THE WAR GAME d: Peter Watkins
The War Game (1965)
Direction and Screenplay: Peter Watkins
Narration: Michael Aspel and Peter Graham
By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
For anyone who thinks that those 50-pack mega-DVD sets of public domain films put out by several different video companies are worthless, I would argue that the amount of films you get for the money is worth it, even if all were mediocre, and that the truth is: each DVD package will come with at least 8-10 enjoyable films, a few true classics like Carnival of Souls or Night of the Living Dead, and every so often a great little film will pop up that makes the package a total steal.
One such 50-pack I got, "Nightmare Worlds," features one such film: a BBC documentary from 1965 (not broadcast until 1985) called The War Game, winner of the best feature documentary Academy Award in 1967. Granted, film quality is always an issue with such cheapo DVDs, but having grown up in the era of television with shadows, snowy static, and rabbit ears, even the worst transfer is significantly better than the prevalent quality of shows years ago. (Note from the editor: New Yorker / Project X offered a good print of Peter Watkins’ The War Game on DVD.)
As a plus, The War Game does one of the best jobs I’ve seen in terms of capturing the zeitgeist of a time and place — and I’ve sat through hundreds of documentaries, from the silent era to today.
Imagine how most of Europe felt, as pawns in the American-Soviet Cold War, being liable to total annihilation due to nothing they had any control over. One wonders what a similar documentary made in the last five years — on current ant-Islamic paranoia — would feel like. And remember, the Soviet Union was a nation whose nuclear arsenal alone could have made the Earth uninhabitable many times over; so, the fear felt by many in those days was comprehensible, whereas the irrational fears of Islamic militancy today is mostly all borne of post-9/11 paranoia.
Written and directed by Peter Watkins, the black-and-white The War Game runs a scant 47 minutes, but packs a hell of a wallop emotionally. The film follows a hypothetical scenario for several months: after China invades South Vietnam, the U.S. prepares for nuclear retaliation, but the Soviets and East Germans (remember when Germany and Vietnam were split nations?) threaten to invade West Berlin. The U.S. fortifies West Berlin, but the Communists attack and repel American forces. Then U.S. president Lyndon Johnson retaliates with a NATO-approved nuclear attack against the Warsaw Pact; as a result, the Soviets launch multiple missile strikes against the United Kingdom.
Chaos rules before the missiles hit. Civil defense authorities lose control of civilians, racial and class tensions reach a boil, evacuees from the cities are resisted by rural dwellers. After we hear of other missile strikes, The War Game centers on the devastation caused to Rochester, in Kent County, when a missile aimed at London veers off course. We then get excruciatingly detailed descriptions (orally and visually) of the blast effects, aftershocks, and resultant firestorms that burn, suffocate, and maim with flying debris those not initially vaporized by the nuclear blast.
Hours, days, weeks, and months pass until the film ends near Christmastime. After the limited nuclear exchanges play out, there seems to be a ceasefire. In the aftermath, we have social anarchy, revolt against authority figures, martial law, radiation poisoning, untreated psychological and physiological damage, food poisoning, starvation, and the wan efforts at medical treatment and cadaver disposal.
In The War Game, seamlessly edited staged events are interspersed with archival footage from the Second World War. Rather crude special effects, such as shaking the camera to simulate the winds of a firestorm, are surprisingly effective. Watkins also makes use of traditional documentary techniques such as maps, scrawled epigraphs of information, recitations of (naïve) quotes from public figures, and man-on-the-street interviews that show the ignorance of average Britons regarding nuclear war and civil defense — e.g., not knowing the effects of Carbon 14 (but would you or I?).
The film also features some yahoo American military sorts in an effective — even if a bit over the top — manner to demonstrate the American enthusiasm for war (but, recall, this was only a few years after Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove showed reckless American militarism at its worst). Additionally, Michael Aspel and Peter Graham’s impassive narration fully conveys the faux realism of the film’s fictive world while also showing how utterly deluded civil defense measures were.
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Tags: Classic Movies, Documentaries, DVDs, Film Reviews, Michael Aspel, Oscar 1966, Oscar Movies, Peter Graham, Peter Watkins, The War Game
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