WAR AS IT WAS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22166, 20 July 1935, Page 14 (Supplement)

WAR AS IT WAS

AUTHENTICITY OF FILM An effective plan was adopted in England to force the censor to release "Forgotten Men," the film which it was feared he would prohibit because of the uncompromising realism with which it exposed the horrors of war. An audience, including the leading film critics of London and the most important personages in all organisations devoted to the welfare of humanity, was invited to a private screening of the film while a copy of it was in the censor's hands, and as a result of the enthusiasm which was created, the censor was powerless to ban a film, the only objection to which was its telling realism. A typical criticism is given by The New Era, which says: "No more impressive film will be made until we have a war more destructive than that of 1914-1918. 'Forgotten Men' is a collection of films, taken at the front, and at sea, by official photographers, mostly British and German, and now presented with a commentary by Sir John Hammerton.

" We see first the tranquil countryside, then the Archduke at Sarajevo, and then Emperors and Kings taking the salute, then death and destruction so devastating, so omnivorous, that one's eyes cloud and one's brain grows numb. All descriptions of the war are quite ineffective compared with this film: at a few yards' range we see thousands of men blown to pieces, bayoneted, squirming in their last agonies. We see the heads of drowning men countless as ants in a puddle; we see death in the Alpine snows, death in the air, death in the mud. But it is not the material horrors which stun one's spirit so much as the sense which the film gives one of the prodigious extent, duration and aimlessness of the destruction. The accompanying sounds have been added, for, of course 'talkies' had not been invented when these films were taken: otherwise the photographs are authentic documents."