how realistic is 1917

The 1,735 sq. Biddiss also got into the psychology of soldiering on the Western Front. The guns, thanks to some creative licence, might not be quite as accurate as in real life: Schofield escapes several gunmen, including a sniper and soldiers on foot. Big expectations but falls short on realism. “But we had to shut him up for obvious reasons, as we couldn’t stand too much of that.”. Of course, anyone would know 1917 is a year during which British troops were fighting in World War I. Your email address will not be published. "It became so common that an effective way for the soldier to express this emotion was to omit this word. Lance Corporal Schofield (Left) & Lance Corporal Blake (Right) called in by General Erinmore to deliver a message that could potentially save 1600 men. “Andy Robertshaw was the advisor on that stuff. Even the rats – which chew off a soldier’s ear, swarm around the trenches, and (unfortunately for the lads) set off a booby trap – are true to life. Yes, 1917 has goodies and baddies – the Brits try to save an injured German pilot, the German pilot responds by stabbing one of them – and it’s a rollickingly tense adventure. There’s also a scene with a tank stuck in a shell hole in No Man’s Land that has the right guns for the period.”. The 1917 script, written by Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns, is inspired by “fragments” of stories from Mendes’ grandfather, who served as a “runner” — a messenger for the British on the Western Front. AK-74: The successor of the legendary AK-47 assault rifle, The Cost Of An AK-47 On The Black Market Around The World, 3 Ways to Supercharge Your Life this Year, The Last Full Measure: Heroic story of William H. Pitsenbarger, Battle of Marawi – a longest urban battle in Philippines modern history. Jarhead, based on Anthony Swofford's book of the same name, recounts Swofford's time as a Marine, while 1917 tells the story of two soldiers racing to deliver a message that could save the lives of up to 1600 men. But thanks to Andy Robertshaw, there’s detailed accuracy with equipment and uniform. “He starts off that way and has a line about, ‘The only way this war is going to be won is last man standing,’” says Boff. “There were fundamental implausibilities and minor historical details that weren’t quite right,” he says. One detail changed is the date. "1917," with its high-octane action, large cast and ever-changing mis-en-scene, opted to stitch together takes up to nine minutes long -- and yes, though marketed as a one-shot film, "1917… June 8 It's Official: The U.S. “When they did realise, they advanced very cautiously – partly because of the traps and rear guards left for them, and partly because they would have to advance 20-odd miles across devastated terrain. The two men had a baptism of fire from Paul, who put them through ­gruelling boot camps until they looked and acted the part. In reality, Alberich was a tactical, well-executed plan which allowed the German army – battered and depleted from the Somme and the grind of the Western Front – to regroup, free up divisions, and shorten its defensive frontline line by 25 miles. “Yes, war is horrible and terrible. Schofield also checks all his pouches before going over the top – a reference to his experience and how soldiers would lose ammo from their pockets during battle. Guns featured in the action include the Lee-Enfield No. ... but in the case of the first world war I think it is very important to show case the struggle in a realistic way. Paul is a retired sergeant who served 24 years in the Parachute Regiment before going into private ­surveillance. He searched shell holes where the companies might be hiding and was shot at by German snipers. He was, of course, wrong and has since apologised. Consequently, it all feels very real, and tension runs extremely high. World War I epic 1917 is an unusual type of war movie – and not just for the fact that it's edited as though it's one continuous shot.. “But these are pedantic things to get worked up about!” says Boff. 1917 follows two British soldiers, Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay), who are handed the perilous task of traversing no … “You do get that in some of the accounts, that Germans put more time and effort into making their trenches,” says Boff. With the Germans in retreat and the Allies communication lines cut, Lance Corporals Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) are charged with delivering a message. “There are resonances of Gallipoli and resonances of almost any First World War over-the-top kind of battle.”. Biddiss had Blake constantly check his bayonet is fixed, while Schofield – more experienced with his kit – fastens it only the once. Comment below what you thought of the movie. “You get the same sense you get from a lot of the photographs from the time.”