page_title: The Battle of the Somme (film)
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: The Battle of the Somme (film) / Production / Background
caption_attribution_description: Español: Voladura de la primera galería subterránea bajo el campo de batalla del Somme. 7:20 de la mañana, 1 de julio de 1916. The explosion of the mine beneath Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt on July 1, 1916. See Image:Hawthorn Ridge mine 1 July 1916 2.jpg for a later photograph in this sequence.
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: On 2 November 1915, the British Topical Committee for War Films, representing British newsreel producers and supported by the War Office, despatched two cameramen to France. Geoffrey Malins of Gaumont British and Edward Tong of Jury's Imperial Pictures, were to shoot footage for short newsreels. By early June Tong had fallen ill and been sent home but he and Malins had made five series of newsreels, which although well-received, had failed to impress the British cinema trade. John McDowell, of the British & Colonial film company, volunteered to replace Tong and left for France on 23 June 1916. On 24 June, the British Army began the preparatory artillery bombardment of German positions for the Battle of the Somme.
caption: Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt mine, 1 July 1916. Photograph by Ernest Brooks.[a]
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