Germany Gazes at War Horrors

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 98, 16 July 1927, Page 23

Germany Gazes at War Horrors

Death and Destruction Depicted By Film IN “The World War” Germany has created not so much a film as a time machine. It annihilates time and space. In these words the Berlin correspondent of a London daily describes the great German war film, which is now creating so much interest in Europe. ‘The World War” has been released by UFA, one of the now powerful Mid-Europe film combines. He writes: In the great Ufa palace, 'Berlin, it swept 5,000 people into war years that ie 12 years in the past. For two hours they lived again > through the triumphs and defeats, the hysteria and the agony that they themselves, and the rest of the world, had believed were only memories fast dimming in the mist of time. Let it be said at once that the film is wonderful. It presents the World War as it was at the time, and not as it seems in retrospect. Most of the pictures are drawn from the State archives —pictures taken by camera men with the German armies in the field 12 years ago. Offered as History But it is the World War as Germany saw it, though its sponsors declare it an historic document, and offer it to the world as such. They have proved that the time has not yet come when any country can look at the great disaster unmoved by racial feelings. Germany has launched upon the world not only a great film, but a great controversy. To-night’s production was the first of a trilogy, and was called “The Nation's Heroic Advance.” For ten minutes the vast audience sat silent while the world on the eve of war was unrolled before their eyes. They were still silent when symbolical flashes set Europe ablaze. Then—the pre-war Prussian Guards marched across the screen, and a great burst of applause swept the theatre. Cheers for Dead Empress Into pictures of fighting, of death and of almost intolerable suffering were skilfully interwoven photographs of Hindenburg, Ludendorff and other heroes of the Fatherland. And, forgetitng the agony on which they had been gazing, the 5,000 broke into round after round of applause. But one figure was absent—the exKaiser. The greatest cheer of the evening went up when the dead Empress was seen standing on the steps of the Palace in Berlin acknowledging the homage of an immense crowd intoxicated with news of victory. These 5,000 people were sitting in the capital of Republican Germany. The screen gave them Imperial Germany, and the 5,000 Republicans were ti-ansformed into subjects of a dead dynasty, into applauding devotees of an army of the past. In one respect certainly the film is objective. It shows the horrors of war in all their realism. It does not shirk from admitting defeat. Dead Heroes Cheered It shows the German legions trailing back from the Marne along roads whose ditches are strewn with corpses of men and horses. In the section, “Death Rides Through Flanders,” shells burst amidst crowded soldiers crouching behind hastily thrown up parapets. Men fall and rise in agony. Baffled and beaten survivors swarm away through the waters that the Belgians have loosened over the land of Flanders. A woman in the seat on m3' right gasped and put her hands in front of her eyes, but two minutes later, with the rest of the 5,000, she was applauding German soldiers fighting their way up the snow-clad Carpathians, or battling in East Africa. When the concluding sentences called upon Germany to remember for ever its dead heroes, the house rose and cheered. If scenes of death and agony shown on the film can convert a world to paefism this film would achieve that end. But I doubt whether it made any converts that way to-night.