Learning on ScreenBattle of the Somme
The Battle of the Somme. GB. 2008. DVD. Imperial War Museum. 52 minutes. £15.00 from IWM shop
This review originally appeared in Viewfinder 74.
About the reviewer: Dr Nicholas Hiley is Head of the British Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent – www.cartoons.ac.uk/
What do the films The Story of the Kelly Gang (Australia, 1906), Battle of the Somme (UK, 1916), and The Wizard of Oz (USA, 1939) have in common? They are all inscribed on the UNESCO “Memory of the World Register”, as vital elements in our global cultural heritage. The case for Battle of the Somme was particularly strong, for as Roger Smither of the IWM notes in the excellent booklet accompanying this DVD, “scenes from it are used in virtually every documentary film or programme that explores the history of the war or the twentieth century”.
The release of this DVD brings a restored version of Battle of the Somme to a new audience. The IWM rightly acknowledges it as one of the most important British films, and offers not only a restored print, a choice of period or modern scores, interviews, and a printed DVD booklet, but also a website at http://archive.iwm.org.uk/server/show/nav.2164 which contains additional resources.
By June 1916 the British government had sold the film rights to the war, and it was a group of film companies that assigned two cameramen – Geoffrey Malins and John Benjamin McDowell – to record the coming attack. The footage they took has become controversial for its small number of staged scenes, but this was inevitable when the government imposed strict limits on the number of cameramen working in France and Belgium.
Malins and McDowell were both in the front trenches for the start of the ‘Great Push’ on 1 July 1916, and nine days later returned to London with 8,000 feet of negative. The editing took a fortnight, and when the film opened its stark realism was immediately apparent. About 20% of the shots – some thirteen minutes of film – show the dead and wounded, and one cinema manager became notorious for putting up a notice: “WE ARE NOT SHOWING THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME / THIS IS A PLACE OF AMUSEMENT, NOT A CHAMBER OF HORRORS.”
Battle of the Somme continues to provoke intense emotion. Dr Toby Haggith, who worked on the DVD reconstruction of the 1916 ‘Musical Medley,’ admits to being ‘startled’ by some of the recommended musical pieces, which ‘challenge…the collective memory of the battle as a futile and bloody campaign’. The ‘jaunty … and unashamedly heroic’ music for the climax of the film seems inappropriate to modern ears, and the DVD thus offers an alternative score by Laura Rossi, to help modern viewers to ‘engage with the film as an emotional experience…not merely as history.’
These alternative musical scores acknowledge the tension in film restoration between authenticity and accessibility for a modern audience. The restoration of the 80,000 frames has also given priority to accessibility, and the removal of flickering, and the presentation of the film at its “correct speed”, should prevent the alienation of modern viewers. But the correction of all elements ascribed to “the relatively primitive technology of the time” is problematic, as it tends towards a reconstruction of the view seen by the cameraman, not necessarily the picture seen by the original audience.
The true archival object will remain the 1931 IWM master copy on 35mm film, but this DVD is a wonderful resource for anyone interested in this remarkable production, and its contribution to the ‘memory of the world.’
Dr Nicholas Hiley
