The Battle of the Somme

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Movie
German title The Battle of the Somme
Original title The Battle of the Somme
Somme-film-ad.jpg
Country of production United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 1916
length 74 minutes
Rod
Director Geoffrey H. Malins
production William F. Jury
music Laura Rossi (re-release)
camera Geoffrey H. Malin's
John McDowell
cut Charles Urban
Geoffrey H. Malins

The Battle of the Somme ( english The Battle of the Somme ) is a British documentary and propaganda film from the period of the First World War about the beginning of the Battle of the Somme . It is considered the first real documentary in the history of cinema and held the box office record for a good 60 years until the release of Star Wars .

The Battle of the Somme has been part of the world document heritage since July 29, 2005 . It is the first British contemporary document to be included on this list.

Military background

The British battle plan

After the First Battle of the Marne , the solidified Front in France in the autumn of 1914 in trench warfare . In the course of the following year, allies and Germans tried to break through the opposing positions with ever-increasing offensives and return to war of movement . With the exception of high losses for both sides, none of these attacks had any results. The use of poison gas , initially by the Germans, did nothing to change that.

In late 1915, at the Second Chantilly Conference for the summer of 1916 , the Allies agreed on several major offensives on various fronts , including a joint British-French in France. The area on both sides of the Somme River , at the junction of the British and French front lines, was chosen as the location . However, on February 21, the German army opened the battle for Verdun . At another conference in Chantilly in March, the French General Joseph Joffre and the British Field Marshal Douglas Haig concretized their plans, taking into account those new struggles. The French troop contingents on the Somme were greatly reduced. The British offensive now also had the goal of relieving the French front at Verdun.

Originally the British infantry was supposed to attack on June 29th. Due to the bad weather, however, the start of the attack was postponed by 48 hours at short notice.

The plan, the German positions by a massive, multi-day barrage with about 1.5 million grenades and by firing a total of 19 mines to destroy. The British infantry should then be able to advance through the no man's land with practically no resistance and take the German positions. However, it was not possible to completely eliminate the German defenders, so that the advancing British units suffered heavy losses. Of the approximately 120,000 attacking British soldiers, 8,000 were killed in the first half hour alone, mostly by machine gun fire . Overall, the British casualties on July 1st amounted to 57,740 men, including 19,240 dead. This day has since been considered the bloodiest in British military history. The losses among officers below the rank of major were particularly high - here the losses on the first day alone amounted to 60%. Nonetheless, the offensive continued and was only broken off in November without a military decision being reached.

The making of the film and contemporary performances

Geoffrey Malins films the preparatory barrage from the trenches on July 1st

After Herbert Kitchener was appointed British Minister of War after the outbreak of war, he initially banned all current reporting from the front. It wasn't until a year later, in the autumn of 1915, that the War Office bowed to pressure from the British Topical Committee for War Films , a lobbying organization for the British film industry, and eased censorship measures . Two official cameramen were sent to France, Geoffrey H. Malins of Gaumont and Edward G. Tong of Jury's Imperial Pictures film production company . Immediately after the outbreak of war, Malins had worked as a freelance cameraman in Belgium and France until it was banned by the ministry. Shortly before the start of the Battle of the Somme, Tong was replaced by John B. McDowell due to illness. The Battle of the Somme was shot by just two cameramen. Geoffrey Malins was deployed in the northern section of the attack front in the operational area of ​​the 29th Division at Beaumont-Hamel , McDowell filmed further south at the 7th Division near Fricourt and Mametz . While Malins took an honorary rank as lieutenant , McDowell preferred to remain a civilian. The filming took place between June 25th and July 9th. Both men shot with 35 mm film , in most cases Moy & Bastie cameras were used.

The Topical Committee had originally not planned such an extensive documentary film and only wanted to use the recordings for short weekly news reports . However, after viewing the footage from the Somme, those responsible decided to make a full-length film out of it. The owner of Jury's Imperial Pictures , William F. Jury , who was also a co-founder of the Topical Committee, was to serve as the producer. The editing was done by the Anglo-American film pioneer Charles Urban , who was supported in his work by Malins. A rough cut of the film was shown in France at the headquarters of the British Expeditionary Force , where General Rawlinson , Commander-in-Chief of the Fourth Army , ordered the removal of certain scenes which mainly showed the "horror of the dead and wounded". Malins later wrote about the footage that remained in the film:

"It is only a very mild touch of what is happening day after day, week after week, on the bloody plains of France and Belgium."

"It is just a very mild reflection of what is happening day after day, week after week in the bloody plains of France and Belgium."

