Most audiences are familiar with New Zealand-born filmmaker Peter Jackson for his work on THE LORD OF THE RINGS and THE HOBBIT Trilogies. Sometimes Jackson steps outside the boundaries of mainstream cinema to create highly unusual films.
For instance, in 1995, he made FORGOTTEN SILVER, a mockumentary about Colin McKenzie, a supposedly real pioneer filmmaker who was responsible for creating everything from a steam-powered hand-build camera and projector to talking pictures and feature-length films. Rob and I showed this mockumentary to students and faculty at UAlbany several times, with the consistent result that most in the audience believed it was a genuine documentary and that Colin McKenzie really lived!
Last year, Peter Jackson completed a genuine documentary called THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD. It was commissioned by 14-18 Now and The Imperial War Museum in association with the BBC. The visuals consist of World War I-era silent moving images and stills which have been preserved by The Imperial War Museum, much of which has never before been seen by the public. His sound track is made up of the voices of actual veterans of The Great War.
While tens of thousands of feet of vintage footage of the European trenches and nasty battles which lead to disfiguration, gassing, and death have been included in numerous documentaries and feature films about the war to end all wars, THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD has something special. Jackson clearly is working with the finest quality footage, straight from master materials made from camera negatives. He is bringing to this footage creative cinematic techniques to make that footage his own. Ironically, whereas in FORGOTTEN SILVER he ages pristine new footage to make it look old, here he is working with old footage that is practically virginal, that is so pictorially fine that it looks brand new.
There is a sense of intimacy with the soldiers that possibly is unique to this World War I film. From the very start, we see and study the faces of the men marching into war. More than 100 years after the fact, we look at the teeth of these men. Did people ever have such ghastly mouths of teeth? We look at the diversity of ages of the soldiers and hear the narration about how many in uniform were only 15 and 16-years-old!
Jackson manipulates the original footage to bring his audience closer to the subjects. He uses fades and camera movement which livens up the stationary camera work of the original photographers. Especially impressive is his use of colorization – the most striking use of colorization that I ever have seen -- it is difficult to believe one is watching movies shot more than 100 years ago. The viewer almost enters into the scenes.
And what scenes these are! Jackson’s mission is to show what it was like to be a soldier in this war. He sets out to capture daily life in those dreadful disease holes called the trenches...eating sparse and sometimes nauseating meals, sleeping when it would seem impossible to close ones’ eyes without fear, wading through muck. Then he presents the soldiers in their times of respite as they sit smoking cigarettes and clumsily dancing to music in the company of civilian villagers. We even are shown photos of the bare backsides of soldiers, a dozen or more men sitting side-by-side, defecating into latrines, many of whom are suffering from dysentery.
THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD did not take American moviegoers by storm when it was released to theaters seven months ago. Obviously, its topic does not make for Saturday date night viewing. Now that this powerful documentary is available for home viewing, it should find its proper audience. Not only does this film succeed in acquainting viewers with the soldiers of World War I, but it also succeeds in demonstrating the significance of a global film preservation program.
Audrey Kupferberg is a film and video archivist and appraiser. She is lecturer emeritus and the former director of Film Studies at the University at Albany and co-authored several entertainment biographies with her husband and creative partner, Rob Edelman.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.