Shooting in the line of fire

Alastair Fraser, author of a book about the film, tells Steve Pratt why it still has an important message.

DAWN, July 1, 1916. Cameraman Geoffrey Malins is woken by the noise of gunfire. He’s given permission to film in the sunken lane in no man’s land. He and his guide, carrying heavy equipment, force their way along the trench, past soldiers preparing for battle. The camera is positioned and, sometime before 6.30am, Malins shoots nearly a minute of film. His Battle of the Somme has begun.

The footage that he and fellow cameraman John McDowell shot became the documentary film, The Battle Of The Somme, seen by 20 million British people – half the population – when shown in cinemas the following month. The royal family had a private screening at Windsor and the film was eventually shown in 18 countries.

The documentary, one of the earliest films of war ever made, records the most disastrous day in the history of the British Army. Audiences were shocked by sights and sounds of warfare, including dead and injured on both sides.

There have been claims that footage was faked, notably shots of soldiers going over the top into battle.

Durham University librarian Alastair H Fraser has spent hours watching the action frame-by-frame to unlock the mysteries of the battle.

He and fellow authors Andrew Robertshaw and Steve Roberts used modern methods to identify soldiers, discover what they were saying and to reveal the actual locations where Malins and McDowell placed their cameras.

He was involved in a documentary about the battle of the Somme on Channel Five three years ago, which screened footage from the film, the only copy of which is in the Imperial War Museum, London.

“The film itself is very significant in cinema history, being the most successful at the boxoffice until the Seventies. And it showed something of the reality of the First World War to audiences of the time,” says Mr Fraser.

“It was just billed as war pictures – see what your sons and brothers and husbands are doing. It also had a strong emphasis that you have to keep working on munitions. That’s probably it’s most overt propaganda.”

The importance of the film, he feels, is that it gave the British public the first view of what the war was about. “It was very controversial as well,” Mr Fraser continues. It shows the dead. Not only German dead, which you might have expected, but also British soldiers lying dead and wounded. That caused a tremendous amount of discussion.

“One wonders what people would think of showing dead British soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq these days.”

Malins and McDowell went to film in France after prolonged negotiations with the War Office, which was suspicious of journalists.

“It was eventually agreed they would go out there under fairly strict control. They were doing a job and took great pride in getting good shots,” says Mr Fraser.

Malins had been out there seven months, with McDowell joining him only days before the battle began. “They were both in their mid- 30s and it probably quite a physical shock being there,” he says.

“One of the interesting things were the technical difficulties. The camera was very big.

They had helpers who carried film, but the cameras were the size of large suitcases.

“The film wasn’t sensitive to certain light conditions. The cameraman had to keep the focus and turn the handle at a standard rate and all the while they were being shelled. One of the points we’ve tried to make is the extraordinary achievement of these men who were very brave, went into the front line and shot genuine combat footage.”

During research, a minute-and-a-half of missing footage was discovered and, using a tie-in book published in 1916, Fraser has been able to place it in the film. Soldiers and the sites from where the battle was filmed have been identified.

Mr Fraser, a founder member of No Man’s Land group that excavates First World War sites, applied archaeological techniques to look at the film and identify locations.

The authors address accusations that scenes were faked. “It’s important to do that because there’s nobody left alive to tell us what it was like to be there. If you’re going to use this film to show the reality of an event, you have to be sure what you’re showing,” he says.

“We’ve done a lot of research on two particular pieces of film showing men going over the top that are often in documentaries. They’re shown as being the reality of the First World War, but both are among the few faked bits in the film. Virtually everything else that has been doubted we’ve been able to prove was shot where it was said it was shot.”

MUCH has been written about the propaganda purposes of the film, but little about the detail it shows. Fraser and his authors have identified individuals.

They were able to show the film to the granddaughter of a man who appears in it.

As well as identifying as many as 30 individuals on screen, a lip-reader has been used to find out what people are saying and forensic pathology has provided dates to the bodies.

More could be done using more sophisticated facial recognition technology and advanced lip-reading techniques. “We’re not finished by any means,” he says.

He’s also hoping to arrange screenings of The Battle Of The Somme at Newcastle’s Tyneside Cinema and Durham Gala.

“Its meaning has changed in subsequent generations, but it’s the only eyewitness we have got to the battle. I’ve seen it hundreds of times and it’s still extraordinary to me,” says Fraser.

“It’s a film that still has quite a message for early 21st Century audiences.”

■ Ghosts On The Somme (Pen and Sword, £25 pen-and-sword.co.uk)

■ The Battle Of The Somme is available to buy on DVD from the Imperial War Museum, price £19.99.