- Geoffrey H. Malins : How I Filmed the War: A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc.

Already on August 2, the final film which recently was the Secretary of War appointed David Lloyd George presented. The first public screening took place on August 10th in front of a select audience at the Scala Theater in London, which was operated by Charles Urban at the time. The Battle of the Somme was officially released in UK theaters on August 21st . Initially, it was shown in no fewer than 34 different movie theaters in London, and from the following week in other cities as well. Within six weeks, around 20 million people saw him - almost half of the population at the time. In total, it was shown in over a thousand English cinemas and was also shown abroad, in a total of 18 different countries.

content

The film is divided into a total of five parts, which was primarily for practical reasons, since the entire film material had to be divided into five rolls of film. The individual scenes are separated by subtitles , the text of which was written by the War Office . The following summary of contents is based on the DVD version published by the Imperial War Museum .

The first two parts show the preparations for battle: units marching to the front, the supply of ammunition, a field service or the barrage on the German positions with guns of all calibres, from light field guns to heavy howitzers . But farmers are also shown working their fields in the immediate hinterland of the front. Part two ends with the explosion of the Hawthorn Ridge Mine .

The third part shows the beginning of the actual battle - the advance of the British infantry and field artillery, conquered German trenches, caring for the wounded and bringing in German prisoners.

The fourth part first shows other wounded and prisoners. Then you can see German counter-attacks and destroyed British and German positions. It ends with pictures of fallen soldiers on both sides.

The fifth and final part continues the presentation of the effects of British artillery fire. You can see shot landscapes, the Lochnagar crater and the shot villages of Fricourt and Mametz . Then captured German trench mortars and guns are shown as well as British units while resting, during roll call and when posing for the camera. The film ends with the further advance of the British troops while the German prisoners are being transported to England.

propaganda

Although the film was intended to strengthen the cohesion between the fighting soldiers and the home front and should therefore also be seen as a propaganda film, the information in the subtitles is essentially limited to facts and location information. A rare example of a direct propagandistic comment is the subheading No. 8, on which you can read:

“Along the entire front the ammunition“ dumps ”are receiving vast supplies of shells; Thanks to the British munition workers ”

“Along the entire front, the ammunition 'stores' receive huge stocks of grenades; Many thanks to the British ammunition workers "

This is a clear allusion to the crisis in the supply of the British Army with artillery shells in the previous year and the strong increase in arms production since then.

gallery

  • The Battle of the Somme (unrestored and with music by Andrew Youdell)

  • Explosion of the Hawthorn Ridge mine near Beaumont-Hamel

  • Allied Infantry Attacking - One of the few reenacted scenes in the film

  • One of the most famous scenes in the film: British soldier conceals a wounded comrade

Public effect

The British population had only seen relatively short front-line reports in the weekly newsreels . The Battle of the Somme was the first full-length film about British soldiers on the front lines. Since the recordings were less than two months old when the film was released and the Battle of the Somme was still in full swing, The Battle of the Somme was practically in no way inferior to the newsreel reports in terms of topicality.

The representation of war victims was also new to the British public. Despite the censorship measures mentioned, around 13% of the film features killed or wounded soldiers, which makes the film unique in the history of British documentary film. Many viewers reacted with corresponding shock, especially to the scenes in which attacking soldiers are supposedly hit in front of the camera and fall to the ground - even if these recordings are just recreated.

Frances Stevenson, the private secretary and future wife of David Lloyd George , whose brother had recently fallen, attended the private screening on August 2nd. Two days later she wrote in her diary:

“We went on Wednesday night to a private view of the 'Somme Films' ie the pictures taken during the recent fighting. To say that one enjoyed them would be untrue; but I am glad I went. I am glad I have seen the sort of thing our men have to go through, even to the sortie from the trench, and the falling in the barbed wire. There were picture too of the battlefield after the fight, & of our gallant men lying all crumpled up & helpless. There were pictures of men mortally wounded being carried out of the communication trenches, with the look of agony o their faces. It reminded me of what Paul's last hours were: I have often tried to imagine to myself what he went through, but now I know: and I shall never forget. "

“We went to a private screening of the 'Somme films' on Wednesday evening, the images that were taken during the recent fights. To say they were enjoyed would be untrue; but i'm glad i went Glad I saw what our men had to go through, to the point of falling out of the ditch and falling into the barbed wire. There were also pictures of the battlefield after the fight & of our brave men, all crumpled up & helpless. There were pictures of mortally wounded men being carried out of the communication trenches with expressions of agony on their faces. It reminded me of what Paul's last hours were: I often tried to imagine what he went through, but now I know: and I will never forget it. "