. “I couldn’t let go of that one image. It drew in all the world’s major economic powers. In a way that doesn't brush over certain details or gloss over them. In his interview with the Sunday People, Paul Biddiss, 51, a dad of five from Oxfordshire, tells the secrets behind 1917’s authenticity. Despite all the bloodshed, 1917’s most haunting scene is also a rare moment of beauty. While it sets up Cumberbatch’s character, Colonel Mackenzie, as a rampant warmonger, when Schofield finally delivers the message, Mackenzie takes his orders. They are supposedly electric but I’d be very surprised if they last longer than half an hour. Laurence Fox recently made headlines with his claim that the casting of Nabhaan Rizwan as a Sikh solider in 1917 was “institutionally racist” for “forcing diversity on people”. Officers in WWI swore like, well, troopers. “German units tended to stay in the same place more than the English and French, who would rotate around. “In the big scheme of things this was not some major strategic trap they were trying to spring,” says Boff. Moira Macdonald. To my eye, he got it bang on here. 1917 also depicts several black soldiers among the British forces, which is also historically accurate. Find out more, The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Made to look as if it is one singular take, with no hard cuts throughout the entire movie, 1917 alludes to the ever-lasting brutality and intensity of warfare. I thought within the world that Mendes created, it was coherent, consistent, sensible, and actually rather beautiful.”. Overall, though, he's complimentary. But the film is not about actual events that happened to Lance Corporal Alfred H. Mendes, a 5-ft.-4-inch 19-year-old who’d enlisted in the British Army earlier that year and later told his grandson stories of being gassed and wounded … “When the Germans retreated, the Entente didn’t even realise they’d gone for a bit,” says Boff. “One of the highest non-combat injuries in that war was trench foot because the boots were seeped in water,” Biddiss told The Mirror. Mendes’ film is set on April 6, 1917, the day the US joined the war. There’s no big Spielbergian scene of French peasants being slaughtered, to be avenged by our hero later in the film. There's a reason for this all to be happening. In short: sort of. More than 9 million combatants had died. Boredom was also part of life in the trenches, and Biddiss captured that by putting supporting actors to work on mundane, true-to-trench-life tasks: filling sandbags, playing checkers with buttons, and killing lice with candles. There was no point in rushing – they had to build up roads and railways to bring the logistics forward to enable the next attack. He’s not some kind of lunatic character, like Kilgore from Apocalypse Now.”. Instead, Schofield has to clamber over bloated civilian bodies – which are just there – when he gets trapped against a dam. Young actors Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay play the parts of Lance Corporals Blake and Schofield respectively, taking responsibility for the majority of the film's dialogue and action. it was understood as a matter of routine. Archive’s androids give new life to an old question: is ‘romance’ electric? Paul’s meticulous attention to detail runs all through the film 1917. I suppose there was more incentive to make it more comfortable. “But in the course of the retreat, the Germans did leave booby traps, and snipers, and machine gunners to make life as hard for the Entente as possible.”. This included 140,000 soldiers from the Indian subcontinent on the Western Front. It was also known…, In the last decade, the NATO alliance is shifting from conventional large-scale forces to surgical precise special units.…, 1917 – the most realistic war movie ever made. The special effects makeup team describes how they created realistic dead bodies for Sam Mendes' WWI movie 1917. “But equally, if there was a message that needed sending and you were the nearest bloke standing by, you might be sent off with it.”. The film’s call to action – the German army retreating from the Western Front – is based on Operation Alberich, a real-life withdrawal by the German to a newly built defensive position known as the Hindenburg Line. Required fields are marked *. The attack is depicted as a hasty assault by Colonel Mackenzine (Benedict Cumberbatch) and the 2nd Devons, who believe they’ve caught the Germans on the run. Biddiss drilled into actors the importance of taking care of their feet, just as real WWI soldiers would have. My question is - how realistic is this depiction and if it is realistic - what were technical specs of these lamps? "There was one particular story he told us about carrying a message across No Man’s Land alone at dusk,” Mendes told Radio 1. The entirety of "1917," a drama set during World War I, follows a pair of young soldiers trying to deliver a message to stop an attack. June 8 As More Americans Head Out, 22 States Are Seeing Jumps In New Coronavirus Cases. “It didn’t seem specific to me,” says Boff. Read our community guidelines in full, The latest offers and discount codes from popular brands on Telegraph Voucher Codes, Alfred Mendes, whose story inspired his grandson's film, George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman in 1917, Dean-Charles Chapman, left, director Sam Mendes, center, and George MacKay on the set of 1917, What’s on TV tonight: Teenage Superstars, The Masked Singer, Raging Bull, and more, Truman Capote as Pygmalion: how the 'tiny terror' threw his adopted daughter into high society. Could it have done better? Mackay’s Schofield is weary from seeing action at the Somme, while Chapman’s Blake is naively gung-ho. The camera follows the young soldiers in one long tracking shot, making it feel like you're right in the action. In fact, 1917 was inspired by stories told to Mendes by his grandfather, the writer Alfred Mendes. He became a military ­adviser after working as an extra on the 2014 film Monuments Men and getting into a ­conversation with its star, Hollywood giant George Clooney. At the end of the day, the message does get through and some lives are saved. Mendes is known for his Academy Award-winning work on … My hobby's are firearms, skiing, martial arts. It's a hugely cinematic moment, of course, but according to the Imperial War Museum, songs – including popular tunes from the day such as Pack Up