"The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century" (1996)TV series

Directors:

Carl Byker
Lyn Goldfarb

Writer:

Joseph Angier (writer)

Seasons:

1

Release Date:

10 November 1996 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary | History | Sport | War

Plot Keywords:

Reenactment | WWI | Civil War | Memorial | Famine

Awards:

Won 2 Primetime Emmys. Another 3 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Martin Landau	...	Woodrow Wilson (3 episodes, 1996)
Malcolm McDowell	...	Charles Stockwell / ... (3 episodes, 1996)
Ian Richardson	...	David Lloyd George / ... (3 episodes, 1996)
Rene Auberjonois	...	Jean Jaures / ... (2 episodes, 1996)
Paul Mercurio	...	Cyril Lawrence (2 episodes, 1996)
Liam Neeson	...	Adolf Hitler / ... (2 episodes, 1996)
Michael York	...	Harold Owen / ... (2 episodes, 1996)

Also Known As:

1914-1918 (UK)

Country:

UK | USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White | Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Company:

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

Movie Connections:

Features The Little American (1917)

Really Well Made Documentary On World War One

In going through my decaying collection of videotapes, looking to dispose of as many space-hogging VHS tapes as I can, I came across the VHS tapes I made of The Great War, when the PBS National feed broadcast it on Saturdays in July 2000. Technically great, this four part documentary series looks at World War One through the writings of eyewitnesses and the use of rarely seen film footage (probably from the Imperial War Museum's film archives). In the prologue to the closing episode, War Without End, the narrator reads excerpts from journalist's Stephen Graham's report after touring the battlefields of Europe in 1920. He described the goals of the soldiers from the different warring nations, one goal he said was "a victory for humanity," all ended by what happened at Versailles. Then, Graham wrote that it was "night again in human history, deep night" with a "succession of phantoms stalking" Europe. Recent events, including the bombings in London, show that Graham's stalking phantoms are still with us.

This series makes harsh judgments of many of the protagonists in the war and it does not gloss over the horrors of the war. Footage of a line of soldiers on crutches or using canes, all missing legs, is not the sort of unsettling stuff you usually see in a documentary. The effort that went into this production has had no effect on PBS, which has not rebroadcast the series since 2000 and has let the series VHS 4 tape set(list priced at a high $100.00) go out of print. The website for this series seems to be active, so maybe PBS will license out The Great War for a DVD release. With some effort and using plenty of my time, I transferred my VHS tapes of the series to DVDR. The political climate at PBS now militates against that group of bureaucrats re-releasing an anti-war documentary, even one as well done as 1996's The Great War. If PBS ever shows this documentary series again, it is recommended viewing, though is can be depressing at times describing the horrors of World War One and the incompetence of the government and military leaders then.