- Frances Stevenson : Diary entry of August 4, 1916

After the film was released, most critics praised the film for its realism; however, some found the portrayal of wounded or dying people in the cinema (which was actually a medium of entertainment) inappropriate. The Dean of Durham wrote in a letter to the Times :

“Crowds of Londoners feels no scruple at feasting their eyes on pictures which present the passion and death of British soldiers in the Battle of the Somme… a 'film' of war's hideous tragedy is welcomed. I beg leave respectfully to enter a protest against an entertainment which wounds the hearts and violates the very sanctities of bereavement. "

“Crowds of Londoners feel no scruples about feasting their eyes on images depicting the suffering and death of British soldiers in the Battle of the Somme. A 'film' about the hideous tragedy of the war is welcome. I respectfully ask to be allowed to protest against a conversation that wounds hearts and injures the sanctity of loss. "

- Hensley Henson, Dean of Durham : Letter to the Editor to the Times

The well-known writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle then wrote a letter to the editor:

“Surely the Dean of Durham's view is a very odd one and will not be shared by many of his fellow-countrymen. How can we learn to understand and sympathize with the glorious achievements and sacrifices of our soldiers so well as when we actually see them in action before our eyes! The film is a monument to their devotion. The theater is filled constantly with the relatives of the men portrayed, and I do not think that they feel that there is any desecration in the performance. There is, however, one very obvious omission. The name and possibly the portrait of the brave operator who risked his life to secure this invaluable national possession should certainly be flashed upon the screen. "

“Certainly the view of the Dean of Durham is very strange and not shared by many of his countrymen. How can we learn to understand and sympathize with the glorious achievements and sacrifices of our soldiers as well as when we actually see them in action before our eyes! The film is a monument to their dedication. The theater is constantly filled with the relatives of the men portrayed, and I don't think they feel there is any profanation in the performance. There is one very obvious omission, however. The name and possibly the portrait of the brave cameraman who risked his life to secure this priceless national property should definitely be on screen. "

- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , letter to the editor, reprinted September 1, 1916

On September 2, following a private performance for the British royal family at Windsor Castle , King George V said:

"The public should see these pictures that they may have some idea of ​​what the Army is doing, and what it means."

"The public should see these pictures to get an idea of ​​what the army is doing and what it means."

- King George V

In response to the film, British poet Henry Newbolt penned a poem called The War Films , which appeared on the Times front page on October 14, 1916. His compatriot CHB Kitchin , who himself took part in the battle, and the Dutchman Jacobus van Looy also dealt with the film thematically in their poems.

Also in Germany was The Battle of the Somme noted. A neutral correspondent sent to Great Britain by the Berliner Tageblatt wrote that nothing more gripping and exciting than these films had been offered to him .

In 1917, as a response to The Battle of the Somme , the German Image and Film Office published a similar, albeit significantly shorter, film entitled At Our Heroes on the Somme . In contrast to British films, however, this consisted to a much greater extent of posed recordings.

While The Battle of the Somme mostly shows the real action at the front, a few scenes were re-enacted in the hinterland. This later led to criticism. However, historians estimate that only about 70 seconds of the entire film are non-original recordings.

In the following decades, excerpts from the film were repeatedly used in documentaries or books about the First World War. Some images or sequences really developed into media icons - above all the scene in which a British soldier carries a wounded comrade on his back through the trench.

The New Zealand director Peter Jackson also used some scenes from The Battle of the Somme for his film They Shall Not Grow Old, which premiered in 2018 , which were then colored and set to music.

Scientific assessment

From a scientific point of view, it was noted that "with this film, the War Office was by no means concerned with accompanying and documenting an event of overriding importance in its entirety; rather, it was more about it - in the awareness of the enormous number of victims that were to be expected - to get in the mood for this event and to spread acceptance, confidence, calm and a comprehensive sense of togetherness. " The film shows "in addition to images and scenes of a kind of civil society that is characterized by perfect organization, social order and an abundance of technical equipment", but also "images and scenes that by no means trivialize danger and death, which the English as such naturally show victoriously and magnanimously. " These images could be shown "because the hoped-for effect of the film should not come so much from the individual images, but rather from their arrangement in an overall composition. Harshness and calamity, especially on one's own side, not avoided them, but in the endurance of which is practiced incidentally, are absorbed in an all 'healing' overall composition. This overall composition makes the Battle of the Somme appear as an event that runs like a classic drama in five stages - exposition, rising action, climax (peripetia), Falling action (retarding moment), catastrophe or happy ending - although it goes without saying that the film wants to allow the British only the second variant of the dramatic outcome. (...) The victory of the English at the end seems to be an inevitable one Follow the careful preparations at the beginning, which include a clear goal and a clearly mapped path Ste on this path make sense and are justified in view of the factually inevitable and therefore unquestionable happy ending for England. So the film ends happily, so they move on to the next battles in order to transfer countless more Germans into captivity. In real history, these next battles are still pending at the time of the early film reception; But just: as happy as the soldiers, the millions at home should also look forward to what is to come. "

Revision and republication by the Imperial War Museum

In 1920 the film's negatives were given to the Imperial War Museum (IWM) for archiving .

