Cinema
Damn the War
Maudite soit la guerre
Alfred Machin · 1914
Synopsis
Two neighbouring countries at peace, which the film does not name. Adolphe Hardeff, a young aviator, visits his friends, the Modzels, on the other side of the border. He becomes close to their son, Sigismond, also a pilot, and falls in love with his sister; happy days pass between the two families. Then war breaks out between the two countries, and the two friends, each in the uniform of his own nation, are forced to fight each other in the air.
Context
The film was shot in Belgium in 1913 for Belge Cinéma, with the cooperation of the Belgian army and its company of aviators, and was released in Brussels on 1 May 1914; Pathé distributed it. Its prints were stencil-coloured, and the reds of the aerial combats still strike the viewer. The Royal Belgian Film Archive and the EYE Film Institute restored it in 2014 from several prints. The Cinémathèque française sees in it a fiercely pacifist melodrama that proved prophetic.
Who it is for
A silent feature film of three quarters of an hour to fifty minutes depending on the prints, with French intertitles; the restored version is in circulation.
Prizes and reception
A pacifist melodrama released on the eve of the war, which the Cinémathèque française judges prophetic.