The best part about this scene is watching again after seeing the end where the other battalion was making a new front. All of the trenches and dugouts at the new front are pristine, and the land between the trenches still lush and green. It gives you a sense of scale in terms of just how long the fighting has gone on between these two lines in the beginning. That no man's land took months and months of war to create.
That lush and green may be a mistake from the set designer. Or at least i seem to remember that certain poison gasses basicaly dissolved all organic matter. So no grass anywhere near where gas was used.
@@NangDoofer I'm just wondering how far that gas would spread when used. Ofcource if there is a story behind all this and it mentions that the ground was largely pristine then it is an annother matter.
I like how at 6:23 you can tell the dead soldier is looking right into Scho's eyes, even though we don't see his face. I love Scho's mortified reaction to making eye contact followed by the 'relief' of it just being a dead soldier, rather than a wounded alive one.
The reek of putrifying flesh, like ammonia, blood, vomit, faeces and urine (upon death the sphincter muscle in your posterior relaxes, releasing the contents of the bowel)....
It haunted Robert Graves so much that he rejected patriarchy, the leadership of society by men, blaming them for this disaster, and turned to Pagan goddess worship, incorporating that in his "The Greek Myths" and especially "The White Goddess". His experiences are documented in his "Goodbye To All That".
When I read Tolkien's version of a Necromancer, it also struck me as something that came from his time in WWI. Basically an entity that feeds and thrives off the deaths of others -- the greater the amount of deaths, the more powerful it becomes. Definitely something a mind would latch on to after seeing waves of death and carnage.
When Schofield and Blake cross No-Man's Land, first they pass dead horses, and then a wrecked tank. It's a brilliant way to visually communicate to the audience that World War 1 was the death of the old world and the beginning of the modern era.
@@freddiefreihofer7716 In logistical and support roles, not on the front lines. And even then the Germans were forced to rely on horses due to how garbage their logistics were.
My favorite moment in the movie. A single shot managed to capture the amount of empty space and devastation caused by a war that lead absolutely nowhere. The giant crater also gave you a good glimpse of how far the war industry had gone back then. Without talking about chemical weapons.
I don't think it is truly a single shot. There are points where things in the foreground move in the way and you briefly don't see the actors. That is a stopping point for the filming. Clever editing then makes it look like one continuous shot when they resum filming from that point.
When he cuts his hand on the wire and he is staring at it he is worried about a possible infection, but when his hand with an open wound sunk into a dead soldier's decaying, bloated corpse he was no longer worried about a possible infection: it would almost certainly become infected at that point and there's no sense in worrying about something that could kill him in a week when there are plenty of things that will kill him in a second in a heartbeat. God Bless all of our Great-Grandfathers who charged willingly over the top of those Combat Trenches.
Seeing him cut his hand in the barb wire always makes me feel grateful that we have so many tactical gloves options nowadays. To a point where it’s hard to even imagine that how soldiers even functioned without them. All the weird things soldiers had to out their hands on back then makes you wonder how many infections soldiers got.
@@Hitithardify Forget the gloves, the antibiotics and med-kits alone would make you feel safer with a threat as minimal as cutting your hand (I know it wasn’t actually “minimal”, but in the sense of being shot at constantly and running straight into machine gun fire, it definitely seems the most minimal)
Possibly the only positive thing we can find is, their imunity system after months in the trenches was possibly far superior to people today. Yet, it is pretty possible he would suffer great infection and would lose that hand afterwards. As I read very many WWI memoirs, common soldier took a loss of a hand as an acceptable prise for going home and survive.
Just cutting it on the wire would have been a likely infection. Around 40,000 soldiers died as a result of infected cuts from sharp metals as the medicine didn't exist at the time. There's an account of one soldier who cut himself on a sharp edge of a bucket and died because of the stains around it infected the wound, the bucket was being used as a latrine.
Oh yeah, even cutting it on the wire would have been enough but adding insult to injury by shoving it into a rotten corpse. And keep in mind anti-biotics are still in their infancy during this period so there is a good to fair chance he’s losing that hand.
