1917 Case Study

Aerial Photographs

Aerial Photography of the Western Front. A road road cutting through fields with shell craters all around.

In early 2019, IWM’s curatorial team received a request to view aerial photographs from the First World War for an undisclosed project.

During that conflict, aerial photographs were taken on reconnaissance flights over the Western Front and pieced together to make large ‘mosaics’. These ‘mosaics’ could then be used to update trench maps, see new German defences and logistic routes and were vital intelligence in planning operations.

Under the tutorage of Alan Wakefield, Imperial War Museums’ Head of First World War and Early 20th Century, access was arranged at IWM Duxford where a large proportion of the archive is stored.

Attention to detail

Initially unbeknownst to Alan, the research was being conducted to authentically recreate these ‘mosaics’ for an upcoming feature film. In the opening scenes of Sam Mendes’ First World War epic, 1917, General Erinmore, played by Colin Firth, can be seen using the ‘mosaics’ in planning an operation on the Western Front.

'I was impressed with the level of attention to detail taken for a short scene in the film to make it as authentic as possible’ Alan remarked.

IWM Collections

IWM’s extensive collections contain some 11 million photographs, 23,000 hours of film, 33,000 hours of sound recordings, 20,000 paintings, posters and drawings and 155,000 three-dimensional objects. The collections can be navigated with the help of our experienced curatorial team and provide fantastic insight for projects concerning twentieth and twenty-first-century conflicts.

Sir Sam Mendes, writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns and actor George MacKay also came to IWM to read several letters and diaries from the period and visit IWM’s award-winning First World War Galleries.

‘When I saw the film I was able to recognise a number of first-hand accounts from letters and diaries in our collection,’ recalled Alan.

The Actors

View video transcript Hide video transcript

Transcript

George Mackay: We did loads of research. I think like first and foremost day any character or at least for myself I think you kind of understand it via it yourself and then it's about filling your brain and everything else with the context around it to kind of work out how you how you would act in that or they would act in that world. So we came to the Imperial War Museum we were there's so much amazing literature. We went to the war sites and graves and monuments, and museums in France and we went to eat in Belgium. We did military training every day so because we were rehearsing the film for about six months before we started and the beginning of each day was with our military advisers, pulpitis and the armory team, Jason, Joss and just getting our hands around all the gear. So it was a kind of constant gradual you know a gradual, just bit-by-bit just piecing it together constantly. The war poets was a way into it because the situation was so surreal I think, there's just there's so much that you can that you can learn and not just saying but the Imperial War Museum, it's the best place to start,

Dean-Charles Chapman: That's the first place I went. Literally, wake up, found out I got the part, went straight there, and I've never been there before so I was always excited to go and in that First World War section as well really, I went there the other day again like when we was there yesterday, so loved the Imperial War Museum. So good, you know, and I read a book called the Western Front Diaries, which is snippets of diary entries of the soldiers, and I actually found that my great-great-grandfather had a diary entry in that book, so I read that.

Dennis Gassner the production designer, who created the sets of the film, and you know Sam, the director, had a very clear vision of what the story we were telling. and you know it was very immersive on set. let alone watching it. and everything felt real you know none of it felt like a movie set or plastic you know. They were real trenches actually dug into the floor, you know and then when you put extras in costume and fill the trench up with hundreds of men and you look down that trench and it's raining and the atmosphere is how it would have been, the conditions are terrible, it touches you, it gives you a bit of a reality check, and you know you realize how good you've got it today. Yeah but you know once you put the gear on and you'd step in the trench, you instantly just were in that mindset, it was easy to switch it on.

[Music]

George Mackay: Trying to understand the experience personally, via kind of personal accounts, listening and reading personal accounts, and then playing these soldiers ourselves, it puts into perspective the scale of the loss of life, because once you sort of start to understand it on a more personal level, you then, when you consider it was millions, that's that has kind of has never hit home quite in the same way. I think I've been shocked by the numbers but it's been a number, it's not been, I've not attached it, I've not had an understanding or insight into the personal loss, so that was a real kind of awakening.

Film: "They're walking into a trap. Your orders are to deliver a message calling off tomorrow morning's attack".

Dean-Charles Chapman: I mean first I think it's important to sort of learn from you know, human history and you know correct ourselves as we go along in history and learn from the mistakes and the good things and the bad things but, you know, those men that fought in that war literally sacrificed everything. They had and you know the more you look into the First World War it just makes you want to cry, just talking about it you know, and I think that's one thing I hope people take away from watching the film is that I hope it sort of inspires them to look at their own ancestors' history.

