Real war documentary4/7/2023 There, it means the coming of magic here, it means an entry to Hell. The result is, in its way, as eerie and enthralling, albeit with a completely opposite emotional valence, as the moment in “The Wizard of Oz” when Dorothy’s world goes from black and white to color. (Jackson took scouting trips to the sites of the war, and, wherever possible, found the precise locations where the footage that he was recycling had been taken, and then photographed the landscape on site in order to match it, earth tint for earth tint, in the lab.) Only at the arrival of these men on the Western Front in Belgium and northern France does the footage spring into color-and, with a painstaking attention to detail, the colors are exactly the washed-out gray-greens and mud browns of the Belgian front, with every square of British khaki, and, occasionally, German gray, lovingly recreated. Jackson artfully has the opening sequences in the film, about the recruitment and training of Brits for the Army (early in the war, they were all willing and even eager recruits, conscription being introduced only in 1916) pass by in black and white. With enormous audacity, Jackson and his team in New Zealand decided, in addition to restoring the footage, to “modernize” it, not merely regularizing its often staccato beat-that familiar jerky rhythm of old silent footage, produced by a mismatch of the speed at which the film camera was turned with the speed at which it’s projected now-and cleaning up its sometimes over- or underexposed light, but actually “colorizing” it to match the palette of the Western Front, and adding, in many places, an audio track carefully synched (with the help of lip readers!) to the ancient footage. The only narration we hear are the voices of the men who fought the war, so the film is blessedly free of the sapient sounds of experts and academic historians.īut the visual record is the heart of the film. The vocal witnessing, beautifully vivid, is straightforward. Jackson, a Great War aficionado (his grandfather, to whom the film is dedicated, fought in it), decided, wisely, to make the film entirely from the old footage coupled with firsthand audio testimony from survivors-recorded over the years, for the most part, in countless BBC memorial broadcasts. Almost no film exists of actual battles, the hand-cranked cinematic equipment of the era being too difficult to move into combat, but there is much footage of trenches and encampments and daily life (including some hair-raising-or, rather, rear-baring-images of improvised latrines). The director of the (Tolkien-betraying, but let that go) “Lord of the Rings” series was asked several years ago by the Imperial War Museums to do something entirely new with their vast archives of footage of First World War soldiers and soldiering in order to celebrate, or at least eulogize, the centennial of the Armistice. It seems like a film that one can see if one wants to see it.Īnd it should be-must be!-seen. Already, after some December dates, a new screening has been scheduled for late January, and presumably more are in the offing, if not a full-scale theatrical release. We are delighted to be working with such an exceptional filmmaker on this ground-breaking production and visionary resource that will enable all secondary school students in the country to see the film.The rollout of Peter Jackson’s new documentary, “They Shall Not Grow Old,” has been a little confusing: made as a documentary for Britain’s Imperial War Museums, with the support of the BBC, it’s being distributed in America by the Fathom group in a series of one-off, multi-venue screenings-as special events rather than continuously playing entertainments. Jenny Waldman, Director of 14-18 NOW, added: “When Peter and I first met, he said he wanted to create a piece of film that would bring the experience of the First World War to life for young people today, which is precisely our focus in this last season of 14-18 NOW. I wanted to find a way to bring new life to the stories of ordinary people living through extraordinary times.” Jackson said: “I’ve always been fascinated by the First World War due to my own family history and the Centenary felt like a unique opportunity to make a personal contribution to the commemoration. The doc has been produced by Jackson’s New Zealand production company WingNut Films and is exec produced by House Productions’ Tessa Ross. The film, which has been created in association with 14-18 Now, the UK’s official arts programme for the First World War centenary, will see Jackson hand-colourize and 3D digitize never-seen before footage, restored with modern production techniques.
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