I don't remember what book it was, but when I was a small kid I read an account from a soldier who did exactly this, and it went something like "every boot pushed into the earth never knew whether it was mud, putrid flesh, or mushy bone it was sinking into. A glance at the sides of the forward trenches would reveal pieces of uniforms, and sometimes pieces of men, including an arm poking out that we named 'Archie' and used to hang our gear off of, until it decayed to the point where we couldn't hang anything off it anymore." I had nightmares for weeks from this passage, and I think it permanently affected my outlook on life. This scene feels like it was written by someone who read the same thing.
i've often thought of this, that in the mud, the wet, the sheer chaos and messiness of it all with regards to artillery fire and men being blown to bits. that it must just be an absolute swamp, a porridge if you will of body parts. grim
I remember hearing a similar account of Australian soldiers in Gallipoli who would shake a hand sticking out of the trench wall for good luck before going over the top.
@@Markus_Andrew No it wasn't, that's a great book, but this was I think an excerpt from an interview in one of the old Time Life history books, I think. That's the closest I can get to remembering where I saw it.
My great-grandfather fought in this war in the Italian Alps, as a soldier of the Austro-Hungarian army. My father always mentions that his great-grandfather never wanted to talk about the fighting he experienced, but that the First World War changed him a lot. From a cheerful person full of life, he became silent and often searched for solitude even for several days. As a retire from the army, he received a military bicycle, which he very much considered and rode it until his death.
@@whatnoitemsnoitemsnopass his great grandfather couldn’t pick which side he was on man, it was a war fought by monarchies based in nationalism, millions were conscripted and forced to fight
It's incredible to me that actual men lived through this horror and managed to reintegrate civilian life afterwards. Truly, the human mind is resilient.
@@nicolelawless3199 yeah I've read up on alot of the history of those times. Many veterans came home with post traumatic stress disorder or worse shell shock. Then there's the people who died from the Spanish flu epidemic that was going on or they were disabled from the poison gas or lost arms and legs. And there wasn't any compensation from their governments.
I remember being nervous about his hand wound for the rest of the film. It’s awful to think that something so petty could take you out even after surviving everything else.
A big moment that always stands out to me is when he cuts his hand on the wire, and then accidentally falls with that same hand into the corpse. Many died from combat, but so many more died from disease. It's an awesome way of communicating just another way these men could be killed.
Me and grandmother saw it together and she tells me that I got into an old state just because I fell out with No Mans Land a few weeks before this, I totally regretted it and now we’re back to the way like we used to be
Yes, the cinematography is absolutely fantastic. However, I think this segment is really given weight by the amazing score. Hats off to Thomas Newman. He did a fantastic job scoring this film.
That's what I was thinking. The second they get in that huge crater and the score kicks in until the hit the German trench gives me goosebumps errytime. I can only imagine the soldiers death in the barbwire at the top of the crater.
Omg that eerie song that kicks on when they go into that huge crater and the camera sweeps across the water. It's creepy, sad, scary, instense, and has so many emotions attached to it, which makes it so haunting. Amazing score like you said, I completely agree with you.
Coming back here after All Quiet on the Western Front. Both of these films are such respectful representations of the sheer brutality and human toll of this conflict.
@@nasedo3129 Agreed. Netflix messed around with the history to push an exaggerated version of events (last battle in particular) that somehow managed to be less effective than the much more reserved 1917
I remember reading all quiet on the western front when I was in school years ago. As an older man now and one with a son to see that movie and watch how youth were lied to and quickly died in the grinder, for nothing makes me so horrified by the war, and double down on the need to never forget, and never let it happen again.
It is extremely heartbreaking to think about how may brave young men from both sides lost their lives in this mud and are still laying there to this day. They tried to clean up the battlefields after the war, but there's only so much you can do. There's probably still tens of thousands of corpses that they didn't find or couldn't retrieve. No wonder people went insane, having to fight along half buried, rotten and destroyed corpses. The human mind is not made to deal with such things. I'm lucky and grateful for (hopefully) never having to see such things in life. Let's hope such things won't happen again.