The film’s stars and director can be heard in the clips below reflecting on how they researched the project, including their visits to IWM.

View video transcript Hide video transcript

Transcript

Mark Strong: I know the history of the First World War, I mean obviously I studied at school, I've been aware of it all my life. There is a lot of information obviously these days on the internet and documentaries, but as an actor it's really or just accessing that place in yourself where you have to try and imagine what it must have been like as a young man to be sent over to France, Belgium, wherever, and you know be in fear of your life essentially and extraordinary circumstances.

Film: "Mike, pick a man, bring your kit".

Daniel Mays: I hadn't worked with Sam before, but on my first day filming he sat me down in his trailer and I met him properly for the first time, and he then explained the whole kind of inspiration behind the film. It was loosely based on all the stories that his grandfather had told him, so he was a great director in the sense of allowing me to sort of, you know, know about that world and gave me a kind of bit of background and we discussed the character, but to be honest with you the moment you're on a film set as big as that with all of those extras and the attention to detail with the production design, and of course all of the uniform which makes you stand and move in a different way it was actually a completely immersive and easy sort of process to get into.

Film: "they're walking into a trap. Your orders are to deliver a message, calling off tomorrow morning's attack".

Andrew Scott: Well I think kind of part of what my job and some of the other actors in the film is to support the two, the two young men. What you need to do is to sort of give a, in a five-minute scene, give a sense of the presence of these men that the young guys have to answer to, and how difficult it must have been for them to really make sense and to trust the information that they've been given.

Film: "we've got all just across here"

"That is the German frontline"

"If we're not clever about this, no one will get to your brother".

Mark Strong: Something that helped me enormously in the shooting of the film was the accuracy of the costumes. They were very keen that they would be an absolute recreation of the uniforms that the chaps would have worn, and I saw a lot of black and white photographs in the costume department, and a lot of the officers had canes or sticks for some reason, I don't know why, but if you look at a lot of photographs they have them I think maybe it was to get through the mud or just to have something you know in their hands, but I asked if I could have a cane because I kind of thought well that's my way of accessing something that I've seen in the photographs, which they let me do, and I felt that Captain Smith, the character I played, therefore was kind of, he kind of looked the part.

Andrew Scott: Well I don't think we have any idea of what it might have been like to be at war a hundred years ago. I think a lot of us don't have much of an idea of what it's like to be at war now, but what this film does in a sort of extraordinary way is to give you a sense, a sort of bird's-eye view of what it must be like and what an evening going into the night time into morning, the actual physical exhaustion and that they went through and the film really is the most visceral way we could do that. We can read a book about it but to be able to... looking at the movie myself I was blown away by the sheer vulnerability, that strength that they must have had, so I think it's just the most immediate way of going "oh my God that's absolutely what
it must have been like" you when you have to go through something like that.

Daniel Mays: There's lots of great war films isn't there, but I think this really does depict the horror of war and that sense of wasted youth. I think it captures the camaraderie and the friendships that were forged between all of those soldiers. I think it's an utterly immersive explosive and emotionally raw film.

Hear actors Mark Strong (Captain Smith), Daniel Mays (Sgt Sanders) and Andrew Scott (Lieut. Leslie) describe how they prepared for their roles in the film – and how film can help us connect with a conflict that took place more than 100 years ago.

The Director

View video transcript Hide video transcript

Transcript

Sam Mendes: I suppose it was based on these stories my grandfather told me and one of them just wouldn't let me go, and I just feel like this war has always been sort of affected me since he told me these stories and I wanted to go back in and tell the story of two men who could have been two amongst two million, until somehow the worm's-eye view of just a brief moment in a war for them and through this keyhole show the vastness of that landscape of destruction that was the Great War.

The whole Imperial War Museum archive is a remarkable resource and we used it to the fullest extent, because this particular war the truth of the war resides in first-person accounts, letters, interviews and things like that and so, so much of it was inspired by those voices and you know it's impossible to articulate how important that whole thing was for this film, I don't think it could have existed in this way. So many tiny incidents are remarked on come from first-person accounts but not just that
photo photographs, you know, details that you know the movie is trying to not slavishly and dryly but make this period live again and it's details and textures and trying to find new ways to express what happened there that is gonna make it live.

