Entertainment For Lively Minds
World at War DVD box set
Posted by goatboyuk69 on 20 December 2009 - 10:51pm.
It may not be festive viewing, but I thought it worthwhile to alert the Massif that the greatest documentary series of all time - The Wire of docs, The Citizen Kane of scary black and white reality, the fruitily narrated king of war minutia - is available at HMV currently for £30 of our earth pounds.
Thats a real bargain for over 35 hours of intensely depressing and distressing footage of people killing each other.
Go on. Get it in. It is Xmas after all.
Merry Xmas -War is over. But not in my house.
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Amazon.co.uk
Has it for 27.68!
Awesome documentary series.
And HMV.COM
has it for £24.99...
http://hmv.com/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?ctx=280;0;-1;-1;-1&sku=37...
It's remarkable
"Down the street the soldiers came"
And that theme tune. Marvellous, evocative stuff. And it was on ITV!
Can anyone imagine a serious 24 episode documentary costing the equivalent of £10M in todays money on ITV these days.
We currently have to pretend they're the saviours of the nation for transmitting Harry Hill's TV Burp.
Didn't someone say recently
That if TWAW had been made using the modern ITV 'documentary' format as a blueprint it would have been 'Arthur Lowe's World At War' and would have featured 'his journey from Dunkirk to Berlin'.
It's already been done:-
'Al Murray's Road To Berlin'
It's a must-have boxset.
I got this box a few months ago and I still only halfway through. I was born the year it was originally broadcast and had never seen it before. I'm not sure why, maybe it's to do with 40 now being closer than 30, but I had a sudden desire to learn about WW2, and TWAW is an amazing introduction. What is most striking is the language and flow of the programmes: they were designed to be paid attention to. Although the pre-credit sequence tells you what the episode is about, there is no introductory overview of the episode, no post break recap after the ads, and no pandering. There is so much in it and yet when it was broadcast you couldn't video it, you had to watch it. The reason I've had the boxset since March, but am only 16 episodes down is that if I decide to watch one, I have to stop everything else that I'm doing. That doesn't happen much these days.
slightly OT
Thanks for articulating exactly what annoys me nowadays about 'documentaries'. They nearly always start with a preview of what's going to be shown anyway, then if on a commercial channel, they spend precious time after each break either recapping what's been said, or previewing what's about to be said (or in some heinous cases, both). I think this ties into something the Hep mentioned on the podcast, with respect to X Factor etc - broadcasters seem to asume we are all thick, so can't be relied upon to either pay attention, or think. This is, I believe, one of the reasons for the popularity of such programmes as WAW, as well as the Wire, in DVD box set form - there is no spoon feeding of the viewer.
Gary
I agree completely with your sentiments Gary...
..but I suspect the constant recapping is done in an attempt to capture viewers who may just have arrived at the show through channel hopping whilst adverts were on the other side. We are all seen as a nation of channel hoppers these days as we slump with our TV remotes desperately searching for something decent to watch - typified by the cartoon character at the beginning of CHarlie Brooker's Screenwipe.
It is still bloody annoying tho'.
A Martian....
....planning a trip to the UK might prepare by watching a bit of TV, reading some popular press and listening to a spot of radio. The only conclusion he could draw would be that we are a nation of drooling simpletons, incapable of anything other than gazing at the gaudy, listening to the simplest dross and waving vaguely at flashing lights. The only conclusion I can draw about the popularity of much of TV and radio output is that most of the population is actually pretty dim, sadly.
Whilst I understand the logic behind the
making of allowances for attention deficit disorder, I just find myself wishing that anyone who suffers from it that badly that they need to have things spelled out in summary form every nine minutes should just fuck off and tune to another channel so that I can watch television programmes that don't treat me like a simpleton.
There is a place you can go
A magical televisual land where every programme is predicated on the assumption that you're not a moron, there are no adverts and absolutely anything is likely to be considered worthy of attention from Krautrock to Chess.
Where is this mythical place I hear you cry? BBC4. It's on freeview and its worth the licence fee on it's own.
Tonight, taken purely at random, I enjoyed pitting my wits against sundry anal retentives (one of them a man who looked spookily like an elderly lesbian) whilst admiring the rather saucy Victoria Coren on Only Connect, watched a fascinating documentary on British video games presented by a man with a stick whose face on encountering Grand Theft Auto for the first time was an absolute picture, followed by a surprisingly riveting programme on how to play good chess.
