Trench Warfare
A TV program about the anatomy of trenches, weaponry, and combat techniques.
Representation of Trench Combat in A Very Long Engagement [2004]).
A scene from Charlie Chaplin's Shoulder Arms (October 20, 1918):
Representation of Chemical and Flame-Thrower Warfare in Young Indiana Jones (1992-93)
Tank warfare: lumbering creatures that looked simultaneously prehistoric and futuristic.
WAR NEUROSES VERSION B reel 1
Shell shock: destroyed nervous system from the inhumanity of the fighting.
Jazz Age Dancing
The movements of the age embodied the nervous breakdown and collective psychic release following four years of mass slaughter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhSrCDCHOc8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WRSpCNSm54
1927 London in Moving Colour
A recently recovered, early color film of London in 1927 by British cinematographer Claude Frisse-Greene, not long after Eliot wrote The Waste Land. It also makes an interesting companion to Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (1925), which hops around London in time and space.
At 0:55 you can see a mild version of a "crowd flow[ing] over London Bridge, so many" (OK, so maybe you can imagine how it would have looked during rush hour). At 4:15, though, you can see a jostling street that really evokes Eliot's sense of the brown uniformity of modern urban crowds.
I was also struck by the number of horse-drawn carts and the lack of traffic lights; instead, the "all powerful hand" of the police officer maintains order in a metropolis not completely used to motorized traffic.
'London In 1927' from John Maher on Vimeo.
May Morning
Oxford, England (1997). Vera Brittain refers to the May Day (in Oxford, "May Morning") celebrations several times in Testament of Youth. May Day is an ancient, pan-European pagan ritual for welcoming the fertility, rebirth, and renewal of Spring, which attained heavy significance for the Lost Generation as the War dragged on and mass casualties mounted. May Day has echoes in T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" and The Waste Land, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, and Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, among other pieces we will read this semester. May day is an important part of English -- as well as European -- heritage, as evidenced by the large crowds who turn out each year. I chose this particular video because I attended May Morning in 1997, though the recording does not belong to me.
It opens with people gathering around the tower at Magdalen College, where the boys' choir sings a hymn at 6am, followed by Morris dancers and crowds walking up the high street street (2:00), Morris dancers performing before a tree near Christ Church College (3:15, 5:45, 7:00), women morris dancers (5:10), female pagan dancers (9:20), and impromptu street performers (9:35). You can also see students wandering around in black tie from the all-night balls and parties that ran through to morning (9:14, in front of the Radcliffe Camera), and various fertility-themed costumes like bulls and dragons.