In 1990 the IWM released the film on VHS , musically accompanied by improvised music by the silent film pianist Andrew Youdell .

restoration

In 2005 the Imperial War Museum started an extensive project to restore the film.

Since the original negatives had long since been lost due to the natural decomposition of the celluloid , a copy made on security film was used for the restoration in 1931 .

Due to the poor condition of the available film material, most of the images had to be processed individually - around 80,000 in total.

Since the film had been re-edited several times in the years after its first release, an attempt was made to reconstruct the original structure as well as possible during the restoration. In some cases it was possible to identify missing parts using historical descriptions and to insert them again from other films in which they were used. On the other hand, a map at the end of the film showing the retreat of the German army from the Somme to the Hindenburg line between July 1916 and April 1917 was omitted - which could not have been included in the original film from 1916.

The restored film finally premiered on October 22, 2006 at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London.

music

As was common with silent films at the time, The Battle of the Somme was usually accompanied by one or more musicians who played live in the cinema. J. Morton Hutcheson, musical director of a cinema chain, put together 40 pieces that he recommended to the cinemas as background music for the individual scenes. In addition to traditional British military marches, they also included a number of pieces by German composers, for example by Ludwig van Beethoven , Conradin Kreutzer , Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy , Carl Gottlieb Reissiger , Franz Schubert , Robert Schumann , Richard Wagner and Carl Maria von Weber . The list was published on August 17, 1916 in the journal The Bioscope , edited by William F. Jury, the producer of The Battle of the Somme . However, it was not compulsory for the performing cinemas.

As part of the restoration of the film, the IWM attempted to create background music that came close to that of 1916, although this differed from cinema to cinema. For this purpose, based on Hutcheson's recommendations, 34 pieces were selected and recorded by four musicians, the line-up of piano , violin , cornet and percussion (occasionally a flute also being used) almost exactly the same as in a typical small to medium-sized cinema of the time corresponded.

In addition, the Imperial War Museum commissioned the British composer Laura Rossi to compose a completely new, independent film score. At the premiere of the restored film, this music was performed live by the Philharmonia Orchestra under the direction of Nic Raine . On October 5th and 6th 2007 the music was recorded in the All Saints Church in the London borough of Tooting for the release on DVD.

Both versions of the music are included on the DVD released by the IWM so that the viewer can choose.

Somme100 FILM

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the battle, the Somme100 FILM project was launched under the leadership of the Imperial War Museum . The aim was to have the film, accompanied by Laura Rossi's new music, screened 100 times over the course of a year in the UK and other countries. Both professional and amateur or youth orchestras could apply. The first of the 100 screenings took place on July 1, 2016, the 100th anniversary of the attack, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Sakari Oramo at the Thiepval Monument in France and was broadcast live by the BBC . There were also performances in New Zealand and the Netherlands.