Thats a fairly typical evening. No reality proogrammes, no celebrities, no adverts. Just intelligent people saying interesting things without unnecesarry distractions or phone votes.
A wonderful thing. Ignore it and lose it.
True dat
BBC4 is a great thing and responsible for the lack of space on my video hard drive thing.
Agree totally
The little I watch comes almost exclusively from BBC4, with a BIT OF More 4. Is it me or did E4 used to be good? Isn't that where the Sopranos started? It is dire now.
Absolutely
..spot on ! The best channel to hit our TV's in years ! And wev'e also got the iplayer to watch it again...........! Does it get any better than this ?
I think not !
Yea verily
For it is so.
Thank the lord it wasn't made now...
'The World at War - brought to you by Goodfellas pizza'.
I've had it for a few years
and go through it probably on an annual basis. (Great for doing the ironing to.) Essential item for any household. I agree with goatboy, but I can't see anyone (let alone that bastion of quality programming, ITV) making a series like this now - 26 hour long episodes, assuming the audience is intelligent and interested enough to watch and re-watch it? Where would we get something like that?
Combine this with 'Civilisation' and 'The Ascent Of Man'
and you've got a fine summary of who we are, what we achieved and how we almost lost it.
Best documentary series ever
Yes, just agreeing with everyone else. I'd also say that Olivier's narration is the very definition of "Gravitas", and it's interesting to see just how, well, old everyone looks in the interview sequences; in its way it's a time capsule about the mid-70s, not just about WW2.
I am off work and half way through it just now.
I am finding it mind blowing. Essential. Everyone should buy it.
Sold
£30 in the high street (how quaint) HMV Shops? I'll have to head on over. It's worth the £5 extra to ensure I've got it pre-xmas and don't have to hang aorund at home hoping that the postman will ring the doorbell rather than just sticking a card through the door and running away.
First the complete Seinfeld, now this. Delighted.
It's a handy solution to what to do with my holiday mornings. Not so long ago, BBC2 used to show an excellent documentary series at 9 or 10 in the morning all the way through the Christmas holidays - one year it was WAW, another it was Ken Burns' Civil War or The Wild West (I'd like to see those DVD box sets at £30). It was the best incentive to get out of bed. Not anymore.
First Box Set I ever purchased
Purchased a couple of years ago.
Hadn't seen it since it was first broadcast in the early 70's and as my own lads were the same age at the time I thought this was something they really should understand.We watched the lot three years ago - late sunday afternoons just before dinner and it opened their eyes to some of the horror their Grandad had seen as a young man.
£27 in Fopp
Job done.
One problem with the series..
When it was made, a lot of important stuff (Bletchley Park, guidance systems used by allied bombers) was unavailable for use because it was still classified as secret! The interviews, though, are the show's enduring legacy. And Larry O's peerless narration. Even if he does pronounce Ukraine as "Youcryin'" all the way through it. Can anyone hear the theme tune without feeling a little chill?
set the tone for Sunday afternoons as a kid
I remember this originally being screened on ITV on Sunday afternoons . As a kid growing up in the 70's I always found Sundays depressing as hell, as if everything suddenly turned from technicolor to grey once a week. All the shops were shut. School loomed next day. Nothing on tv except farming programmes and religious bumph. The World At War added to the Sunday melancholy, especially the haunting theme tune and titles. Of course I grew to love the programme later on, but even hearing the theme now gives me a Proustian rush of memories of stodgy Sunday dinners, Songs Of Praise and general tedium and greyness.
Absolutely
You described my own experience perfectly.
And mine
a perfect summation of my childhood.
Me too
It was shown on STV (or Scottish as we're now supposed to call it) on a Sunday afternoon just after Glen Michaels Cartoon Cavalcade.
Glen Michaels Cartoon Cavalcade was a rather strange affair presented by a middle aged man who was friends with a Dachshund called Rudi and a paraffin lamp called Palladin. Third division cartoons such as Batfink and Mr Jaw (he was a shark) were shown and birthday greetings were broadcast to local children.
And then they interviewed Albert Speer.
Such, such were the joys.
I would like to nominate that...
...for "Post of the Year".
