page_title: The Battle of the Somme (film)
section_title: Britain
hierarchical_section_title: The Battle of the Somme (film) / Reception / Britain
caption_attribution_description: English: Still image from The Battle of the Somme showing a wounded soldier being carried through a trench. The accompanying title frame read:British Tommies rescuing a comrade under shell fire. (This man died 30 minutes after reaching the trenches.) Français&#160;: Capture d'image du film documentaire La bataille de la Somme montrant un soldat blessé transporté à travers une tranchée. L'intertitre qui précède indique&#160;: «&#160;Les britanniques secourent un camarade sous le feu des obus. (Cet homme est mort 30 minutes après avoir atteint les tranchées).&#160;»
context_page_description: The Battle of the Somme, is a 1916 British documentary and propaganda war film, shot by two official cinematographers, Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell. The film depicts the British Army in the preliminaries and early days of the Battle of the Somme. The film premièred in London on 10 August 1916 and was released generally on 21 August. The film depicts trench warfare, marching infantry, artillery firing on German positions, British troops waiting to attack on 1 July, treatment of wounded British and German soldiers, British and German dead and captured German equipment and positions. A scene during which British troops crouch in a ditch then "go over the top" was staged for the camera behind the lines.
  The film was a great success, watched by about 20 million people in Britain in the first six weeks of exhibition and distributed in eighteen other countries. A second film, covering a later phase of the battle, was released in 1917 as The Battle of the Ancre and the Advance of the Tanks. In 1920 the film was preserved in the film archive of the Imperial War Museum.
context_section_description: The popularity of the film was unprecedented and cinemas played the film for longer runs than usual, often to packed houses, while some arranged additional screenings to meet demand. The film is thought to have achieved attendance figures of twenty million in its first six weeks of release. The film also attracted more middle-class audiences, some of whom had never been to a cinema before. William Jury, as the film's booking director, initially charged exhibitors £40, with the fee decreasing by £5 a week; after two months, a reduced fee of £6 for three nights put the film within the price range of village halls wishing to show the film. By October 1916, the film had been booked by more than two thousand cinemas in Britain, earning over £30,000.
  British authorities showed the film to the public as a morale-booster and in general it met with a favourable reception. The Times reported on 22 August that
  Crowded audiences ... were interested and thrilled to have the realities of war brought so vividly before them, and if women had sometimes to shut their eyes to escape for a moment from the tragedy of the toll of battle which the film presents, opinion seems to be general that it was wise that the people at home should have this glimpse of what our soldiers are doing and daring and suffering in Picardy.
  — The Times, 22 August 1916
  Some members of the audience considered it immoral to portray scenes of violence; Hensley Henson, the Dean of Durham, protested "against an entertainment which wounds the heart and violates the very sanctity of bereavement". Others complained that such a serious film shared the cinema programme with comedy films. On 28 August, the Yorkshire Evening Post printed the comment, attributed to Lloyd George, "If the exhibition of this Picture all over the world does not end War, God help civilisation". The film was shown to British troops in France from 5 September; Lieutenant-Colonel Rowland Feilding, an officer who saw the film in a muddy field near Morlancourt, described it as "a wonderful and most realistic production" but criticised the film for failing to record the sound of rifles and machine-guns, although there was an artillery accompaniment from guns firing nearby. Feilding suggested that the film could reassure new recruits, by giving them some idea of what to expect in battle; the intertitles were forthright, describing images of injury and death.
caption: Frame from sequence 34: British Tommies rescuing a comrade under shell fire. (This man died 30 minutes after reaching the trenches.)[19][b]
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