literature

Web links

Commons : The Battle of the Somme (film)  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Norbert Wehrstedt: "The Battle of the Somme": The First World War in Film , Leipziger Volkszeitung , May 19, 2014
  2. ↑ Viewpoint: The WW1 film over 20 million people went to see , www.bbc.com , November 7, 2014
  3. ↑ Matt Brosnan: What Happened During The Battle Of The Somme? on the Imperial War Museum website
  4. ↑ Imperial War Museums : NOTES ON ... The Battle of the Somme Film (PDF)
  5. ↑ Rozina Sabur, Laurence Dodds: Ten facts about the Battle of the Somme , The Telegraph , July 30, 2016
  6. ^ Stephen Badsey: The British Army in Battle and Its Image 1914-18 (Birmingham War Studies) , Continuum / Bloomsbury Publishing , London and New York 2009, ISBN 978-0826437181 , p. 118
  7. ^ Stephen Badsey, The British Army in Battle and Its Image 1914-18 (Birmingham War Studies) , Continuum / Bloomsbury Publishing , London and New York 2009, ISBN 978-0826437181 , p. 117
  8. ↑ Toby Haggith: Official War Films in Britain: The Battle of the Somme (1916), its Impact Then and its Meaning Today in: Edinburgh Companion to the First World War and the Arts , Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2017, ISBN 978-1 -4744-0163-0 , p. 313
  9. ↑ Geoffrey H. Malins: How I Filmed the War: A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. , Herbert Jenkins, London 1920 (PDF), p. 183
  10. ^ Stephen Badsey, The British Army in Battle and Its Image 1914-18 (Birmingham War Studies) , Continuum / Bloomsbury Publishing , London and New York 2009, ISBN 978-0826437181 , p. 121
  11. ↑ Viewpoint: The WW1 film over 20 million people went to see , www.bbc.com , November 7, 2014
  12. ↑ Paul Cornish: Britain's Memory of the Battle of the Somme at www.iwm.org.uk , August 13, 2018
  13. ^ Robbie Collin: When The Battle of the Somme beat Disney at the box office , The Telegraph , July 1, 2016
  14. ↑ Imperial War Museums : NOTES ON ... The Battle of the Somme Film (PDF)
  15. ↑ Anton Kaes: Battlefields in the Cinema and the Crisis of Representation in: Battlefields: Coding of violence in media change , Akademie Verlag , Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-05-003587-0 , p. 124
  16. ↑ About the film and the music at www.somme100film.com
  17. ↑ Imperial War Museums : NOTES ON ... The Battle of the Somme Film (PDF)
  18. ↑ Stephen Badsey: The British Army in Battle and Its Image 1914-18 (Birmingham War Studies) , Continuum / Bloomsbury Publishing , London and New York 2009, ISBN 978-0826437181 , p. 124
  19. ↑ Robert Hiltz: One Of Canada's Most Iconic WWI Images Was Staged For A British Propaganda Film on www.canadalandshow.com, January 17, 2018
  20. ↑ Imperial War Museums : NOTES ON ... The Battle of the Somme Film (PDF)
  21. ^ Ian FW Beckett: The Making of the First World War , Yale University Press , New Haven and London 2012, ISBN 978-0-300-16202-8
  22. ↑ Roger Smither: "A Wonderful Idea of ​​the Fighting" - The question of fakes in 'The Battle of the Somme' , in: Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television Vol.13 No.2 (1993), p. 149– 168
  23. ↑ picturegoing.com
  24. ↑ Viewpoint: The WW1 film over 20 million people went to see , www.bbc.com , November 7, 2014
  25. ^ On History , September 16, 2016
  26. ↑ www.arthur-conan-doyle.com
  27. ↑ Stephen Badsey: The British Army in Battle and Its Image 1914-18 (Birmingham War Studies) , Continuum / Bloomsbury Publishing , London and New York 2009, ISBN 978-0826437181 , p. 122
  28. ^ Henry Newbolt: Text for "The War Films" on www.thebioscope.net
  29. ↑ Geert Buelens: The Silence of the Somme: Sound and Realism in British and Dutch Poems Mediating The Battle of the Somme in: Journal of Dutch Literature Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 5-27
  30. ↑ quoted in: P. Max Grempe: Deutsche und feindliche Kinopolitik im Weltkriege , in: Der Kinematograph No. 515, November 8, 1916, pp. 17-19 (PDF)
  31. ↑ With our heroes on the Somme in the Dresden cinema calendar, accessed on June 1, 2019
  32. ↑ Imperial War Museums : NOTES ON ... The Battle of the Somme Film (PDF)
  33. ↑ Matt Lee: The 1916 film The Battle of the Somme: Who is this mysterious hero? , TRACES magazine, July 12, 2016
  34. ↑ Imperial War Museums : NOTES ON ... The Battle of the Somme Film (PDF)
  35. ↑ Taylor Downing: They Shall Not Grow Old , in: Military History Monthly (MHM) , December 2018
  36. ↑ Tom Garner: Peter Jackson talks “They Shall Not Grow Old” and First World War family history at www.historyanswers.co.uk
  37. ↑ Günter Helmes: "If any question why we died ...". Reflections on early cinematic productions of the First World War. In: Yearbook on Culture and Literature of the Weimar Republic, Vol. 18, 2017, pp. 68f.
  38. ↑ David Walsh, Toby Haggith: Restoring the Battle of the Somme and the Battle of the Ancre and Advance of the Tanks in: Journal of Film Preservation
  39. ↑ The Battle of the Somme Centenary Tour on www.somme100film.com (PDF)
  40. ^ Report on the screening in Thiepval in the list of performances of Somme100 FILM