World War

The film The Battle of The Somme was released in 1916 whilst World War One was taking place.   It is a documentary about the battle that took place in the Somme in 1916. the film was filmed and edited mainly by the government and was a huge success, selling twenty million tickets in the first six week after it came out.   but, did Britain see the full trenches or just what the government wanted them to see? Many people believe the film to be a very useful historical source, however some others aren't so sure. Is it really reliable?
At the time, films were very rare so other sources are used such as pictures, letters, autobiographies, poems and diaries from the soldiers in the trenches that have been found. Many of which agree with the film. For example a letter from Bert Bailey, in the 11th Rifle Brigade, states: "Please stop sending me tea, sugar and salt for a bit as we already have some." This shows that the film is correct in that soldiers had very large amounts of food.
However,   some scenes were more than likely to have been edited to only show the good parts of the war,   for example, a lot of the film was only focusing on the beginning of the war which was very successful for the British, and the inter titles were using strong words such as   'pounding', 'effective', and 'bombarding' these words are aggressive and suggest strong success on the British and French soldiers however the film did not show that the enemy soldiers were not greatly effected. This shows us that the film was biased and was not showing the full picture. This was most likely to make the soldiers' family and friends feel positively that they were safe and happy and to make more men want to join the army.
In the film, it mostly showed Britans and Frances' success, but very little failure was shown. Why would the government want to hide parts of the truth? To make the war look better! World War One was a devastation war that effected all of the world in some way. The war started in 1914...