That was the first time I fell out with No Mans Land and I totally regretted it because it would’ve been with me for 3 years that year and I didn’t want to give up on it. No Mans Land is still with me today 5 years later
I think this kind of war will probably never happen this large scale... With the age of mechanised warfare and advanced warfare, trench warfare is more a tactic for home/ ground defence than any kind of actual 1917 situation. Just look at Ukraine. They don't really have a solid trench setup right now ( during the 2014 invasion and thereafter sure, but now? It's more foxholes than trenches
And there are not only corpses, but also ammunition that are left. Entire fields in the Somme and around Verdun are still dangerous to cross because of the sheer amount of unexploded shells, grenades and mines. They remove dozen of them every year, but it seems like a task without an end
Ww1 was straight insanity, these age old empires fighting with all they’ve got, all this new technology and tactics, and the scale and brutality of it was something the world had never seen before. It literally ended these hundreds of year old empires
It literally changed humanity forever. My only friendly edit to your comment is the "new technology and tactics"... That was the problem with WW1. The tactics were outdated for the new far more advanced technology. They fought a Napoleonic 19th century style war with modern 20th century weaponry. Thus you had a perpetual stalemate with the most brutal killings of any war. It reshaped the political landscape and as you put it, ended empires. Unfortunately, the mishandling of the Versailles Treaty by the allies paved the way for WW2.
@@zachphillips3784 Admittedly, the conditions of the Versailles Treaty were either too strict or not strict enough. France, which despite several history re-writings by the anglo-saxon world is legitimately the main victor (and the ally nation which suffered most losses and destruction), wanted to ensure Germany would be splitted and partily annexed by neighbouring countries in order to prevent any... revenge, which would have come either way as the German people hadn't seen any foreign army parading in the streets of Berlin and they believed the conspiration theories of a treason which gave the allies an undeserved victory. But the US and the UK wanted a European continent with no nation which could clearly dominate the others. France, having lost a whole generation of young man in 14-18 would soon earn the consequences of the USA's help to Germany's recovery in the 20's, in 1940... And be called surrendering monkeys by the grandchildren of those who kind of facilitated Germany's victorious invasion. But really, really: WW1 and WW2 were mostly about allowing the US to become an uncontested empire. Korea, Vietnam. Afghanistan, Irak,... many brutal killings yet to come.
My great grandfather told me that the thing that frustrated him the most about video games, and movies depicting war times is that they always show men fighting men, when in the war it was children slaughtering children, the oldest soldier he ever met in the field was 24. He fought in the second World War
This movie really makes the horror of ww1 real, the bodies, the wire, the literal desolate landscape, all things you’d see in horror movies, the bit that makes it actually horrific in this to me is the fact that it’s broad day light, the time when there’s not meant to be horror
This scene captured trench visualisation and the atmosphere like nothing I’ve ever watched or played. Terrifying without the whole horror aspect. Raw uncertainty about whether they will be fired upon. Who is around them. The dead the rotting corpses, skeletons, rats. One of the best movies I have ever watched and time and time again it still amazes me.
You must watch Paths of Glory a film that shows the suffocating atmosphere of the trenches and an over the top full frontal attack by hundreds of men. 1917 is benign by comparison.
I remember holding my grief over the war in until the run scene and then I exploded. I’ll never forget how kind and helpful everyone were. Then me and grandmother reunited with them for 1917 a month later
I think what makes this stand out so well is the straight record effect. No pauses just 1 frame constantly. (There were pauses but so unnoticeable it’s incredible)
You wouldn't believe it, but there is a hidden cut at 3:17 While filming they couldn't figure out how transition from this shot (crane dolly) to the next one (steadicam), so the actors are temporarily and seamlessly replaced with CG doubles as they climb out of the trench. Amazing work from MPC and the filmmakers!
Wow, that’s amazing! I’m a huge fan of the long take, and study them in films. If what you’re saying is true, that may be the most seamless stitch of all time
@@Jeff-cr9ho How do you know that? I know there are many clever cuts throughout the film where going from dark to light areas, and when extras move in front of the camera for example, but after rewatching your clip many times, I am convinced that is not CGI.
My grandfather William was born in 1887, italian front, Alpini Fiamme Verdi, from Caporetto to Vidor a terrible battle in november 1917. He was a survivor but a piece of his life has been buried on those battlefields. RIP granpa. MV
I can't even begin to imagine how that must have been like to be living in those trenches, starving, wet, rats eating at your ears and toes, and foot rot from soggy boots and socks "No Man's Land" a destroyed landscape once full of life and greenery turned into a land of dead and shot up tree's, crater's from artillery gun's, barb wire, horse's killed from calvary charge's, soldiers on both sides killed and rotting, and the only thing living are flies, crow's, and rats feasting on the dead. Can you just imagine the smell of corpses that have been out there for 3 to 4 years rotting away
My favorite piece of ww1 literature is storm of steel by Ernst jünger. There is mutiple times in the book where he describes the dead. At one point they're digging trenches in 1916/1917 and his shovel keeps uncovering bones, cartridges, and bits of uniform from summer of 1914. Even one time he described the hands, arms and legs in no man's land, during the start of the Somme, just sticking out of the ground and into the sky like roots of a knocked over tree. Give it a read its very eye opening as he served from 1915 to March 1918 as an german officer and lived.
