Life after WW1 in Colour

[Alan24]

Not seen this TV programme posted here yet?

 

Second and final episode on More4 9pm Monday 29 Jul.

 

Watched the first episode on catch up and would consider it relevant and of interest to most of us here.

 

Regards 

Alan 

[GWF1967]

Thanks for posting. 

[Steven Broomfield]

A real curate's egg.

 

Part 1 had some stunning film (colourised), but there was little thematic sense - it was very bitty and seems to wanser around with little direction. The voice over was also extremely odd: referring to President Wilson as having 'won the war' and setting the British and French as the enemies of post-war progress with little (or no) attempt to explain exactly why the French, in particular, were so keen on putting Germany in its place.

 

Discussion of the Spartacists in Germany was also extremely one-sided with no balance to counter the feeling that the Red faction in the fighting weren't necessarily whiter than white (no pun intended). 

 

I came away feeling that it was aimed fairly and squarely at a liberal/left American audience with no real interest in a balanced or nuanced view. I suspect that's why it's on More 4 rather than somewhere more mainstream.

Edited 29 July , 2019 by Steven Broomfield

[Guest]

The second episode is on More 4 from 9pm to 10pm today,  Monday 29th July.  I must warn my GWF colleagues that there is a particularly difficult ethical conundrum facing them at that time. It clashes with "Love Island"   Enjoy 

[BIFFO]

I agree with Steve(for a change) A real curate's egg. I saw part one last week,have part two on my planner,at least it doesnt re hash all the same ww1 footage,whats happened to good ww1 progs  I have seen nothing about the dig at white sheets,or the lost Canadians,some one some where must be having a dig around.?

a couple of weeks ago a doco on the "chinks"I have to call it that,man they were cheated,used,hidden lied to ,when sent back forgotten,

talk about our troops returning to a land fit for heroes,they never even had land.

[Guest]

     Saw Part 2 last arvo.  Not sure that "Love Island" would not have been more informative about the immediate post-1918 years.  In terms of both quality and content, it failed to get to the standard of even "daytime TV".   In technical terms, the colourisation was very poor-and showed just how much time and effort had been put into the matter by Peter Jackson.  Background crowds (of which there were many) were uniformly  brown - was that the only cloth colour after 1918-and was everyone sunburned?  There was a fondness for pictures of dead people- dead famine victims in the Ukraine, dead Jewish people after a post-war pogrom, disinterred corpse on the Western Front...etc..etc. Presumably, as it was reasonably inanimate, it did not tax the colourising software technicians unduly (Although they really must get back and work through City and Guilds Basic Colourisation Lesson 2).  

     The choice of footage and commentary was offbeat and somewhat bizarre-   Seemingly done for a French audience, the "highlight" was Marshal Foch dressed as a Native American chief- not something you see every day ( What a pity for history that  Earl Haig was not similarly photographed-presumably he was invited to the US Unknown Soldier  ceremony). The credits at the end show film stock was taken from a wide variety of sources but there appeared no real theme to  it all. Was this the same team that  the WW" "Crisis of Empire" series. on Junkovision over and over again?

     The immediate post-war years do raise serious problems- the continued extent of violence  shows that we are hemmed in by diplomatic niceties -that of Foreign Office clerks and ministers signing off treaties of peace to say the war was over, while fighting and death continued all over the place. There really must be some reconsideration of whether "1918" is the most useful marker of the "end" of the war- and time to revisit A.J.P.Taylor's observations that diagnosing the causes of wars is easy, doing the same for How Wars End is troublesome.

    There were no  "talking head interviews"  save one of an obscure French politician, included to show it was an early experiment in "Sound" - the French politico concerned certainly had flowery mannerisms and language and looked like Napoleon III with anorexia.  By my count, there were 3 quotes only from contemporary sources- of which Stefan Zweig was the only one to ring a bell. 

     Mentions of Britain were few ( the statistic of British war dead buried in France was wrong-presumably the researcher just ran CWGC and got the tally of named graves-woefully wrong).

    There is a lot of meat to be had for these years- and a lot of newsreel footage. Perhaps a whole mini-series -a la BBC "Great War" series could be done for relatively little (Channel Four commissioning editor- put down that "Private Eye" triple and take note)   As it is, the British viewer would learn more of the immediate post-war era by watching re-runs of episodes 1 and 2 of "When the Boat Comes In "

   In Juke Box Jury terms - a "miss"

   

[Alan24]

     The choice of footage and commentary was offbeat and somewhat bizarre-   

 

On 29/07/2019 at 08:51, Steven Broomfield said:

Part 1 had some stunning film (colourised), but there was little thematic sense -

 

I suspect that they just made the narrative fit the bits of film they could get hold of royalty free. 

 

On 29/07/2019 at 08:51, Steven Broomfield said:

. The voice over was also extremely odd:

 

Colin Teirney 

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0862918/bio 

Seems to do a lot of voice over work on channel 4/5/more 4...

 

Regards

 

Alan

[Steven Broomfield]

 As it is, the British viewer would learn more of the immediate post-war era by watching re-runs of episodes 1 and 2 of "When the Boat Comes In "

   

   

Mrs Broomfield and I didn't waste time last evening. However, a re-run of When the Boat Comes In would be welcome

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Steven Broomfield said:

Mrs Broomfield and I didn't waste time last evening

 

       !!!

[David Filsell]

And an extra! For luck!