Goatboy, you have hit the demographic nail on the head with that one.
For men of a certain age, i.e. 40, your post just about covers everything that Sundays were all about, and your deadpan (can you deadpan in text?) delivery of the line:
"And then they interviewed Albert Speer."
just about made it for me. Thank you, thank you. Still chuckling.
Don't I get a mention? (sob)
Sorry to be a saddo, but linking the WAW with the awfulness of Sundays as a 70's child was mine methinks.
(Though Goatboy's Albert Speer line is brilliant. )
.
Many thanks but credit where it's due
Thanks a lot for the kind words but Ricardo was indeed responsible for the bringing up of a lot of semi-melancholic memories for 40 year old men.
Mind you, a "Post of the Year" nomination is not to be sniffed at. However, my proudest message board acheivement remains the time I started a cyber-sex thread on the ScottishFitba.Net message board.
The responses were, shall we say, interesting.
Bless thee Goatboyuk69
The World At War brings up so many emotions in my 40 year old memory.
One thing that seriously stopped me appreciating what a great documentary TWAW was as a kid was the scary as hell title sequence - all those haunting black and white photos of civilian victims of WW2 blurring and melting into the lapping flames of the titles.
The last b+w image in the title sequence is the scariest - a gaunt hollow-faced skeleton of a human. It might be a photo of a concentration camp victim - but it could also just as easily be Death.
(They really don't make 'em like this anymore , do they? )
Apologies Ricardo,
..it was the Albert Speer line that got me, but I doff my hat to you, sir, for starting this little sub thread, and carrying me over a "pothole in memory lane" as Randy Newman would say!
Cheers Iain
Have a lovely Xmas and New Year,sir.
War - Whats It Good For?
If ever a voice was invented to convey the futility of war it was that of luvvy Larry. I saw the original broadcast in the 70's and it did compound the Sunday melancholia. It is also unmissable viewing and greatly effecting. No one could fail to be emotionaly involved while watching, that is the real skill of the production. It should be compulsory viewing at ever school in the country.
Tyne Tees showed it on Sunday mornings
Just before 'Weekend World'
It gripped my 11 year old self. I still recall seeing one episode, I think possibly on the siege of Leningrad, where footage was shown of a young boy no more than 5 or 6 stood helplessly looking into the camera next to the body of his mother who had died of cold and starvation in the street. Eventually he burst into tears. And the equally poor souls around him just ignored him.
Devastating television.
Too much Sadness
The piece that rattled in my teenage head, for years after; was film of Japanese civilians jumping in the Pacific at the cliffs of Iowa Jima.
Why did they do it? They would have been safe and well treated. Probably had the best meal for several years. They could have had a happy life but chose the ocean with their children. War is a form of insanity.
That was an example of the same
Japanese mentality that meant the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be rationalised relatively simply at the time. Death before dishonour, loyalty to the Emperor, all that stuff was a central part of the Japanese psyche.
Had America and the allies invaded Japan, the likelihood is they would have fought to all but the last man and the allied casualties would have been monumental before they finally surrendered. For all its horrors, from an allied perspective, those bombings saved tens of thousands of lives.
Plus the Japanese propaganda of the time
had the invading Americans roasting and eating babies.
At the risk of going down a rabbit hole
A lot of the reading I've been doing around this points to the fact the japanese were actually trying to negotiate a surrender at the time (before Hiroshima and Nagasaki), but the allies just didn't like the proposed terms and felt like they could get exactly what they wanted (complete capitulation) by setting an example - the bomb.
And just as an aside, why drop 2 types of bomb if one could provide the example, one uranium one hydrogen, if it wasn't more of a test on expendable targets, and a message to others (like Russia). Why drop them on cities of civilians rather than a less populated or more military area.
As with the fire-bombings of Dresden and Tokyo (yes, and the London blitz, Coventry etc), these were war crimes. We just don't hold ourselves to the same standards as the vanquished. Some of Churchill's early middle east escapades with Bomber Harris would probably make your hair curl.
The usual justification for the atomic bombings is that allied lives were saved, but there were practical alternatives which wouldn't have put them in danger in the first place, or incinerated 2 cities.
To be fair, I did say
"the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be rationalised relatively simply at the time".
