World War II: Lost Films (WWII in HD) [DVD]

So, as with all Blu-Rays in my collection, I move my seat closer to the screen to enjoy the cinematic resolution offered by Blu-Ray - and after a half hour of varied quality imagery, sat back in my seat for what is effectively a standard (for UK, not for the US) resolution set of archive footage. What's notably worse in the archive footage is a curious mixture of 4:3 original, either stretched to widescreen (wrong aspect ratio), or cropped to widescreen (missing top and bottom). It has a mix mostly of genuine colour footage but includes far too much of the bane of all documentary purists - 'colorised' black and white footage, which looks like it came from the 'Battlefront in Color' DVD set. For example, I've seen much higher quality newsreel based footage of Pearl Harbour elsewhere. Here the focus has been on previously unseen colour footage which is quite poor in quality and limited in coverage, given the enormity of the event.

The opportunity that has been missed with much of this archive footage is the lack of digital restoration. With only a few exceptions, there has generally been no obvious attempt to stabilise, or clean up the dust and scratches on the footage they used (and I don't include 'colorisation' which here is mostly worse than the black and white footage). This is more true of the early days of the war - the first 2-3 episodes. The picture quality situation (probably due to the volume of colour archival footage increasing as we progress chronologically through the war) does appear to improve with later programmes in the series.

I've seen comparisons on the US site to 'the World at War'. With the greatest respect, such a comparison is not sensible to make. The World at War handles the detailed story and the strategy of the war's progress for all countries involved requiring 26 52 minute episodes- this series covers in 10 episodes of 49minutes each. This series follows a bunch of US individuals who actually fought in the war, and it works quite well from that limited kind-of US-national 'foxhole-level' viewpoint. The modern footage of the US military folks today is all hi-def which contrasts with and at times shows up the archival footage. Their direct narration, segued with actors when showing archival footage, works extremely well. The cross-section of US personnel covered is reasonably good. Where World at War wins is in having direct interviews with the decision makers on all sides. You'll not get that here, but then 'tempus fugit' and not many are around today to be interviewed.

This series may (OK will!) upset the non-US nationalists amongst you - I draw attention to the North African campaign where the graphics clearly show the international element, but the British and Commonwealth military's actions are glossed over. The focus on the soldiers means that for the bigger picture stuff, say, the power-play between Montgomery and Patton subsequent to the North Africa campaign, or for instance the German-Russian campaign, you need to look elsewhere.

So in summary buy this if you can imagine the title should actually say something like 'The USA in WWII in HD'. It makes a worthwhile addition to existing content and is in my opinion the best recent US documentary series on the US involvement in the Second World War.

I'm not normally an avid watcher of WW II documentaries, and thought as many others did that the final and definitive word has been spoken on the subject, in the BBC World at War series The World At War: The Ultimate Restored Edition 2010 [Blu-ray]. However, this series adds a new scope and dimension to remembering the Second World War. The combination of the approach to the material, and the material itself, has produced something incredibly memorable, sobering, informative, and essential viewing. The material is colour footage, mostly unseen until now, found, as the series prologue says, over a two year search. This has been photographed with High definition, to preserve the material. So what you are saying is high definition version of material of various quality - 8mm, 16mm, often blemished with the ravages of time. Seeing this material, which mostly reflects the Pacific campaign, though North Africa and Europe are well represented, is extraordinary. The distance emotionally and time-wise from the events that you have when seeing them in black and white, is not so easy when presented with the stark reality in colour. It makes the moments more vivid, and more human.. which brings us to how they have handled this material. Rather than try and tell the story of the war from a broad overview of tactics etc - we see the events through 12 different peoples first hand perspective. This is war, as seen through the eyes of individuals, not the historians's traditional dispassionate approach. If there is a down side, it is that this is a very America-centric view of the war, starting from Pearl Harbour and concluding with VJ Day. But that is a reflection of the materials available, and is not an indictment of the filmmakers.
Combined with a sober and well scripted commentary read by Gary Sinise, and voiced by contemporary actors, interspersed with interviews with those still alive, makes this something quite unique, a moving and educational experience. Recommended.

First the good points. I found the documentary extremely well put together. I liked the switching of the action between the different war stories which not only maintained interest but had you wanting to come back again soon to follow the thread. The use of graphics to provide strategic context, zooming into and out of the annotated map was excellent. As a result all 10 episodes were fast moving, informative and captivating. A lot of the reviewers have given a thorough and postive review on the subject matter and I would have given it 5 stars but for the following.

Where I felt extremely let down was by the intensive marketing of this documentary as HD with words such as "converted to HD with meticulous technique, WWII in HD provides a picture of World War II as it has never been seen before". That raised certain expectations which were subsequently proven to have been naive. The war footage was not even up to the quality expected of Standard Definition signal (575 picture lines in UK + 50 for flyback). A lot of it was more like VHS quality of approx 300 lines, or worse, and hence was very fuzzy.

The bonus feature about converting the film to HD explained the process. The film had been scanned at a 4 megapixel resolution for archiving - a resolution preumably chosen so that it ensures that the scanned version is as good as the original. It was then converted to HD resolution, 1920 x 1080 (approximately 2 megapixels) for use on the blu-ray disc. However, it is obvious that if the granularity of the original material is not good, then scanning at a higher resolution merely produces fuzzy images - which is what you get with varying degrees on all the war footage.

However, given that many scenes were horrific, the lack of clarity did make it more palatable - I do not know whether I would have been able to continue to watch some scenes in full HD clarity. So I guess my grievance is with the marketing people for, in my opinion, misleading people.

Do I recommend this documentary? - definitely, but it only needs to be the DVD version.