politalX Politics Store - The First World War In Colour [2003]
![The First World War In Colour [2003]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51N0A9EC5DL._SL160_.jpg)
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List Price: £24.99
Our Price: £7.98
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
Manufacturer: Fremantle Home Entertainment
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: Exempt
Binding: DVD
EAN: 5030697007094
Format: PAL
Label: Fremantle Home Entertainment
Manufacturer: Fremantle Home Entertainment
Number Of Items: 2
Publisher: Fremantle Home Entertainment
Region Code: 0
Release Date: 2003-09-01
Running Time: 372
Studio: Fremantle Home Entertainment
Theatrical Release Date: 2003
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Editorial Reviews:
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World War I in Colour is a Channel 5 documentary (6 x 50-minute episodes) made with the cooperation of the Imperial War Museum, designed to make the Great War come alive for a 21st-century audience. The events of 1914-18 are authoritatively narrated by Kenneth Branagh, who presents the military and political overview, while interviews with historians add different perspectives. The human cost is conveyed by moving interviews with the now very elderly survivors, and by extracts from letters and memoirs. All aspects of the war, on land, sea and air are covered in separate programmes. In theory the series continues the heritage of ITV's The Second World War in Colour (1999) and Britain at War in Colour (2000), and with 75 per cent of the material never shown on television before there is every reason to watch. The crucial difference between this and the WWII programmes is that the Great War wasn't filmed in colour, and the footage has been computer colourised. The programme-makers argue the conflict itself was in colour--but however realistic the digital processing, it still feels inauthentic and historically a distortion. Worse still is their destroying the original compositions by cropping the top and bottom of the material to fit widescreen TVs. The result is a potentially excellent series badly presented, best watched with the colour turned off. Even then it cannot compete with the BBC's 26-part The Great War (1964), still one of the finest documentaries ever made. On the DVD: World War I in Colour is presented on two discs with three episodes on each disc. The modern interview clips look and sound immaculate, while the historical footage varies from very poor to quite good. Even so, the picture resolution is not helped by discarding a third of the original images and stretching what remains to widescreen. The budget spent on colourisation would have been better used to restore the often very scratchy black-and-white film, and to pay for an orchestra to rerecord the score, which is realised with a clichéd palette of preset electronic samples. Both DVDs reproduce the same general background facts, timeline and 20 biographies as static text screens. Disc One has a 15-minute behind-the-scenes feature in which producer Philip Nugus and director Jonathan Martin justify the colourisation. Disc Two offers Tactics & Strategy, which at 52 minutes amounts to a whole seventh programme, mixing archive footage with new computer graphics to illustrate in detail 13 specific aspects of the conflict. Presented in 4:3 ratio this is the most creative, original and rewarding part of the entire package. --Gary S Dalkin
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Satisfactory
Comment: The First World War in Colour accomplishes all it says on the box, covering the Land Sea and Air War with no particular bells or whistles. As previous reviews suggest, the same footage is repeated several times over, and the shot of the guy carrying a wounded soldier through the trenches as he looks towards the camera is shown in every episode, sometimes two or three times an episode.
Branagh does a decent job with the narration, however, the best part of the series for me is seeing some of the old veterans telling their stories, in what was probably the last time they will ever appear on camera talking in depth of their experiences. Just seeing and hearing their tales of horror on its own makes the series worth watching, and it is primarily because of them I gave it a three Star rating, otherwise it would have been two.
The programme as expected does rely heavily on footage of the land war, and I was rather disappointed at the short space of time they dedicated to the Battle of Jutland in the Sea War programme. The same can be said of the BEF action in August 1914 at the start of the war, and as always the magnificent fighting retreat from Mons was almost totally ignored - arguably one of the greatest military actions in the history of the British Army.
So in conclusion the programme is certainly worth watching as an introduction to the Great War, but compared to the definitive BBC production in 1964 on the Great War, or the 1969 Thames TV production called the World at War, the First World War in Colour certainly falls a long way short of reaching these standards.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Simply terrible!
Comment: "If any one tells you that they weren't scared to go `over the top' then they're a liar!" That is the only line in this travesty of a TV show that you need to know and the producers seem to know this as it gets repeated and repeated until I switched off the TV. Do not waste your money on this dribble. It doesn't tell you anything new and is very bland, so bland that I never made it to disc two! The BBC's The Great War documentary is much better even if it is in black and white! One star is one star too many.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A great series...
Comment: An excellent and valuable resource on the subject of World War one including veteran's views and experiences that I found most moving. The production team have done a great job of colourising the film footage without making it look "coloured in" and it gives a good impression of what it was like.
As for the narrative I found it to be as good as any other and this DVD explores several aspects of the war from the trenches to the war at sea and in the air. I though it was a great series. Not quite on par with the series "The Great war" which was outstanding. This series is a must have for those interested in the subject.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Colour brings the war to life
Comment: By colourizing the film, the producers have brought WW1 to life. Being a child of the age of colour, I have always found black & white uninviting & unexciting. I believe that this series will set a trend just like the Britain at War in Colour has done.
However it was not only the colourizing that made the series, but the editorial policy of the series itself. It has a balance between personal interviews, diary extracts, opinions of experts & the commentary by the Narrator thereby keeping interest in the viewing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A very good history.
Comment: The colour is first rate and the historical accuracy is even better. Some of the best historians of the Great War have contributed to this feature, Gary Sheffield and Norman Stone are among the finest in all of military history. This is not a day by day running of the war but is rather more of an overview account. This is essentially a true account of how the allies came to win the war. It is not however the accepted 'schools' version of events and is in my view all the better for that.
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