Me neither and I’d lose it if I was there. In 2020, it was my first time falling out with No Mans Land and I felt terrible afterwards because we usually get on very well. I hate falling out with it
There were so many casualties after the first couple of months of fighting that neither side bothered to retrieve most of their dead. So the rotting bodies just kind of piled up in no man's land, half buried in the mud or floating in puddles, completely dehumanized
Fun fact, even tho it did seem like a single shot with no cuts, there actually are cuts to it. it was just so seamless, that it looked like there was never any cuts during the whole shot. digital corridor went over this shot in one of their videos. absolutely stellar.
I recently took a trip to France with my dad to see many of the WWI and WWII battlefields and cemeteries. I saw many of the trenches, shell and bomb holes and tried to imagine them looking like this. Seeing these locations after being healed by nature really gets you thinking about the horrors of war.
Something I learned which I share now so everyone can appreciate it, is the massive amount of accuracy put into these scenes in terms of costume design. The webbing they have tells you that Schofield has been in the war long before Blake, before we even learn this through dialogue. Blakes leather webbing is supposed to have only been for training purposes, but after the massive losses up to 1916, the standard for who could join up was lowered. No longer were they only takin 'A-1" class men. This meant that they were taking in much more than the canvas webbing manufacturing companies could handle, which is what Schofield wears, so the army resorted to sending them ahead without it and instead with what they had in larger supply, which was the leather webbing. That attention to detail alone is mind blowing, especially considering the audience may not even have any idea about any of this! I know I didnt.
Such a horrifying view of 'no mans land'! Every inch is detailed so well. There's this huge, devastated area full of thousands of bodies of men who once had lives and families at home, but now there is not a living soul in sight. The devastated moonscape combined with the eerie music is haunting to say the least. It almost gives me the feeling that it's a zombie movie and that all the dead bodies will come to life. The destruction contrasts so much with the stillness that it almost feels unnatural. Like something is about to happen. I suppose we're supposed to see how the characters are at a constant state of alert as they could be spotted and shot at any moment. This scene does a very good job at building that suspense! I've always found the first world war spooky. That cross over between the old world and the new. It's something I can't quite put my finger on. Like a museum at night. This music (especially the part when they go through the deep crater) puts those feelings into sound for me.
You should look in your local library for more information on how these poor buggers survived and died, this was real life for your grandfather and great grandfather, the poem 'in Flanders fields ' if you haven't read it might if you close your eyes after reading awaken your imagination
I know what you mean by that museum at night feel. It was a sloppy war, trench warfare subjected those humans to the worst things imaginable, and for the smallest effect. Just thinking about that war, it must have had the most dead bodies per square mile by far.
This was how I fell out with No Mans Land then back in 2020 lockdown. I randomly got up one night because of my panic attacks and I went on the landing to grieve for those who died but then my mother heard me crying so I spent 5 minutes with her and I was literally struggling to breathe properly because I was so scared of No Mans Land at that point and I never have been before. I didn’t sleep at all that night struggling to breathe because of stress. It was a horrible moment
Idk if its just me, but I lowkey feel like I'm walking through no man's land with them. The thought of a bullet coming any time, feeling the pain of that barbed wire, the disgust of seeing dead soldiers, everything.
I had that feeling too, that was the most haunting dreams of 1917 yet and I panicked as Schofield gets his hand infected that I dreaded the worst for him
Age before beauty. My Dad already had Connery's autograph from the 60s. They never really knew one another. Decades later at a Manchester Utd game, they were both leaving the Men's Room. Dad said "Age before beauty" and let him go the exit door first as Connery was 12 years older.
For those who are curios that big crater wasn’t caused by artillery, it was caused by underground mine that the British used to blow up fortified bunkers.
the one thing that is hard to imagine us that no man's land was actually worse than that. I've been to some WWI battlefields and even today it is haunting
legit feels like an apocalypse film, Everyone and the animals are dead, no one is to be found, the eerie silence... just apocalyptic. Crazy to think stuff like this was real
I have never seen "No man's landing" depicted in such a big and horrific way. It makes you think and relativice how troops might have seen trenches as "home" and "safe spot" with buddies in contrast to the cataclism nature of no man' landing.