I've read some of the things you allude to, and agree in part, but there's plenty of other evidence suggests Japan would not have seriously contemplated a negotiated surrender until some kind of extremely bloody invasion was well under way.
That said, the US clearly had a vested interest in dropping those bombs as a statement for the world to ponder on post-war. I think it's one of those where, for all the documentation that has been released, we'll probably never really get a full answer on how necessary or otherwise it was. I do know that my dad, who was serving in the RAF in India, and who had escaped being shot down by the Japanese on New Year's Day 1945, was bloody relieved they weren't going to have to be part of an invasion force because none of them thought they'd any cance of surviving it.
On the subject of risking running down rabbit holes, here's a devil's advocate one for you. Viewed AT THE TIME, rather than from our perspective, given that Germany and Japan were the instigators of the war, wasn't allied carpet bombing etc etc a justfied response?
The modern idea that wars can be won by one side behaving virtuously against the dirty tricks of some evil empire seems a nonsense to me. War is dirty, it always was, it always will be and when you are in a conflict of that scale, you win by whatever means necessary because the consequences of not winning are too great.
Up to a point, I'll agree to parts of that
yes, I'll go along with 'viewed at the time', but not based on what was public justification/propaganda, but based on what was known by the allied powers - the people who knew of the negotiations and the decision process. All due respect to the POWs who were held (and mistreated) by the Japanese, but that's hardly the informed position as to whether the Hiroshima or Nagasaki drops were necessary. And I have the same problematic debate with older rellies for exactly the same reason, including 'what do I know, I wasn't there' with me being in my 40s. Well yes. But in truth neither were they - Truman was. Churchill was. The military leaders were. They knew what they were doing.
As to 'whatever means necessary', that we'll have to disagree on. If like Bush/Cheney you think the Geneva Convention is quaint and doesn't apply, go for your life. If you think we can justify absolutely anything, so firebombing paper/wood cities, carpet bombing civilian areas, nukes dropped on cities through to depleted uranium shells on today's battlefields, to chemical warfare (Churchill/Harris on the Kurds I believe in the early 20th century, through to Saddam Hussein against the kurds later on), to landmine sales, to torture, and so on ad nauseam.... then it's simply an eye for an eye old testament style, rather than do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Or more simply, no, I don't think you can do anything you like. Edit - they're called 'non-combatants', and 'women and children' for a reason.
And finally to the context of the time, a long, bloody and dirty war, my point is that the bottom line in Japan was that it wasn't just a) bomb into submission or b) fight hand to hand to the death. That's the false choice that was propogated to justify the actions - there were other alternatives that weren't taken.
Slightly off topic though, another interesting aspect I read was that the Japanese weren't actually fighting for the emperor as such through the war, although he was there. They may have been prepared to fight to the death for their mother country or honour or whatever, but the emperor's god-head like position as we view it today was a post-war American invention to fill the political vaccuum.
It's late and I'm off to bed
so I'll keep it short.
A very good insight into the arguments behind aand reasons for dropping the bombs is given in Bird and Sherwin's book "American Prometheus: the triumph and tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer". In short they were dropped to scare Stalin.
If I can find it, I'll get it.
£21 for something that's usually £70 is worth looking at, especially something of this magnitude. I've never seen it mind, but I've never heard anyone say a bad word against it.
I'll be having a look for it tomorrow.
Like the others
I saw it in real time as a kid and someone gave it to me earlier this year as a birthday present. Addictive and horrifying. Should be essential viewing for the yoof.
I always get a buzz from seeing
James Stewart in amongst the talking heads, without indication of his more famous career. Can't see that happening these days. It would probably be called "Jimmy's War" or "It's a Wonderful Strife" if commissioned by today's ...er... commissioning people.
I bought this set for my brother's birthday back in September,
and he's well on the way through it. I'll borrow it when he's done and give it my full attention too; though I remember a lot of it from the initial broadcasts, there's so much of it I'm bound to have missed chunks.
As a Christmas present to myself this year, I've just picked up the Complete Dad's Army boxed set, which HMV has reduced from its original retail price of around a ton to £35, which is also a bargain by any measure.
Once I've finished wondering at the full horror of the historical facts, and the human capacity for evil, I can now also wallow in our wonderful ability to make light of trial and suffering by laughing at it and its consequences, rewarming the cockles of my heart after Larry's delivered the monumental stuff.
