience for silent films. I couldn't find a clip with the commentary, so here's the silent film.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=958QR_Cdg5U[/ame]
 
From around the same time period of WWI, an American film crew had filmed some of Pancho Villa's actual exploits in Mexico as a feature film. In 2003, there was a movie made about that movie called "and Starring Pancho Villa as Himself." I saw it and wasn't too impressed. But I would have liked to have seen the original. I don't think any copies of it survived, just as most other movies of that period did not survive either. The nitrate film stock used back then deteriorated rapidly if not stored properly, and additionally the practice at that time was just to throw out movies when their runs were completed as they took up valuable storage space.
 
Cardboard_killer said:
Over the weekend I watched a National Archives narration of the restored print of On the Firing Line With the Germans, which was an American film shot by mid-West journalists who traveled from the USA to the Netherlands, to Germany, and then to Poland (at the time part of Russia). With the US neutral when filmed in 1915, the mid-west population of German descent was the target audience, and the film did very well until it was pulled out of theaters in March of 1917, a month before we declared war on the Central Powers.
Click to expand...

Interesting to see a number of what seem to be Gew.1888s and maybe some Mauser 71/84s in use by the Germans.
 
DWalt said:
Interesting to see a number of what seem to be Gew.1888s and maybe some Mauser 71/84s in use by the Germans.
Click to expand...

One of the neat (to me) things about the movie was that the Germans censored it, and kept some of the footage. At first they were going to take 2/3rds of it, but the director appealed to the Crown Prince (IIRC), and most of the film was allowed outside the country. What the Germans did with the confiscated footage isn't known and presumably it was either destroyed immediately (seems unlikely) or destroyed in either during the rest of that war or during WW2.

It's just possible it exists somewhere in someone's basement or in a moldering ex-USSR warehouse somewhere. However, it was cilinoid (sp?) which deteriorates badly if not cared for intensely.
 
Last edited:
I expect that it will become available through Netflix or Amazon. With Amazon of course you can buy a hard copy (maybe).

Someone commented about colorizing old films. In general I agree that it's a bad idea. Movies originally shot in B&W look better in B&W because the lighting, clothing, makeup were all used for B&W.

The upside to the colorization process is that before an old film can be colorized, it has to be digitally remastered. While the colorization fad is over, the digital remastering process is still going strong. Which is why we see so many well restored movies from the 1930s on these days.

A few weeks ago TCM had a documentary "Dawson City:Frozen in Time" on. As someone mentioned in this thread, the old nitrate films were usually destroyed when the reached the end of the distribution chain. Dawson was the end of one such chain and movies sometimes showed up 2-3 years or more after release.

The distributors didn't want to pay for return shipping, so films were burned, thrown in rivers, or buried. In the case of Dawson, many were buried as fill when an indoor pool was replaced by a hockey rink.

The vast majority were destroyed, but in 1979 a contractor dug up some old one when the lot where the hockey rink once stood was being rebuilt. Many of the films found there were restored. All are silent movies, and the documentary has litte voice over, mostly just written information and background music. I found it pretty interesting, if only because it tells us how much of early cinema has been lost.

Tom S. said:
For the price of the ticket ($15) I'm mulling over whether I want to go see it or wait for it to become available on video and buy it instead.
Click to expand...
 
Ivan the Butcher and I saw the film last night and even though I'm a cheapskate thought it well worth the $15. Didn't know until we sat down that it was in 3D. Watching the movie I couldn't help remember a comment a friend who was a Korea vet made to me when Saving Private Ryan was released. He said: They can do all they want with visual and sound effects to try and make war movies more real. However the first time someone releases Smell Surround it will be the end of war movies.
 
I've seen it and though it was good. Peter Jackson however is not on the level of Ken Burns when it comes to story telling.
 
Tom S. said:
For the price of the ticket ($15) I'm mulling over whether I want to go see it or wait for it to become available on video and buy it instead.
Click to expand...


It was worth every penny of $15 to see it on the big screen, I'll also buy the DVD when it is available. There is a 30min commentary after the movie about how they made it, Not one person left the theater when the "How to" film was run.

The film was so well done, I want to give a shout and applause, but the subject was so sobering (and real), I just dried my eyes and left in silence, like everyone else. The film restoration was so dramatic, you would think it was a current studio production.

At the end of the documentary they encourage you to remember your family members that were there. Please, allow me to introduce you to Walter:
My paternal grandmother's cousin Walter was in WW I and from the letters he wrote home, he believed he unit across no-man's land was from the same region of Germany we came from (for one thing the dialect and accent, for another the names he heard called out at roll call). Walter was most likely killed by family friends and 2nd cousins. In a photo of him before boarding a troop ship, he listed weight of his pack and equipment at 165 pounds, he weighed 135 pounds! There was also a photo of him walking up the gangplank of the ship, that is the last our family ever saw of Walter. You could say he still resides in France, but it sure wasn't by choice!

I find it comedic they way the Tommys talked about the different kinds of Germans; they really liked the Bavarians and They and the Bavarians really hated the Prussians. My Family is Bavarian, and my wife's is Prussian! I tease her about: The Prussians wanted to conquer the world! The Bavarians wanted to conquer a KEG! That seems to be the opinion of many others also!

Ivan
 
Last edited:
Saw it last night, cinema was packed, glad I book ticket on line a day ahead, well worth every penny.

The movie itself is 99 min. long, but there is another 30 min. or so at the end with director Peter Jackson explain how the movie was made, the detail and research they try to nail down to made the movie as authentic as possible, while it isn't an exact historical record of WW1, this movie does provide a better understanding the hardship soldiers endured on the Western Front.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

oldbrownhat
Edward Johnson, C.I.A. Hero in Iran Hostage Crisis, Dies at 81
Replies
1
Views
229
Rudi
R
oldbrownhat
Al Pacino on the inside story of The Godfather
Replies
14
Views
920
s&wchad
s&wchad
RM Vivas
The value of gun books
Replies
15
Views
720
dobegrant
dobegrant
oldbrownhat
American filmmaker has interviewed over 1,500 Second World War veterans
Replies
6
Views
338
Greyman50
Greyman50
RM Vivas
New York Police Target Model ++UPDATE 08MAR24 ++
2
Replies
23
Views
2K
tt66
tt66

Latest posts

Back
Top