Hot Docs - How I Filmed the War

Rating: ***1/2

Geoffrey H. Malins is probably one of the most influential filmmakers you’ve never heard of. His 1916 documentary, The Battle of the Somme, represented a great leap forward in the areas of filmmaking, war photography, reporting and, indeed, propaganda. But let that last one not diminish the impact that this film had when it was first released, or its historical significance nearly 100 years after the fact. Canadian filmmaker Yuval Sagiv has now revisited this documentary in a highly unusual way by exploring the blurring of the line between truth and propaganda while digging into Malins’ own conflicted background.

First of all, the movie is silent. The only sound is clacks and scratches of the old film, which is intercut with title cards containing bits of narrative or dialogue, like the films of the silent movie era in which The Battle of the Somme was released. The title cards are a mix of filmmaker researched information about Malins and the film, or excerpts from Malins book about the filming of the documentary and being the “Official Kinematographer” of the British forces on the front lines of the Great War. The conceit is pretty effective where in this new documentary feels like itself is a relic. It’s like someone put a disc of James Frey’s mea culpa interview with Oprah in the back of copies of A Million Little Pieces.

Honestly, it should come as no surprise that Malins staged some parts of his film to make it look more action-oriented then would have been possible in a way that wouldn’t get the cameraman shot in 1916. If that’s surprising it’s only because we expect people in the past to be more honest, or that the technology was so new, we think it had never occurred to anyone to exploit it. Or does anyone care? It’s common knowledge now that the picture of the American flag being raised over Iwo Jima was staged yet that doesn’t seem to rob the image of its power as a symbol. You still see it on motivational posters to this day after all. Even Sagiv seems to treat it as an afterthought as the famous charge “over the top” as a fake is only examined near the film’s end.

The really interesting parts of the documentary involve how Malins cut through the typical propaganda of the time by projecting a lot of realism in his work, as well as the sorted story of Malins himself. Malins, like Frey, seemed to play fast and loose with his origins, but fortunately for the filmmaker this was easier to get away with before the invention of the internet and Google. Still, the “spotty” history of Malins does nothing to belie this work he created. A work that, for its time, startlingly captured the horrors of the war front in an era where war was still romanticized. Trench life, in all its grime, was shown in a way that a lot of the era’s recruiting material tried to ignore. Despite Malins’ sleight of hand and the officials of the times’ editorial pruning in the interest of morale, the refreshing honesty of The Battle of the Somme still resonates a century later.

As for the film about the film, there’s an experimental quality that can, at times, be distracting. It’s seems as if Sagiv has created a director’s commentary for a silent film done in the style of that film’s original release, which creates an odd, post-modern twist in the way How I Filmed the War can be viewed. There are occasions when I think the art draws too much attention to itself, but Sagiv’s format is refreshing at the very least. But as well done as this film is in the way Sagiv made it, I would still love to see something with a little more analysis and distance; a true consideration of The Battle of the Somme and its impact on filmmaking. Perhaps Sagiv can next break new ground with a documentary sequel or remake.

Paris 1919

Rating: ****

The significance of Remembrance Day means something different to everyone, but the choice of date for Remembrance Day comes simply from the fact that on the 11th hour, on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, the guns went silent along the frontlines of Word War I. Naturally, it wasn’t called World War I at the time, the presumption, of course, that there wouldn’t be another World War, especially once the great peace treaty worked out amongst the leading powers of the time had been established and signed, thus preventing such a disastrous conflict from ever enveloping the world again. In a sad bit of irony though, the Treaty of Versailles ended up laying the seeds for the very conflict was intended to prevent, and its impact still reverberates through history 90 years after it was signed.

The National Film Board documentary Paris 1919 rather seamlessly blends archival footage and historical re-enactments to create a genuine feeling of time and place as the people and politics of the 1919 Paris Conference are exhaustively dissected. The film, which made its premiere earlier this year at the Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival in Toronto, is based on the book by Margaret MacMillan which won the Governor General's Award for English language non-fiction recipient in 2003. And much like the book it’s based on, the film is thorough, but easily accessible to those that may not be overly familiar with the history involved.

But that’s not to say that this is any beginners guide though. With the 100th anniversary of the start of the war nearly upon us, and the fact there are maybe five surviving veterans of the conflict worldwide, it seems more important now than ever to make sure that this history is not forgotten. Combine with that a feeling of timeliness and a rather astute reading of history in a way that makes it almost more like docudrama then documentary, and you have a recipe for something endlessly interesting and endlessly interesting to talk about. The film focuses primarily on the ‘Big Three,’ U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and how their conflicting goals ended up forestalling any chance at maybe creating a lasting peace.

One can easily see the parallels to our current times: An idealistic US President, beloved by Europeans as a sage representing new hope, worn down by old world thinking that keeps real change unattainable because no one else really wants it. In the case of Clemenceau and Lloyd George that was revenge and money, respectively, from Germany. A failure or possible unwillingness to understand the immediate history lead the main powers to a course that would decide the fate of the world, for good or ill, for the next 100 years. From the rise of the fascists in Italy, to the disillusionment Ho Chi Minh with the west, to the cramming Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis into a new political entity called Iraq, the very face of the world was changed by the Paris Peace Conference and Paris 1919 shows both how difficult that was to achieve and how easily it came apart.

Like any good historical story, Paris 1919 is a story of “If only…” and I think that filmmaker Paul Cowan is really good at pushing that element of the story. As much as it’s a cliché, the re-enactments really make the history come alive, thanks to some incredible production values that seem to say that no expense was spared in taking the viewer a century back in time. And these aren’t dinner theatre actors either, these are old pros playing a part and creating genuine interaction and not just spitting out one section of the Penguin Dictionary of Quotes at each other. There’s drama, there’s tension and more than a few moments that give you pause where you ask yourself why these guys didn’t see what was coming right down the road from their actions. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, making Paris 1919 all the more important for viewing the big picture, historically speaking.