Landships II

It is The Cloth Hall and filmed in 1919, I hope they put it on I-player as well.
Paul

Would have been nice to see more of the film shot from the airship !

Paul Bonnett wrote:

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Would have been nice to see more of the film shot from the airship !

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Absolutely. But it seems nowadays that the presenter is more important than the topic. See the reactions on this blog: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tv/2010/11/the-first-world-war-from-above.shtml

LincolnTanker: Also correct. Same old IWM footage. The disturbing thing is that those of us who are fortunate enough to know a little more than the average punter have to watch Idiot's Guides such as this being broadcast to the less well-informed. Did you notice that the supposedly buried Tank had a tadpole tail? (The Michael Palin film on The Last Day of WWI was shown again last weekend. It included footage of Russian troops in the east)

For the non-British viewer: Fergal Keane is an apparently distinguished reporter who has sent doom-laden reports from around the world for many years. A while back he wrote a book about his father's and his own alcoholism. He oozes melancholy, and it was embarrassing watching him trying to squeeze comments about the gruesomeness of the War out of his interviewees, some of whom tried desperatley and obviously to satisfy him. And, of course, no point could be made without our having to observe FK's reaction to it (even though he already knew the facts in advance). I really do dislike this style of documentary, but it is the norm. Just presenting the facts isn't sexy enough. Why not show more of the original film and broadcast it on BBC2, where all the bells, whistles, and pointless CGI wouldn't be necessary but a carefully-written script would?

Harumph!

 

-- Edited by James H on Monday 8th of November 2010 12:54:20 PM

mickk wrote:

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 Did any one notice the bit about Fray Bentos, they said the tank appears on an aerial photo but only showed it in CGI , fitted with a Tadpole tail.
 I'm confused!!

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My recollection is that an aerial photo was initialy shown, then it was CGI'd to give a 3D view if it, including the tail!

-- Edited by LincolnTanker on Monday 8th of November 2010 11:34:51 PM

I dont think Ive seen any pictures of tanks with Tadpoles actually in combat. I allways thought they were a 1918 thing and never really used.
(Learn something new everyday )
Will have to go and build one now.

James,

Here is some informations on the original film . . .

http://pages14-18.mesdiscussions.net/pages1418/forum-pages-histoire/Generalites/dirigeable-champs-bataille-sujet_10812_1.htm

You can found it in Ecpa-D (Fort d'Ivry - Paris)

Good visit in Paris . . . . Michel

Thanks, Michel. Most informative.

Dozens of people involved, to produce this very average documentary.

Allow me to relate a short but rather worrying anecdote:

Most of us will have seen the BBC documentary Tanks - Wonder Weapons of WWI? at some time. It isn't terrible, but it barely mentions the French contribution, and there is some stuff about modern "smart weapons" that has no right to be included. I suggested to a (very) senior figure at Channel 4 TV that it might be a good idea to produce a superior film on the subject. Amongst the objections she raised were a) it's too soon, and b) we're not interested in making docos that are "just" better versions of existing ones.

It's disturbing that Channel 4's documentary department prospectus says that new revelations about well-known topics are precisely what they are interested in.

Laurence Rees, then creative director of BBC TV History and (I think) Exec Producer of Wonder Weapons, told me that there would be no point in making a new doco because Wonder Weapons has to be syndicated and repeated for the purpose of bringing in revenue for the BBC. So we're stuck with it.

The purpose of this is not to name-drop, but to illustrate the obstacles to getting a proper film made about the subject. But suggest yet another doco about the Egyptians, the Romans, the English Civil War, Nelson, etc, etc, and they jump at it. There have even been two docos about who killed von Richtofen. And then F Keane comes up with this pile of pants. How did he wangle that?

BTW, one thing that the numerous critics of FK's attempt haven't mentioned is that when FK is in the Bristol Fighter, he is being filmed delivering his thoughts to a camera that is, presumably, in a helicopter flying alonside. (I shouldn't think the blimp would be able to keep up) He is then filmed from the forward cockpit of the Brisfit delivering his lines to the helicopter. How self-indulgent, BBC-production-course is that?

I feel a bit better now. Thanks for your time.

Cheers James, much appreciated.

Hi James,

Yes, undoubtedly you did have some influence - but as posted elsewhereOf course most of these "startling new discoveries" are in the mind of the show's producer however he's probably not far short of the mark when it comes to the average person's knowledge of "the war to end all wars" and in any event there is much worthwhile and seldom-seen material to inform even the most knowledgeable (perhaps with an equal amount of inanity to infuriate them, but well worth the look anyway I reckon).

At least they didn't continually recapitulate everything covered to date every 10 minutes.  That drives me crazy.  On the principle of "use it or lose it" I suppose we're all being transmogrified into compliant couch-potato consumers - or the "marching morons" as Cyril Kornbluth would have it, though that through the quite different process of genetics under the influence of differential reproductive rates.  Oh gawd, no reason both should not apply for an accelerated programme!  The only defences are the steadfast maintenance of a high level of curmudgeonliness for the first and an adequate supply of compliant ladies prepared to overlook certain biological imperatives for the greater good for the second.  Girls, humanity depends upon you (if you can excuse any unfortunate images that phrase might engender).

Um, yes, I thought it was quite viewable James - I can see the point of your objections but, with a lesser knowledge of things, found quite a bit of diversion and interest - almost despite the commentary and self-indulgent production.  There are worse around and (certainly) less worthy subjects from my point of view.  That they could undoubtedly have done better with similar or less effort seems to be taken as besides the point these days.  Anyway, competition for funding never did ensure the progress of the best projects, sadly.

