Apocalypse: World War I
2014
Original language: French
- documentary
- war & politics
The story
Colorized historical footage in ascending order of World War 1. Not only the relatively known Flanders and France battles, but also the generally unknown Italian-Austrian, German-Polish-Russian, Japanese-German, Ottoman Empire- Allied and African German Colonies, and other unknown or forgotten fronts and battles.
What it’s like
Colorized archival footage dominates here, with muted, slightly washed-out hues that make trench mud, khaki uniforms and pale northern skies feel uncannily close, while the grainy black-and-white originals keep reminding you how far away 1914 really is. Narration by Mathieu Kassovitz is measured and unhurried, and the score is sparse and mournful, with low strings and long silences between shellfire and the drone of old engines. The rhythm is chronological and steady, moving from the Western Front to the Italian Alps, the Eastern Front, the Ottoman campaigns and the African colonies, so each episode settles into a slow accumulation of loss rather than a sequence of thrills. Tone is solemn, reflective and occasionally bleak, with a quiet anger at political blundering, including the 1917 Russian collapse. Violence is real and frequent but shown through archive: corpses, shelled landscapes and wounded men appear without graphic staging, and the dread comes from scale and repetition more than gore. It suits a rainy weekend, a history-minded evening, or a long stretch of attentive viewing, and is best for people who want the forgotten fronts told with gravity.
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