Isn't it true that if you play
the sound to the 7th epiode of WAW from 11 minutes in and the pictures from "The Battle of Godfrey's Cottage", they are perfectly in sync?
Or was that the Wizard of Oz...
You....
Stupid boys!
Can I also recommend?
I picked up a boxed set by the BBC, just called World War 2, over here for about $100. It too, is excellent, contains many interviews with participants and survivors. Some of those with some Russian and German gentlemen are bone-chilling. Has the Ken Burns series The War been shown in the UK? The DVD set is terrific, though, understandably, a little US-centric. Highly recommend both of these to all history types.
History as Tragedy
The greatness of the "World at War" was it's unrelenting tone of tragedy. Victory or defeat was hardly the impression. Relief on conclusion and too many tears for any lifetime. Men, women and childrens lives thrown away.
Spot on...
When I was growing up in the 50's and 60's, almost all the coverage (TV and cinema) of the war was positive and 'gung-ho'. When I was a small boy in the 50s almost every game we played was based, in some way, around the war.
TWAW was the first time I can recall a mainstream programme/film which *didn't* focus on "Hey we stuffed the Jerries and the Nips, wasn't it great" and pointed out how the human beings on all sides suffered.
And wasn't it curious that,
half an hour after silently watching the staggering events unfold on the screen, awestruck by their horror, we could get out the box of Airfix soldiers, 1/72nd scale landing craft, Buffaloes, Sherman tanks and DUKWs and re-stage the bloody storming of Okinawa on the living room floor, gleefully mowing down whole platoons of US Marines with scything machine gun fire, pulverising the crews of armoured fighting vehicles or roasting hillsides full of dug-in Japanese infantrymen if we had a couple of flamethrower figures to hand?
Its the faces...
...every time, the faces of the people. Even the victors look scarred, and their eyes empty.
It should be on the National Curriculum.
it's not a surprise that ...
... in the UK we generally look at WWII through the prism of our country's own historical experience ... also a death is a death and any attempt to 'out-martyr' another country is repellent (a dead British soldier in Norway in 1940 is as important as a Chinese woman killed by Japanese soldiers in 1938, surely?)
but from the Martian anthropologist's perspective (or the relevant Wikipedia page), the countries who bore the brunt of the carnage were (in round figures):
Russia - approx 30 million deaths, over 14% of its population
China - estimated 10m-20m deaths, 2-4% of its population
Germany - estimated 6.8m-8.5m deaths, 8-10% of its population
Poland - 4m-5m deaths, 16-17% of population
Dutch East Indies - 3m-4m deaths, 4-6% of population
Japan - 2.7m deaths, 3.8% of population
India - 1.5m-2.5m deaths, >1% population
French Indochina - 1m-1.5m deaths, 4-6% of population
Yugoslavia - 1m deaths, nearly 7% population
Philippines - 0.5m-1m deaths, 3.5-6.5% population
(the UK and France combined lost around a million people, the US over 400,00)
this leads me to think that Russia v Germany on the Eastern Front, and Japan rampaging around the Pacific, were the main events (while we tend to think about Dunkirk, Battle of the Atlantic, Battle of Britain, D Day and the final campaign of 1944/45 in Western Europe) ... also if there was a nationality you didn't want to be in the middle of the last century it was German, Polish or Russian
Couldn't agree more.... And
Couldn't agree more....
And you have the remember the numbers of soldiers/civilians from countries like Russia who were slain by their own country through either a) starvation b) being cannon fodder or c) being executed because they lacked commitment to the cause or were related to someone who didnt share total ideals.
On a related subject - I have just finished reading "Hitler's British Slaves - Allied POW's in Germany 1939-1945" by Sean Longden. Forget Colditz of the Great Escape - many ordinary soldiers were worked/starved to death in conditions similar to those experienced out in Burma but its not something that is really acknowledged here. Its a thought provoking read.
Nemesis
Max Hastings's account of the end of the war against Japan suggests that around 3 million starved to death in Bengal, which would suggest the figure for India is on the low side.
A wise man once said to me...
"War is stupid and people are stupid
And love means nothing in some strange quarters"
Well, thats that fucked then
Thank you Boy George.
Might be a mistake but
got this boxset for £15 from my local Tesco today.