The War Game – 1965 | 48 mins | Drama, War | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Peter Watkins’ The War Game was originally produced by the BBC on a budget of £10,000 for broadcast on television, but corporation bosses had misgivings even before it had been completed, decided it was unsuitable for mass audiences, and ordered it to be kept off the airwaves. Watkins, who had already made a name for himself with the seminal Culloden, does an excellent and imaginative job based on considerable research of Civil Defence and scientific documents. As a result of political and media campaigning, it was eventually agreed to make it available for theatrical release through the British Film Institute; enabling it to win the 1967 Best Documentary Academy Award. Watkins left the BBC in protest when it was banned, his film finally being broadcast terrestrially in 1985.

Shot on location, the wholly harrowing depiction of what could happen immediately before, during and after a nuclear attack on rural Kent; The War Game is filmed in pseudo-documentary style and is disturbing in its verbal realism. The attack itself is predictably grim, but the most revealing part is the aftermath of the bomb – the severely burned are killed off and their bodies set ablaze, policemen shooting those beyond help, looters being shot and psychologically traumatised children being interviewed.