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War Gamesmanship
By STUART HOOD
SUSPECT that half the trouble comes from the I use of the word 'documentary,' suggesting as it does an even-handed weighing of the evidence, a careful marshalling of the pros and cons in the desiccated terminology of megaton death. But this is not one of these droning CD lectures Sprinkled with limp jokes. What Peter Watkins has produced in The War Game is an exercise of the imagination. 'If we are to reach any compre- hension at all of what an attack by nuclear weapons would mean I must first try to provide a description of the effects of a single ground burst.' So the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence in his Lees Knowles lecture on science and military affairs. This is precisely what Peter Watkins has done. If the result is a nightmare, whose fault is it?
The trouble is that the BBC has persisted in asking that the film be judged as a 'documentary.' Why else invite newspapers to send their military correspondents to see it—whose whole vocabu- lary is one vast euphemism and whose judgments were as relevant as those of the Tailor and Cutter to an exhibition by Francis Bacon? If the film is to be judged it must be in terms of its vision. As such the first half at least is brilliant. The tension of a nuclear crisis, the retina-scorching flash, the shock wave rolling across the countryside like an avalanche, the fire-storm sucking men and machines into its furnace: all these are shot with an impressionist technique which is a world away from 'documentary' shooting. It is a technique which accepts the shake and judder of the camera, which does not mind if someone momentarily obscures the lens, which is fresh, arresting and not yet mannered—although it occasionally teeters on the brink. The editing is breathless, designed to jolt; the vision informing the whole, apocalyptic. Its effect is to make one understand —not intellectually but emotionally, visually, and in the pit of one's stomach what the words 'nuclear warfare' mean.
Where the vision begins to flag is in the second half, which deals with the aftermath of an atomic strike. That the police should be armed and use their arms to shoot looters, I find logical and am prepared to accept. But that they should carry out mercy-killings—shooting hopeless cases of burn- ing and radiation as they lie in rows in the gutter —is more difficult to swallow. Not that I believe that we are not as a people perfectly capable of gruesomeness; but even the Germans did things more discreetly. Where the film nose-dives, how- ever, is at the end. The scene—a camp for persons displaced by the bomb. The time—Christmas. What are they playing on their little portable gramophone? 'Salle Nacht, Heilige Nacht,' which is, I should have thought, a cliche from which even Hollywood would now shrink. But worse is to come. Child survivors are interviewed—for whom? the telly?—and to the question: 'What do you want to be when you are big?' they reply: 'I don't want to be nothing'. Which is pure Mabel Lucie Attwell.
There are two other questions about the film: why did the BBC have its private showing? and should the film have been shown on television? Two answers to the first question are going the rounds. They complement each other. One is that
by inviting editors and politicians to the private showings the BBC was offering itself up for willing rape and would happily bow to pressure to show the film. The second is that the whole thing is a diabolically ingenious piece of publicity designed to ensure that, when the film is shown, it will have unprecedented ratings. I suspect that the explanation is simpler—that the BBC merely wants to eat its cake and have it. It won't show the film to the television public but it didn't actually suppress it, did it? Which leads one to the real question: should it have gone out or not? Three years ago the BBC, in some trepidation, did make and show a documentary called Overkill which, because of inter-service squabbles, was not without its tribulations. It was a very well made, somewhat old-fashioned documentary with beautiful photo- graphy in which one saw the whole process of launching a nuclear attack: underground com- mand posts, rockets emerging from their silos, V-bombers taking off. It was, in its own way, spine-chilling but with the coolness of a military exercise, which is not for real. And at the end there was re-assurance. The bombers could always be called back. Here the problem is that crucial one facing all broadcasters: to what extent has one the right to disturb the viewer, to alarm or frighten him? I did not see any of the audience—although they were a bit subdued at the end—running out of the National Film Theatre in a Gadarene rush to cast themselves into the Thames.* I do not suppose viewers would be driven to suicide either. The BBC once showed a military execution in mid-evening as an illustra- tion to a programme on facing. death. I do not see why The War Gauze should not have been screened late at night with abundant trailing to warn those with weak nerves. As for the question of bias—such bias as there is in the programme has to be set against the multitude of programmes in which the doctrine of `mutual strategic deter- rence' is expounded, supported and taken for granted. There is, however, another solution, said a man who came out of the theatre behind me : 'Of course, the people who ought to be shown this are the Russians.' Maybe they have stronger nerves. To turn now to programmes which have actually been seen on the air, let me commend— if commendation be needed—Not Only . . . But Also (BBC-2-9.35 p.m., Saturdays), which is rumoured to attract the largest audience ever re- corded for BBC-2. This does not surprise me. Last week's edition, huskily decorated by Dionne Warwick, demonstrated that thirty minutes is exactly the right length for Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, who contrive to avoid the longueurs of other satirical programmes. I had not thought it possible to wring any more genuine humour out of the psychiatrist's consulting room until I saw P. C., as a trick-cyclist of daunting reason- ableness, arrange for D. M. (a patient of long standing and his wife's lover) to murder him at 4.30 p.m. next Wednesday and thus really get rid of his aggressions. D. M. had the true haunted look—like a man I once knew who, in gulfs al
* 1 forgot my umbrella.—ED. guilt, used to make love to his psychiatrist's sec- retary on the healing couch. The other sketch I must mention featured D. M. as a nice English actor being flogged (literally) through the part of the Hunchback of Notre Dame by a German director. It was not only funny in itself but, as presented by P. C.. sent up all those terrible tele- vision programmes about the Cinema as Art—a real piece of public service broadcasting.
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