The Battle of the Somme has long been recognised as one of the jewels in the collection of the Imperial War Museum's Film and Video Archive, an opinion formally endorsed in 2005 when the film became the first item of British documentary heritage to be accepted for inscription on UNESCO's ‘Memory of the World’ register. To mark this honour, as well as the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War, the Museum in 2008 published The Battle of the Somme on a new DVD, featuring a full digital restoration of the film and two different, specially recorded musical accompaniments.
As the Museum's application for UNESCO registration made plain, The Battle of the Somme is important both as the world's first feature-length battlefield documentary and for a number of other reasons. These include the precedents it set in propaganda technique, the issues it raised about the portrayal of warfare for a general audience, and the role it played in turning film from a little-valued form of mass entertainment into a medium worthy of inclusion in the collections of a major national museum.
The film's greatest importance, however, and the reason for its astonishing success with British cinema audiences on its release in 1916, was the feeling among members of those audiences that the film was making it possible for them to share some of the reality of what their husbands, sons, brothers, neighbours and other loved ones were experiencing in the actual battle of the Somme.
This sense of engagement with reality has continued through the years following the end of the First World War. The film is the source of several of the most iconic images used to invoke the Western Front, the First World War or even twentieth-century warfare in general in popular imagination. Images such as the great mine explosion at Beaumont Hamel, the nervous troops in the Sunken Lane, the ‘over the top’ charge, the ‘trench rescue’ of a wounded comrade, the treatment of casualties and the faces of the survivors are all very familiar to millions of people who have no idea where they originated.
The fact that one of those images – ‘over the top’ – is now universally recognised as a scene deliberately staged for the camera rather than a piece of actual combat filming has added another element to the reputation of the film, contributing in some people's minds to a cynical ‘understanding’ that much war film is heavily tainted by the practice of faking.
The Imperial War Museum has devoted considerable attention to examining the question of the authenticity and thus the historical value of its films. As early as 4 May 1922 the Museum arranged a screening for a panel of Trustees and invited experts to comment in these terms on The Battle of the Somme and other titles. This tradition of examination, research and evaluation has continued and been encouraged ever since, not least from a feeling of responsibility towards the cameramen whose work is preserved in the Archive, and whose bravery and integrity are challenged every time a generalised or unfounded accusation of faking is made.
The Museum has never, however, had the time or the resources to pursue the kind of detailed analysis that has been undertaken by Alastair Fraser, Andrew Robertshaw and Steve Roberts for the present book. We first met this team when they were working with YAP Films on a 2006 television programme called Battle of the Somme – The True Story and have followed with interest the extraordinary range of material they have uncovered and freely shared with us, as well as the variety of forensic techniques they have used, as they continued their research for Ghosts on the Somme.
The fact that Ghosts confidently endorses the authenticity of the vast majority of the footage shot by the film's two cameramen, Geoffrey Malins and J.B. McDowell, at the end of June and the start of July 1916 is a gratifying corrective to the kind of glib assumptions mentioned earlier. At the same time, the quantity of evidence produced to justify reinterpretation of so much of the traditional understanding of exactly which units or individuals were filmed, where, on what occasion and by whom, will give everybody who thinks they know the film much food for thought for many years to come. Ghosts on the Somme sets a new standard for the examination of archive documentary film and is more than welcome as a result. The availability of this book will greatly enhance the understanding of those who view The Battle of the Somme and are interested in the detailed history of what they are watching.
Roger Smither
Keeper, Film and Photograph Archives
Imperial War Museum