To me the most disturbing bit was that dead solider at 2:47. It looked like he died literally with his mouth open. But judging how him and the other dead solider are in a crater, I am assuming they both got killed by an explosion from German artillery.
I heard a statistic that Mortars alone accounted for over 50% of casualties in WW2. Artillery accounted for a good portion of that other 50%. I imagine WW1 was the same if not worse. Artillery is a truly frightening weapon! If you read 'Storm of Steel' by Ernst Junger you'll basically get PTSD from his descriptions of a days long artillery barrage alone!
For me the most disturbing scene was when he tried to gain balance and accidentally stuck his wounded bleeding hand in a rotting corpse... Infection hazzard.
I love the use of music. Usually in cinema music is used to set the tone for a scene. Mystery and wonder with windpipes along with epic scores for fight scenes. However in this movie they use music to, in my opinion, convey the feelings of the characters in the scene. Quiet unsettling music for crossing no man's land not knowing if you are going to survive, scores that make you tense up as they check the trench just for it to cut off when they see nothing. Chills every time.
I could never truly imagine the full horror of the western front in 1917..unless I was there,the constant ever present fear of a bullet or a shell or gas...must have been such a dreadful thought,the freezing cold rain,mud,craters filled with filthy still water,infection everywhere,the bitter cold..thinking every moment could be your last...all those rotting bodies ,,those men had families,girlfriends who loved them once,now they lay there,lifeless in decay buried in the mud so far from home,never to be seen again,mothers who lost so many of their sons to this terrible war..and those who were fortunate enough to survive,would never be the same again..very brave men,may you all rest in peace,much respect to all of you..
I get really stressed out over nothing but then I think about how much the First World War cares about me and I also care about those who served and died
Hard to believe 1917 is 3 years old today and I’m literally celebrating the anniversary after nearly being in a bus accident but no one or me were hurt. Glad to be home and got out alive thanks to 1917
@sviero I say yes. The wounding from the rusted Barb Wire alone had a heavy chance of causing (back then) 99% Deadly Tetanus. Not to mention dipping the Hand into a decaying, Rat- biten Stomach. Infection: 100% Sure. Possibly not only 1 Type. Survival Chance? Not to calculate, pure Luck.
@@theduke9292 he didn't, but im sure he died after the movie because of it. How long would an infection kill you though? Because it took Scofield and Blake 1 day to reach their destination
I just love how the music swells up when they were nearly at the German trench. The first time I saw the scene, It was almost as if I could feel the adrenaline that they likely would also have felt at that moment. Whoever composed the soundtrack for this film is an absolute genius.
0:53 i love this moment, shows Blake's relative naivety and innocence, he's still disgusted enough to look back at the dead horse in morbid fascination, while Schofield plows ahead relentlessly
Maybe he’s ploughing ahead thinking of his brother, like no hesitation to go ahead, he couldn’t wait! Just my thoughts 🙂 Well observed though, it’s a special movie, and I’m so glad it paid such special respectful homage to actual people! I was surprised how good it was! In my older age I’m shying away from war movies 😬 but this was different
By 9pm, my street is usually deserted like somethings happened and I was suffering a nose bleed AGAIN but it could be the heat or something. I was so scared the blood would go everywhere again because I was sent home from college due to intense stress levels twice in 3 years
They turn up every year, almost every month. There are Archeology teams that go out now and excavate the remains of the old trenches. Often they find the remains of men who are still manning their posts, having been killed and immediately buried by a close artillery burst. Rarely do they find any that were carefully laid to rest by their comrades. My great-uncle Joe was a Sergeant in the U.S. Army Expeditionary Force back then. I wonder sometimes what kind of horror he saw.
@@markl2322 my grandfather served in the Pacific theater in WW2 and my father served in Vietnam for 2 tours. They have never once spoken of this other than it was hot and wet. I am happy that they are still looking for those men.
@@ericread2369 I am too, bless them. I visited the war cemetery every year when I was 15 and the war then haunted me for years ever though I wasn’t there thank goodness. November 11th is normally the most haunting day of the year because the world stops to remember them. November 11th is my favourite time of year because of that
A good half of the Australians who died on the western front have no known grave. Particularly at Pozieres where they held a salient with the artillery of 3 German field armies obliterating them from 3 sides.
