The War Game

For the Doctor Who serial, see The War Games.

The War Game
Directed by	Peter Watkins
Written by	Peter Watkins
Starring	Michael Aspel Peter Graham
Distributed by	BBC
Release date(s)	1 November 1965
Running time	48 min.
Country	UK
Language	English

The War Game is a 1965 television documentary-style drama depicting the effects of nuclear war on Britain. Written, directed, and produced by Peter Watkins for the BBC's The Wednesday Play anthology series, it caused dismay within the BBC and in government and was withdrawn from television transmission on 6 August 1965 (the twentieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing). The Corporation said that "the effect of the film has been judged by the BBC to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting". However, it had some distribution in cinemas and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1966. But it remained unshown in full on British television until 1985.

Synopsis

Made in black-and-white with a running time of just under 50 minutes, The War Game depicts the prelude to and the immediate weeks of the aftermath to a Soviet nuclear attack against Britain. A Chinese invasion of South Vietnam starts the war; tensions escalate when the United States authorises tactical nuclear warfare against the Chinese. Although the Soviet and East German forces threaten to invade West Berlin if the U.S. does not withdraw that decision, the U.S. does not acquiesce to Communist demands and occupies West Berlin; two U.S. Army divisions attempt to fight their way into Berlin, but the Russian and East German forces defeat them in battle. The U.S. President launches a pre-emptive, NATO tactical nuclear attack. A limited nuclear war erupts between the West and the East; missiles strike Britain.

The chaos of the prelude to the attack, as city residents are forcibly evacuated to the country, leads to the story's centre in Rochester, which is struck by an off-target missile aimed at Gatwick Airport. Key targets in Kent are RAF Manston and the Maidstone barracks, which are mentioned in scenes showing immediate effects of the attack. The results of that missile's explosion are the instant blinding of those who see the explosion, the resultant firestorm caused by the heat wave, and the blast front; later, the collapse of society, because of radiation sickness, psychological damage, and destroyed infrastructure; the British Army burns corpses, while police shoot looters during food riots.

Style

The story is told in the style of a news magazine programme. It features several different strands that alternate throughout, including a documentary-style chronology of the main events, featuring reportage-like images of the war, the nuclear strikes, and their effects on civilians; brief contemporary interviews, in which passers-by are interviewed about their knowledge of nuclear war issues; optimistic commentary from public figures that clashes with the other images in the film; and fictional interviews with key figures as the war unfolds.

The film also features an out-of-universe voice-over narration that describes the events depicted as things that would happen during a nuclear war. The narration reminds the viewing audience that the civil defence policies of 1965 have not realistically prepared for such events and that perhaps no adequate preparation is ever possible; it emphasizes that the government and the public have wrongly thought of nuclear war as a survivable ordeal like the Blitz, when it is more likely to resemble the devastating firebombing of Japanese and German cities in World War II but on a much larger scale.

The film contains this quotation from the Stephen Vincent Benét poem "Song for Three Soldiers":

"Oh, where are you coming from, soldier, gaunt soldier,

With weapons beyond any reach of my mind,

With weapons so deadly the world must grow older

And die in its tracks, if it does not turn kind?"

Of his intent, Peter Watkins stated:

... Interwoven among scenes of ‘reality’ were stylized interviews with a series of ‘establishment figures’ - an Anglican Bishop, a nuclear strategist, etc. The outrageous statements by some of these people (including the Bishop) - in favour of nuclear weapons, even nuclear war - were actually based on genuine quotations. Other interviews with a doctor, a psychiatrist, etc. were more sober, and gave details of the effects of nuclear weapons on the human body and mind. In this film I was interested in breaking the illusion of media-produced ‘reality’. My question was - “Where is ‘reality’? ... in the madness of statements by these artificially-lit establishment figures quoting the official doctrine of the day, or in the madness of the staged and fictional scenes from the rest of my film, which presented the consequences of their utterances?”

Filming

The film was shot in the Kent towns of Tonbridge, Gravesend, Chatham and Dover. The cast was almost entirely made up of non-actors, casting having taken place via a series of public meetings several months earlier. Much of the filming of the post-strike devastation was shot at the Grand Shaft Barracks, Dover. The narration was provided by Michael Aspel and Peter Graham.

Influence

In the 1980s The War Game was followed by such similarly themed films as The Day After (US ABC,TV film, 1983) and Threads (BBC, 1984), the latter of which particularly evoked Peter Watkins' style and delivery. The War Game itself finally saw television broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC2 on 31 July 1985, as part of a special season of programming entitled After the Bomb (which was also Watkins' original working title for The War Game). After the Bomb commemorated the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The broadcast was preceded by an introduction from British journalist Ludovic Kennedy.

Awards and recognition

The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000, voted for by industry professionals, The War Game was placed 27th. The War Game was also voted 74th in Channel Four's 100 Greatest Scary Moments.

A portion of dialogue from this film — describing the effects of the detonation of a nuclear bomb — was used by the British hardcore punk band Discharge on their 1982 album Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing, as an intro to the song "The Possibility Of Life's Destruction." The line "the sound of an enormous door, slamming in the depths of Hell" was also used as the basis for the lyrics of the song.

See also

• List of nuclear holocaust fiction
• Nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom
• Nuclear weapons in popular culture
• Threads, a 1984 British docudrama about nuclear war

References

• Murphy, Patrick. "The War Game—The Controversy". Film International, May 2003. [1]

External links

• The War Game at Google Videos
• Notes on 'The War Game' from Peter Watkin's website
• The War Game at the Internet Movie Database
• The War Game at AllRovi
• Encyclopedia of Television
• British Film Institute Screen Online UK only