I don't know Mr. Keane, but I know his work in other areas and I am not a fan of his style. By coincidence, he began a new radio series tonight. The first episode involved his interviewing for 30 minutes a man whose girlfriend was raped and murdered in a notorious case several years ago. The police bungled the investigation, arrested the wrong man, and allowed the real murderer to kill another woman and her child. This must seem extremely off-topic, but the point is that the style of the discussion was very similar to that employed with Mme de Prévaux and the historians in the film - FK reciting a list of grisly details and waiting for the other person to confirm them. He seems to feel that he has made an art-form of this practice and has become an expert at asking probing questions on sensitive matters in a fearless fashion. I am a little cynical about it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qvbj


Why he was given this documentary to present is not immediately obvious to me (although at least it wasn't given to a 'celebrity'). I have never heard of his having an interest in the War, and suspect some BBC politics might be involved.

I asked a friend of mine who has been a broadcast journalist for 30-odd years to watch the film (without prejudice), and his criticisms were virtually the same as ours: what was the central point - the airship footage, aerial photography, the War itself? Obviously, the sights visible from the air lead into explanations, but there didn't seem to be any coherence. Things seemed to be thrown together in an increasingly haphazard fashion as the film progressed, until the bit about the farmer's wife falling down a hole, which was entertaining but hardly relevant.

It was easy for a serious student of the War to spot a handful of factual mistakes that the lay viewer wouldn't. But the BBC is supposed to get things right, for the benefit of everyone and for the sake of its own credibility. (I was once involved in a documentary about Lech Walesa and Solidarity. A long scene was reshot, at great expense, when the Polish advisor pointed out that the [English] extras were wearing their wedding rings on the left hand. In Poland they are, apparently, worn on the right hand. A trifling matter, but you have to get that sort of thing right.)

I quite agree that FK was far too dominant and insufficiently informed. I don't understand why the historians and the director weren't able to rein him in and point him in the right direction. It sometimes happens when the rest of the team are intimidated by the presenter or his reputation and don't feel able to contradict him.

Small factual errors and dubious assertions aside, what was the hook for the film? For the likes of us, it was another doco about the War, and we would watch those all day. But programme commissioners feel they have to make subjects more "accessible", so they have to come up with a U.S.P. They chose to major on the "new" airship footage. The trouble is that it's not new, although the claim is made several times on BBC websites. If anything, the undeveloped plates at the IWM are what's new. M de Prévaux's footage, impressive though it is, was shot in relative safety six months after the War. The battlefields had been photographed thoroughly during the War, as was pointed out. So, really, the airship footage's only advantage was that it was movie rather than still. There is no way to really get hold of this story, unless it becomes a chronological account of the birth and growth of aerial photography for military purposes. I'm not sure that that would have been commissioned.

I think this doco became a victim of its own attempts to sell itself, by hanging everything on the airship (the French one, not the inexplicable British one at the beginning) and then failing to deliver what was promised in the trailer and preamble. Rather than  exploring to a sensible extent aspects revealed from the air, it shot off at a tangent too often. There wasn't enough 'before-and-after' comparison of the devastation. By pointing out that de Prévaux didn't photograph the Somme but then going on to talk about it, they made it seem irrelevant. If they had simply left that sentence out, the problem would have disappeared. Perhaps with my Landships hat on, I might have explained the battlefield littered with ko'd Schneiders in more than five words

I would have moved de Prévaux down the batting order, introducing him as an interesting supporting character. I gather that he and his cameraman shot 3 films over the Front, the flight from Nieuwpoort to Mt. Kemmel being just the first. Whether all 3 came to 80 mins in total or each is 80 mins long, I don't yet know. The doco also cried out for a mention of Solmon J. Solomon and his work on camouflage creation and detection.

I'm not sure I would even have included the dreadful stuff with Mme de Prévaux at the end, which was excruciating. It was noticeable that FK said he was going "to find out more" about what happened to her father but actually ended up telling her. This information was, according to the director, revealed by "meticulous" research. Actually, Mme de Prévaux wrote her father's biography herself 10 years ago. You can buy it on the Net.

Finally, the production techniques. Some of the CGI (the Avro 504s and so on) was OK. The bombardment of Ypres was feeble. The overlaying of the aerial photographs was distractingly fussy and gimmicky. And if the point was to show how commanders could move from a "worm's eye view" to an aerial one, why use CGI to show the process in reverse? I don't know why they took a special interest in Fray Bentos; aerial photos could have been used to pinpoint any of a million incidents in the War. I suspect it's just that a researcher found the incident particularly novel. Shots of chatting Parisians (and an accordionist!), FK using various forms of transport - so unnecessary but, sadly, mandatory nowadays.

The mercifully absent recaps every five minutes are an advantage of the advertisement-free BBC. They don't have to tell people who have changed channels during an ad break what's going on.

As a result of several unfortunate incidents in the last few years, the BBC is highly sensitive about misleading the audience. Intentionally or otherwise, I think this prog did so on more than one occasion. The claim that de Prévaux's footage had been lost for almost a century is somewhat undermined by the fact that it appears in this Belgian doco screened in 2007. It even has the ECPAD logo on it - I'm sure they didn't put that there in 1919.

http://ineuropa.nl/programmas/36788896/afleveringen/42972115/

The prosecution rests.



-- Edited by James H on Wednesday 17th of November 2010 07:01:26 AM

Does anyone happen to have a copy of this VHS? I'm told it is from the 1980s and contains some of the de Prévaux footage.