WW1 Films

[castman]

Does anyone know / can recommend films with the subject of World War 1 but not specifically 'war' movies as such, I am more interested in the life of families at home side of things - i.e. seeing the dreaded telegram boy walking to your door, the way the war affected people at home

[Nick Dando]

Regeneration is the only one that comes to mind for me.



Regeneration (1997)



Nick

[Moor Larkin]

Didn't that old TV show, Upstairs Downstairs have a WWI 'home-front' story-line?

[CaptainWaggett]

name='Moor Larkin']Didn't that old TV show, Upstairs Downstairs have a WWI 'home-front' story-line?

According to the makers, it was the first time the WW1 home front had been addressed in tv drama.



There's a list here but film-makers have never been as interested in WW1 as in WW2. Waterloo Bridge is probably the most famous WW1 home front film but it's hardly a typical family saga.

[will.15]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Boy_Jack_(film)

[castman]

Thanks Guys. That gives me some to go with. Upstairs, dowstairs is a little too 'upstairs' for what I was after.



My son Jack and Atonement are about as high up the social ladder I want to go.



Thanks again....and keep 'em coming!

[penfold]

To the best of my knowledge they aren't available on DVD, but there are some rather fine films about the Home Front made during WW1; some really good PFI's starring Henry Edwards and Chrissie White, recruiting films for the Land Army with Alma Taylor, and the occasional comedy....Tubby's Rest Cure springs to mind, a 1916 Hepworth short comedy on the premise that, in the Summer of 1916 there are no young men left in the English countryside...

[Freddy]

Joyeux Noël is about the Christmas Day truce, what is interesting is a small part of the film deals with the authorities and the church's reaction to it. Also you do see the human face of the soldiers.

[lionheart]

classic BBC series " The Monocled mutineer"



[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monocled_Mutineer]The Monocled Mutineer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

[dukdriver]

The BBC also dramatised R F Delderfield's ` A Horseman Riding By' in 13 parts in the late 70s, part of which chronicles the effects of the War on a Devon estate and its inhabitants.

[CaptainWaggett]

name='dukdriver']The BBC also dramatised R F Delderfield's ` A Horseman Riding By' in 13 parts in the late 70s, part of which chronicles the effects of the War on a Devon estate and its inhabitants.

Flambards is quite similar. But it's interesting that the cinema has never been very interested in the WW1 home front - partly, of course, because there weren't really any WW1 films from 1945 until Oh, What a Lovely War

[castman]

name='CaptainWaggett']Flambards is quite similar. But it's interesting that the cinema has never been very interested in the WW1 home front - partly, of course, because there weren't really any WW1 films from 1945 until Oh, What a Lovely War

Exactly, I find it very strange that WW1 seems to have been so overlooked considering the number of films made about WW2 and every other conflict since. Historically speaking WW1 lost more lives, devastated more families and thus had the greatest impact on nations world-wide than any other conflict before or since.



I can only think that ,at first, war films may have been considered a bit of a raw nerve risk to produce, by the time it was considered a safe bet to make such films we had ww2 which had much better press and news coverage to enable films to be made more accurately about specific events

[Nick Dando]

It was a case of the technology to make the films was better during WW2 and in its aftermath. And it was an easy box office target for film makers through the 1950s and 1960s. The equipment was still available, although sometimes anachronistic (Bedford QLs in Dunkirk, a Land Rover in Ice Cold in Alex, the inevitable German half tracks which were always American M3s).



Nick

[CaptainWaggett]

There are plenty of WW1 films in the 1930s but they're mostly not concerned with the home front which is what was originally asked about.. But then nor are 1950s and 1960s WW2 films (the only exception I know of being Those People Next Door). Though one 1930s exception that hasn't been mentioned is Goodbye Mr Chips which has quite a long section about the school in wartime.



I don't think it's that surprising that WW1 vanished from the popular imagination after the 1940s. After all, there probably aren't many 1920s and 1930s films about the Boer War and film-makers lost interest in the Falklands and first Gulf War long ago.

[lionheart]

anyone remember this when it was on 1982 ( in UK it was called Bad Hats staring Mick Ford



L'amour fugitif (1982) (TV)





















.