Silent Films Illustrated With Commentaries By:

About Geoffrey Malins & John McDowell's "The Battle Of The Somme" (1916)


Silent Guest Stars: Herr Eric Stott, Herr Louis Weinberg, Herr Kingo Gondo, Herr DrNoose und Herr George Kincaid


Herr Eric Stott wrote: "Most of the battle footage is faked- shot in England. There is some genuine Somme footage, shot at a great distance."

Herr Louis Weinberg replied: "You make it sound as if much of the film is faked! The fake battle footage is limited to a small number of shots and most of those are soldiers going over the top."

And Herr Kingo Gondo added: "You'd have to be nuts to be in the front trenches, for any purposes. That's why it's called "the insanity of war."
I assume all such scenes to be faked, unless I know otherwise. "

But Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien said: "And obviously that's not true; the battle footage is very limited but in any case in the main is real footage besides that the film focuses more in war preliminaries ( display of assault or conventional weapons ) and its consequences ( display of German prisioners ). "

About this Herr Eric Stott wrote: "Yes, that is very true, but when the film was originally presented the faked battlefield footage was promoted as being genuine. It's not as if they took honestly shot footage and misrepresented it, it was intended to deceive- there are faked deaths. People were taken advantage of- mothers thanked the filmmakers with statements like "Now I know how my son died for his country". There's a lot of valuable footage, but as a whole it's tainted."

And Herr DrNoose asked: "Now I am curious. Is the film available for viewing on the web? DVD available?".

Efficiently Herr George Kincaid wrote: "There's a good series on World War One, made in the early '60s, now on DVD. http://www.deepdiscountdvd.com/dvd.cfm?itemID=MDY063293 (Not an ad for Deep Discount, just a convient link, though the price is good). That series has a lot of combat footage in it, as well as other scenes. DDD also has a set of WWI movies: https://secure.deepdiscountdvd.com/dvd.cfm?itemid=IMA000512 There are several books on Great War photographers, I understand. The site www.firstworldwar.com has footage as well. Hope that helps. "


Published in "alt.movies.silent".