Screening Twentieth Century Europe by Ib Bondebjerg

Author:Ib Bondebjerg
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030604967
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

ARTE also developed a very complex website (http://​www.​14-tagebuecher.​de), which contributes to the building of a history fact and memory archive to be used by the general public and educational institutions.

British War Period Drama

Unlike World War II, there are no period dramas in Germany on World War I. In the UK, on the other hand, we find a rich variety of period dramas where the war is very central to the narrative in different ways. The Passing Bells (2014) is a British-Polish co-production telling the story of an English and a German young man joining the war. The narrative moves almost seamlessly between the two characters, who also meet during and at the end of the war. It also moves back and forth between those at home and those at the front: through letters and in the imagination of the soldiers and their loved ones. The pictures of family life on both sides is also completely parallel. In this way the universal dimension of humanity is underlined and the national dimensions of war downplayed. The Crimson Field (2014), written by Sarah Phelps, deals with the lives of medical staff and patients at a field hospital in France, and women play a major role here. One of the main themes is actually the new order and new possibilities for women, not just because of the need for women in all sectors of society, but also because the war is an indication of more fundamental changes. The reality of war as it arrives at the hospital is a realist background for a more general conflict between two worlds: heritage and the traditional class society and world order, and the painful birth of a new world order, new social and cultural norms and values.

Birdsong is a quite different kind of period and war drama, where a complicated love story is combined with a harsh and very realistic war story. The narrative is told in flashback from Stephen’s perspective, his memories of the love affair visualized and crosscut with the war story. The narrative, visual and thematic effect of this way of telling the story is stunning: the love scenes are shot in lush pastel colours, sunny green, often slightly in slow motion, like a dream of paradise and life as it can be; in contrast the war scenes are shot in grey, black and brownish colours. The action scenes portray war as hell, slaughter, death and chaos. Stephen is almost killed three times but miraculously survives. However, all heroism and celebration of the war is stripped away from the narrative, in Stephen’s response to a senior officer talking about fighting this war for king and country: “This isn’t a war, sir. It is an exploration of how far men can be degraded.”

The memories of the love story are clearly a large part of Stephen’s survival, which we see in the acceleration of the crosscutting between the two narrative layers as the war intensifies. The love story clearly functions as symbolic counterimage to the war.

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