World at War, The

The World at War is a massive documentary effort, put together by Thames Television back in 1974, when memories of world war two were fresher, but extensive archival footage was also being uncovered from a variety of sources, including Germany and Russia.

Made in conjunction with the Imperial War Museum, it shows commercial English television acting like it could match the BBC in style - these days you'd get World Idol doing hits of world war two karaoke style. Roll over Vera Lynn

The show's presented on DVD in a five volume box set, each volume with two discs, and each with timings that run from over four to over seven hours of footage. What you get is a detailed coverage of the war from a variety of angles, with an emphasis on campaigns - the march on Moscow, the siege of Stalingrad, the u-boat campaign, the desert war, Japan in the Pacific, and so on - put together in a way that provides a coherent view of a significant part of the bigger picture.

The approach emphasises archival footage - black and white and color - of varying quality, but strong visual impact. These days the fashion is to get a hundred or so extras in period gear to act out for the camera and use that as an evocation of past times. Apart from aspiring to drama - but lacking the budget or the impact - this is perhaps one of the worst trends in documentary, which is ostensibly about real people and real events. It leads to a kind of shoddy, ersatz history - is that Winston Churchill or a fat actor pretending to be Winston Churchill? If the latter, you know you're being given fake images about fake times.

Here you get to see Winston and Adolph and many of the other key players, along with the poor grunts in the field, killing and dying. The show doesn't shy away from footage of the dead - frozen or mutilated - reversing a trend up to that time where war games never produced so much as a tomato spurt when someone fell down in battle. And being world war two, there's all kinds of death and destruction to be observed, from the effects of a Russian winter, through Auschwitz and the fire bombing of Dresden to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Narrated in svelte, classy tones by Laurence Olivier (in the days before he became a knight), this is as good a collection of world war two footage ever assembled to provide an overview of a vast conflict that touched most of the world.

If your only experience of the second world war is via a play station game, this will introduce you to a more sober reality. At the same time, the hand to hand fighting in the seige of Stalingrad or the fall of Berlin will have a familiar feel.

The DVD's reproduce what is now an old show with some fair degree of quality, though the original footage shot in the field of combat is naturally rough, and there are only a few nondescript extras - but given the amount of viewing to hand, having some extras isn't that useful.

Originally priced at $185 or thereabouts, the canny shopper can now pick it up more cheaply - either by importing or by noting specials - EzyDVD had it available recently for $99. At that kind of price, it's good value, offering some 32 hours of viewing. It's a worthy companion piece to the drama series Band of Brothers, showing the arc of the war in a way thats not so American, emphasising just how many people got tangled in the mess.it's also a tough kind of viewing - there's no glamor of war on offer here - though it's also a rewarding visual insight into the life and times of people caught up in military madness. Not bad for a thirty year old commercial television documentary series. And a pity those quality days are gone, and all we can do these days is feast on the tit fest called Big Brother while people kill and die in Iraq.

 

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