Your Troubles – were a way to combat boredom in the trenches. Biddiss ensured lots of other details were correct: how to salute properly; handling and firing weapons (using rubber bayonets and blanks – both of which are still dangerous); how specific bullet wounds would affect body movement; not keeping fingers on triggers (a common mistake from movie soldiers), and expressing fear and anger during battles. Furthermore, the military personnel of all ranks has called it the most realistic war film ever made. It dispels with the popular “lions led by donkeys” myth for a more matter-of-fact viewpoint: not everything was completely senseless. “We had one chap who was a very, very good singer and he used to indulge in his singing and lead us in the choruses and he was always inclined to get a bit sentimental,” said Private E Todd, who served on the Western Front. He used to be at the National Army Museum and has 30 to 40 years advising on this stuff. The Hollywood blockbuster movie 1917 has been hailed as a masterpiece and it is one of the main favorites at this year’s Oscars. The story has been, as Mendes himself described, “enlarged” for the big screen. 1917 does simplify details for the sake of dramatic license: maps that would actually get you nowhere, muddled jargon relating to the regiments, and bringing its casualty clearing station (a makeshift hospital for the wounded) much closer to the frontline than it would have been in real life. It was not actually shot in one take, but rather a series of continuous, uncut shots that were then cleverly connected to give the feeling of one long take. And it has won praise from real soldiers such as Afghanistan veteran Colonel Richard Kemp. In a gripping drama inspired by a real-life war story told to Mendes by his grandfather, they play Lance Corporals Will Schofield and Tom Blake – two young British soldiers on a mission to warn comrades that they are walking into an enemy trap. But there’s nothing to mark the assault out as anything other than generic WWI stuff. Production cut out 2,500 feet of trenches around its filming locations on Salisbury Plain, with military historian Andy Robertshaw (who was also an advisor on War Horse and Wonder Woman) ensuring that the trenches and No Man’s Land landscapes were dressed properly. "But frankly, it’s a film. “The Allies had pretty much come up to the new German line by then,” says Boff. You got a sense of it, but it wasn’t stuck down your throat. I've just seen "1917" and when Schofield and Blake were in enemy trenches - the rat tripwire scene - they were using some portable lamps. Some are lost, but some are saved.”, 'I saw a corpse and jumped out my skin': inside the muddy horrors of making 1917. Wounded soldiers are bloody, missing limbs, and crying in pain. Sam Mendes’s blockbuster film 1917 follows two young British Army messengers in an against-the-clock attempt to deliver a message behind enemy lines. Jan. 7, 2020 at 6:00 am Updated Jan. 8, 2020 at 11:48 am . Boot camp for George Mackay and Dean-Charles Chapman included crawling around in the freezing cold, running with their heavy boots, and moving and taking cover while carrying full kit. He was caught in a gas attack in 1918 and sent home. Sam Mendes directed and produced the film, 1917. It was a British and Canadian attack to capture the new ridge and was supposed to suck in German reinforcements to a French offensive further south, which happened in May. Set in World War I, 1917, is a pure bravado of two soldiers, Lance Corporal Schofield & Blake, who are tasked to deliver a crucial message to Colonel Mackenzie. In the film, the retreat is played as a trap – a crafty manoeuvre to lure the Allies into an attack, unaware that the enemy is heavily fortified and anticipating it. Although it features A-list names Colin Firth, Mark Strong and Benedict Cumberbatch in supporting roles, the actors who take up most screen time are the ­previously little-known George MacKay, 27, and Dean-Charles Chapman, 22. As recalled in Alfred Mendes’ autobiography, which was written in the Seventies and published posthumously in 2002, Alfred enlisted aged just 19 and fought on the Western Front for two years with the 1st Battalion Rifle Brigade. “Some filmmakers would have made a huge deal out of that,” says Boff. Here’s how Mendes’s 1917 measures up to true events. Dr Jonathan Boff, history lecturer at the University of Birmingham and author of Winning and Losing on the Western Front, jokes that after coming out of the cinema he dubbed the film “Tommy Atkins and the Trenches of Doom” for its Indiana Jones-style adventure. The movie 1917 is visually accurate in terms of uniforms, but it suffers from multiple historical errors, I liked the movie. Paul Biddiss had only one objective, to train more than 800 men to look and act like soldiers and give ­essential advice to director Sam Mendes. Two Indian regiments even took part in an unsuccessful cavalry charge during the Battle of the Somme. View more property details, sales history and Zestimate data on Zillow. “But when he reads the letter, he backs down and does what he’s told. A soldier wakes up in a flowery meadow in the first few seconds of "1917," Sam Mendes' gripping action drama about World War I. Having the clobber and guns is a great start, but to avoid having “all the gear and no idea” military advisor and former paratrooper Paul Biddiss taught the actors were taught to move, shoot, and even think like real WWI soldiers. The depiction of atrocities against civilians are also nuanced. “So I told them they must look after their feet.”. 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