I'm a huge fan of documentaries (especially wartime docs) that tend to have black & white archival footage. WWI and WWII documentaries really hold my attention. And while I find pieces on Nazi Germany extremely dark and disturbing, I also find myself engrossed in sort of a state of disbelief at how one group of human beings can treat another group of human beings. I hate saying that I "enjoy" these films, but at least I'm learning something from them, and not merely being entertained by someone else's misery.
Beyond that, most documentaries involving ships and technology of the 1940s and earlier are also on my list of things I watch somewhat regularly.
This is a film that really broke the mold in documentary films. It played in a very limited run, in very few theaters. A buddy of mine and I left work to go and see it in the Seattle area. It includes interviews of soldiers who survived The Great War (WWI), and featured something never done before. First of all, the B&W film was digitally colorized (not a new thing), but additionally, the film was slowed down to a more life-like pace. That is, old films always seem to be at some sort of hyper speed, making the motions of the subjects seem jerky and moving far too quickly. This film adjusted that down to a more realistic motion. Secondly, they hired lip readers to go over the old B&W archival footage and read what the soldiers were saying in the old silent clips, and then used voice actors to give voices to those silent images. Wartime sound effects were also added (again, nothing new), and were quite accurate in their representation and timing, to my mind. The film is really quite moving. I enjoyed it so much so that as soon as it was released on DVD, I bought one. It's not quite a documentary, as such, and yet it is, if you know what I mean. I highly recommend it.
Here's the trailer.
View: %5BURL%5D%5BURL%5D%5BURL%5Dhttps://youtu.be/IrabKK9Bhds?si=hbBNgEsesgMtM0Y6[/URL][/URL][/URL]