I mean it's over a hundred years now since the Great War ended and it still throws a big shadow. You walk into any village or town and the UK and there's the memorial to the fallen of the first war and you know we wear our poppies on Remembrance Day and all of those things, but I think there's a danger that it becomes more and more distant and it seems less and less relevant and for me you know I made the movie in a way that wants an audience to feel like it happened yesterday. It's a contemporary film, you know, it's made with all the contemporary bells and whistles of a big movie and and obviously I hope that this somehow enriches people's understanding of what these men went through because it was extraordinary and terrible.

Flm: "Mike. Pick a man bring your kit".

Sam Mendes: I wanted to feel locked together with these characters so you live every moment with them, the seconds tick by in this race against time and you begin unconsciously to realize you can't escape from that, and it's only two hours of real-time but you know through those tiny little keyhole you can see something of the scale of it all as well, and that feeling of you just know that there's no escape, I think that was very important part of the film.

IWM London was also used by production company, Entertainment One, to host a press conference with the cast and crew of the First World War epic, including Director and Writer Sam Mendes, Cinematographer Roger Deakins, and Producer Pippa Harris.

Fifty national and international press were in attendance, including journalists from The Times, the Guardian and Press Association.

The writer

View video transcript Hide video transcript

Transcript

To get the story right, you know, and to be believable and to pay tribute to the men who fought and died in that war, I needed to read all the first-hand accounts I could. I spent a lot of time kind of online and I'd actually read in books that people who'd access your collection as well, so it was very circular, everything came back to the Imperial War Museum, and even a lot of the films and documentaries I read came back to the Imperial War Musem, like They Shall Not Grow Old and everything as well which you guys did thank you very much for that.

I spent a huge amount of time in your reading rooms, I am leafing through the diaries, a lot online, and actually just going through your collection here at your First World War exhibits is massively moving, so the Imperial War Museum collection played a huge role in this it was absolutely vital to me. When you read those first hand accounts some of them are very, just, this happened, this happened, this happened, but then every so often you find the poet, do you know I mean, you find someone who is just a connection to you in a way that it's not familial or necessarily about something with someone from Glasgow, something like someone with the same birthday as you and it brings it home in a really powerful way. The fact that everything's there at your fingertips it's so useful.

There was a lot of surprise and stuff, I think I think the more surprising thing throughout my research was the triumph of the human spirit. You think, when you think about the war, how did, for four years, 10 million men murder each other and sink into mud and no one go mad or say stop, and when you read the first hand accounts you realise they didn't do it for king and country, they did it for the men next to them, they did it for their wives and their daughters and their sons at home, they did it for their family.

There are a few things more important than understanding your history. The only way that we can move forward as a civilisation is to understand the huge colossal mistakes we made and World War One was a human catastrophe. It was a flood of unbelievable proportions. If you go to northern France and you drive down a mile of road you will pass four cemeteries filled with the young men who died for inches. To understand that, to remember that as a civilization, and to know that war shouldn't even be the last resort, it shouldn't be a resort, that it is despicable, the people should never ever partake in it, it's so important. The fact that it's now passed out of living memory, there no there are no survivors of the war left because we're a hundred years later, it's now more important ever, is it's no longer the veterans' burden to tell the story, it's our burden to go and learn that story, to understand that story. You know 1917 is the First World War was mainly fighting for a free and united Europe and a united Europe is in threat again, do you know I mean, at any point our world can fall back into the catastrophe of war. Go and read about what these men lived through, politicians, everyone, you know kids from age three and up, should be known about that so that we really understand that this is stupid, we shouldn't do it. It's not an accident that 1917 is a story about two men carrying a message to stop a battle, that was very much designed by Sam and I, by everyone involved. It's not pro-war, it's not about, kind of like, hey fights solves differences.

Krysty Wilson-Cairns spent ‘a huge amount of time’ reading personal accounts of the First World War while researching the script for the film 1917, which she co-wrote with Sam Mendes.

She visited IWM London to review documents and visit the First World War Galleries, explaining: ‘To get this story right and to be believable and to pay tribute to the men who fought and died in that war, I needed to read all the first-hand accounts I could.’

Imperial War Museum’s Curator Consultancy service can be used for a variety of projects, both big and small, from television and film to consumer products and publishing. Further information can be found on our website and enquiries can be sent to [email protected] or through the enquiry form online.