Just back from the live screening of PJ's WWI tribute film.
Wow!
It's not a history of the war, or an analysis of the reasons/political situation etc. It is very much a British soldier's tale, from pre war shaky black and white footage, through declaration, recruitment, training and embarkment for France. At this stage I was enjoying a lot of new footage but wondering what all the fuss was about.
Then as the soldiers arrive at the front, the screen increases in size, the image sharpens and bursts into colour and the soundtrack explodes into life. Evidently they recorded the NZ Army on artillery training and used these sounds for the shelling. The voiceovers are the BBC voices from the sixties when the survivors were still relatively young.
At this point the entire audience was bolt upright, glued to the screen as we were taken through trench life, r&r, shelling, etc building up to a horrendous tank-assisted bayonet attack into the German trenches.
PJ cuts living images of the individual incredibly young troops horsing about pre attack, with the bloody wrecked corpses lying in bits on the battlefield. Total rapt silence in the audience.
After the attack, some very moving footage of German POW's and medics helping the badly wounded of both sides. Then on to Armistice.
Interesting q&a with PJ afterwards, where he described the difficulty of getting the old jerky film looking smooth before sharpening the images and then colourising. He disclosed they had cleaned up 100 hours of footage for the Imperial War Museum but only used one hour and 40 minutes in film. So he expected a lot of much improved images in future documentaries from other sources too!
Well we all know PJ is a hero, but with this, he is now officially immortal as far as I am concerned.
Sandy