The Great War - BBC Series 6 Disc Boxset [DVD]
(Simply Media - 2009-11-02)
6 Discs (1036 minutes)
Region: 2 - Exempt

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Customer Reviews (Average 4.0 from 2) :
A missed opportunity
Rating:4
To start off , this is the best overview of WW1 on Dvd you can buy. Considering it is almost 50yrs old now it still is as good if not better than historical documentaries made today .
The Reasons for going to war and why events happened is very clearly explained . The indivdual battle plans and political plans are also given great analysis.
The only let down is that the last few episodes feal that they have been rushed and are not up to the standard of the first half.
However looking at this now I would of liked to see more interviews with soliders as this is the most valuable resourse to insight into the war itself . As we all know now there are nomore 'Tommys' left alive and i wonder if the producers knew what a valuable resourse they where?

A magnificent series
Rating:4
The Great War (First World War/WW1) was a major divide in world history. It destroyed four empires and mortally wounded a fifth. It laid the foundations for the current Middle East conflict and the advance of the USA to the leading position it still holds - and of course the foundations for the much greater catastrophe 25 years later. It also triggered the beginning of the end of European colonialism and massive social upheavals such as the advancement of women.

Having recently seen ITV's classic "The World at War", I was reminded of this earlier BBC series of the earlier conflict, which had appeared on the then-new BBC2 during my student days. Sir Jeremy Isaacs, producer of "The World at War", frankly confessed his admiration for it. I found to my surprise that it has only recently been made available on DVD, having hidden in the BBC archives for half a century. It is a LOT more expensive that the ITV series.

Is it worth it? For amateur students of human folly such as myself, most definitely yes. In retrospect, it is astounding that it was made at all. The BBC put a lot of authentic film together - I was surprised at how much there actually was, and found the quality sometimes amazingly good. There is quite a bit of clearly acted footage ( "All quiet on the Western Front"?), and the same shots are often repeated (the German soldier throwing a "potato masher" grenade comes up time and again). And then there are the big guns and explosions - lots and lots of big guns and explosions. Lots of the same big guns and explosions. Understandable, I guess, as massive bombardments were a feature of the battles of the Great War.

A particularly nice feature is the mass of interviews of veterans from all nations. As I write, Harry Patch, last surviving British Great War combatant, has recently died at the age of about a million and a half. When this series was made, the veterans were not old men in their dotage, but middle-aged men, whose memories of the events were sharp and clear. Unfortunately, there is nothing from the decision-makers, who are all presumably currently confronting their Maker and trying to explain their actions away.

So, in the light of 50 years of more recent scholarship, how does "The Great War" stand up? To my eyes (and I make no pretence of being a scholar), pretty well. It does not settle the argument that still rages on in the UK at least - were the British generals incompetent butchers, who fed men into the mincing machine of the Western Front to cover up their cluelessness, or were they merely men caught up in titanic events the like of which had never been seen or envisaged, and who did the best they could with the means available? The series seems to lean towards the latter view. Certainly Sir Douglas Haig's comment that the German Army had to be defeated is often repeated.

Generals are taught to manoeuvre on a battlefield, to outflank the enemy. What is left if outflanking is no longer possible is frontal attack, against entrenched positions, fortified by whole forests of barbed wire and covered by machine guns. And that's what the often-maligned Haig did. The first day on the Somme, on which so many of my Northern Irish countrymen died, has been described as "the greatest British military disaster since the Battle of Hastings". But Haig perservered and the Somme not only took the pressure off the French at Verdun, but also gave the Germans the first inklings of doubt that they might not win.

I was also pleased to see the enormous contribution of the United States recognised. The USA is often characterised as having arrived late in the piece. But the USA had to build up a major army from very little - and without the USA and its enormous industrial might (even then it was not a rival country but a rival continent) and magnificent fighting spirit of the Doughboys, the war would not have been won.

Several negative points in my opinion. Much use (rather too much in my opinion) is made of the sombre British war poets such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, to try to capture the misery of the trenches, of men called upon to endure the unendurable. And the end leaves you with cheering crowds at war's end. I'd also have liked analysis of the Versailles Treaty, which, along with an embittered Austrian corporal lying in hospital recovering from a British gas attack when the Armistice came, were to set the scene for Round 2, 20 years later.

The narration (largely by Sir Michael Redgrave with the help of other distinguished voices) is splendid, and obviously the inspiration for the use of the (even better) Lord Olivier in "The World at War". The music score is sometimes overdone and intrusive, but generally fits in quite well. I was particularly amused by the constant appearance of a splendid brass version of "What a friend we have in Jesus", often in battle scenes! It transpires that the British Army used it, with, er, slightly modified words:

When this bl***y war is over
I'll be happy as can be!
When I put my civvy suit on
No more soldiering for me!
No more church parades on Sunday!
No more begging for leave pass
I will tell the sergeant-major
He can shove it (where the sun never shines)!

It sums up the feeling of the Tommy/Fritz/poilu in the firing line very well.





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