Directed by Humphrey Jennings • Documentary • 1943 • 36 minutes
The villagers of Cwmgiedd, southwest Wales, are the stars of Humphrey Jennings’ unforgettably inventive drama-doc. At Lidice, Czechoslovakia, a mining community’s entire male population was executed by the Nazis in 1942. Jennings (often said to be Britain’s greatest documentary filmmaker) ingeniously retells the story as if happening in Cwmgiedd, whose inhabitants re-enact the tragic events.
It’s a brilliant counterfactual twist on the ‘story documentary’ format so often favoured by the wartime Crown Film Unit, not only expressing with great power and empathy the tragedy, bravery and moral importance of Lidice but also making unbearably palpable, for domestic viewers of the time, what is at stake for Britain in its defence against German invasion. It’s also brilliantly filmmaking, reserved at first then building, with Jennings’ characteristic attention to telling visual and aural detail, to an emotionally wrenching climax. Last but not least, it’s a deeply felt tribute, by the most English of Englishmen, to Welshness and Wales.
Up Next in World War II
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Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
Directed by Marc Rothemund • Drama • With Julia Jentsch • 2005 • 117 minutes
The true story of Germany’s most famous anti-Nazi heroine is brought to thrilling life in the multi-award winning drama Sophie Scholl-The Final Days. Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, Sophie Scholl s...
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Heimat is a Space in Time
Directed by Thomas Heise • Documentary • 2019 • 218 minutes
In HEIMAT IS A SPACE IN TIME, German filmmaker Thomas Heise shares the stories of three generations of his family, in their own words.
Heise sets the tone early, reading an anti-war essay written in 1912 by his grandfather Wilhelm, whe...
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The Good War and Those Who Refused to...
Directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Tejada-Flores • Documentary • With Ed Asner • 2002 • 57 minutes
Millions of people from Allied countries fought to liberate Europe from Hitler’s grip during World War II . Yet 40,000 Americans refused to shoulder weapons in “the good war.”
Narrated by Ed Asn...
