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Ghosts on the Somme: Filming the Battle, June-July 1916
The Battle of the Somme is one of the most famous, and earliest, films of war ever made. The film records the most disastrous day in the history of the British army - 1 July 1916 - and it had a huge impact when it was shown in Britain during the war. Since then images from it have been repeated so often in books and documentaries that it has profoundly influenced our view of the battle and of the Great War itself. Yet this book is the first in-depth study of this historic film, and it is the first to relate it to the surviving battleground of the Somme.
The authors explore the film and its history in fascinating detail. They investigate how much of it was faked and consider how much credit for it should go to Geoffrey Malins and how much to John MacDowell. And they use modern photographs of the locations to give us a telling insight into the landscape of the battle and into the way in which this pioneering film was created.
Their analysis of scenes in the film tells us so much about the way the British army operated in June and July 1916 - how the troops were dressed and equipped, how they were armed and how their weapons were used. In some cases it is even possible to discover what they were saying. This painstaking exercise in historical reconstruction will be compelling reading for everyone who is interested in the Great War and the Battle of the Somme.
The authors explore the film and its history in fascinating detail. They investigate how much of it was faked and consider how much credit for it should go to Geoffrey Malins and how much to John MacDowell. And they use modern photographs of the locations to give us a telling insight into the landscape of the battle and into the way in which this pioneering film was created.
Their analysis of scenes in the film tells us so much about the way the British army operated in June and July 1916 - how the troops were dressed and equipped, how they were armed and how their weapons were used. In some cases it is even possible to discover what they were saying. This painstaking exercise in historical reconstruction will be compelling reading for everyone who is interested in the Great War and the Battle of the Somme.
- GenresMilitary History
224 pages, Hardcover
First published April 19, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
August 8, 2017
If you decide you want an in-depth look at the making of the 1916 blockbuster Battle of the Somme , this is the book for you. If not, the level of detail in the still-based analysis will go straight over your head.
The illustrations do tell their own story, however. The technology may have had problems with clouds and movement, but not with the exhausted eyes of the wounded or the alternation of relief and shell-shock on the faces of Bavarian prisoners. A crouched corpse, the left had darkened with pooled blood, carries a pathos that even Michelangelo's Pieta cannot match.
Time has not softened the impact upon the public. One widow [mis]identified her husband on-screen in October, a month after she'd received the KIA notice. One great-granddaughter almost saw her father or brother on-screen in 2011, who had inherited the mannerisms and smile of an ancestor that was to be dead within the hour.
Dialogue has been reconstructed by professional lip-readers and dialect linguists. I hope that these efforts, in combination with the process of colourisation, might give us a Techicolor Talkie version one day. The fake footage is limited to a minute. Real combat, even viewed close enough to be knocked off your feet by enemy artillery rounds, looks tame and soo far away across the expanse of a WWI battlefield. So we get some explosions at a practise range and that overused picture that has been captioned all over the Western Front and even as the 29th (regular) Division at Gallipoli :
"
Reading miniature helmet lettering and reconstructing colours from grainy pictures where the untrained eye cannot go beyond "He has two eyes, a nose and a mouth" in combination with Then-and-Now battlefield archeology is a skill to envy. It serves to trace the bulky tripods of Geoffrey Malins and his lesser-known partner John McDowell (guess which one does not have his own Wikipedia page) in the week around 1 July 1916.
The book comes with seven area maps, which will serve the Somme student in combination with other books, and a minute-by-minute list of the screen captures discussed, which will serve the proud owners of the DVD (in my case, a German edition of the IWM release...)
The illustrations do tell their own story, however. The technology may have had problems with clouds and movement, but not with the exhausted eyes of the wounded or the alternation of relief and shell-shock on the faces of Bavarian prisoners. A crouched corpse, the left had darkened with pooled blood, carries a pathos that even Michelangelo's Pieta cannot match.
Time has not softened the impact upon the public. One widow [mis]identified her husband on-screen in October, a month after she'd received the KIA notice. One great-granddaughter almost saw her father or brother on-screen in 2011, who had inherited the mannerisms and smile of an ancestor that was to be dead within the hour.
Dialogue has been reconstructed by professional lip-readers and dialect linguists. I hope that these efforts, in combination with the process of colourisation, might give us a Techicolor Talkie version one day. The fake footage is limited to a minute. Real combat, even viewed close enough to be knocked off your feet by enemy artillery rounds, looks tame and soo far away across the expanse of a WWI battlefield. So we get some explosions at a practise range and that overused picture that has been captioned all over the Western Front and even as the 29th (regular) Division at Gallipoli :
" Reading miniature helmet lettering and reconstructing colours from grainy pictures where the untrained eye cannot go beyond "He has two eyes, a nose and a mouth" in combination with Then-and-Now battlefield archeology is a skill to envy. It serves to trace the bulky tripods of Geoffrey Malins and his lesser-known partner John McDowell (guess which one does not have his own Wikipedia page) in the week around 1 July 1916.
The book comes with seven area maps, which will serve the Somme student in combination with other books, and a minute-by-minute list of the screen captures discussed, which will serve the proud owners of the DVD (in my case, a German edition of the IWM release...)
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review