It was in many ways the last great regal pageant of the 19th century. There
was Kaiser Bill on his white horse riding through the streets of London with his
uncle, Edward VII, and his cousin, the future George V, as well as a host of
minor monarchs from around Europe following the coffin of Queen Victoria. A
camera team from Pathe News was on hand to record the moment. For 74 years the
public flocked to the cinema to see the Pathe newsreels. Now Pathe is digitising
its 50 million feet of newsreel film and is making them available over the Net
at http://www.britishpathe.com. It’s a fantastic resource that brings history to
life—click on “video files” to see “Ten days that shook the world”.
Within 13 years of the old Queen’s funeral, George V and the Kaiser were at
war. Pathe has some sombre footage from the Battle of the Somme in 1916, with a
modern voiceover. This is nicely complemented by sound recordings of survivors’
experiences at the Imperial War Museum’s site at
www.iwm.org.uk/online/fww_rem/sounds/.
As the war dragged on to its gory conclusion, the
Russian Revolution forced the abdication of the Tsar—another one of George
V’s cousins—and Pathe was on hand to record the event. There is of course
an alternative take on what the First World War was all about. There is a good
article about it by John Reed www.marxists.org/archive/reed/works/ttw.htm, the
American journalist who chronicled the history of the Russian Revolution in his
book Ten days that shook the world—and so coined the overworked
phrase.
But the newsreel was not just about war and death: it was also about
entertainment. If you click on “all about Eve” in Pathe’s video files you will
find a 1926 film of one Santos Casani, the Daily Mail’s dance
correspondent, dancing the Charleston on top of a London taxicab with his
partner. The Charleston, a dance craze that swept Europe, had its origins in
black culture: there’s a taste of this in an 1897 film clip at the Black Film
Center at www.indiana.edu/~bfca/clips.html.
Advertisement