Great film, you couldn’t realistically fault it, you could fault it but you would be nit picking. It’s as great as a WW1 film could be, and they filmed a part of it less than 300 yards from my house.
People dont know one thing that the soldiers who survived ww1 did not get the life they deserved after the war. Firstly, the great depression had impacted their already low economic situation. And even worse, some of them said goodbye to their own sons who left home to fight ww2.
That soundtrack is sooo good man…can’t get enough of this movie, should have won best sound track that year…the pictures, the acting, the adventurous story…this is going to be one of those war movies we look back on as one of the greats like Saving Private Ryan…
What I find most horrific about this scene is not so much about the graphic appearances of the dead corpses, but the fact that these were soldiers, that will always be forgotten and unknown, because they were never retrieved after the battle for whatever reason. They were left behind, and the soldiers had names, and their bodies and belongings will never be brought back to their families. These men define “missing in action”
This movie is an absolute masterpiece and it accurately portrays what the horror of the First World War was for those who will never know the trenches…
My Grandfather was born in 1896 and fought in World War I in the United States Army. He was a Master Gunnery SGT in an artillery unit. I still have his helmet.
Though WW2 was a million times worse and deadlier. there’s some things that made WW1 worse for the common soldier. Something about having to sneak across a empty silent apocalyptic field full of of decaying bodies, mud and the thought that I could get sniped any moment is more terrifying than almost anything I’ve seen from any WW2 movie.
Omg this movie is so anxious. I can't even believe that this was real and a point in time. They shouldn't of had to fight in that war and lose their lives at such a young age.
when my dad was a boy he had a gardener that was in WW1, in the cavalry. Apparently there was hand sticking out the wall of the trench that they all used to shake as they went past.
Yeah, it's funny they use all the corpses as landmarks, but still... How else are you supposed to navigate when everything else is gray and blown to bits? Truly terrifying experience in hindsight.
It’s devastating what’s happening in Ukraine. The news makes me so depressed because it reminded me of my fall out with No Mans Land 2 years ago which I totally regretted, I love you No Mans Land really and i promise I’ll never let you down again like that
My great grandfather was in this. On his deathbed he would have flashbacks and yell for everyone to get down. He was in the middle of a flashback when he took his last breath. 97 years old. I can’t imagine something so traumatic that it haunts you for nearly 80 years
I can’t imagine what that must’ve been like! Come and See (1985)’s Floyra has watched me have flashbacks of last year when I was ill in hospital almost dying. Now that’s real trauma
2:39 looking at hand... then the green comes over and gets spooked...so he punches his fist down to gain balance... realizes that his open wound was just inside a corpse..... moves on because that IS war.
Man ...... What terrible horrific beings we are . I see these images . I watch the sheer absolute horror we inflict on each other, and I realise we are all damned and not worthy of saving . I wait patiently and pray for something to end the nightmare for the darkness is everywhere and inevitable.
Can see a hidden cut at 4:45... the second solider's gait and grip on the rifle change after the thick tree passes the camera. Not a criticism, mind - you have to look hard for it.
And how needless it was. At the same time, it showed how extremely outdated the military tactics were with the advancement of (at the time) modern technology and weaponry. Marching in division lines across an open field and calvary charges on horseback were no longer effective tactics when the machine gun was introduced.
@@Sigma0283idk about needless, if we never went to war over there. The forces would have taken more land and expanded an army stronger than the USA. Germany's whole plan at the end was to share the USA over it grows stronger and makes a 1 world power. This is why war is needed to keep bad guys from gaining great power to soon dominate a homeland with very little force.
Both Dean-Charles and George did that quick stare back at the bodies perfectly, as if to be horrified that the dead are just sitting there but they have to carry on with their duty and forget about it
Imagine being a soldier killed in a battlefield and your dead body is A) left to decompose in a filthy pond, B) spread out everywhere, or C) just on a grimy, mucky battlefield. You will never get a proper burial, you will not be placed in a casket, your body is left to rot in the middle of nowhere.
This is easily in my top 5 war movies and I've seen many good ones. Even a scene like this which features no action, is filled with suspense and terror.
A nice detail I just caught was that the barbwire they encounter shortly after leaving the British lines is mostly staked with the metal "pig tail" stakes where as the barbwire they encounter near the German lines is mounted on wood stakes. That certainly makes sense as differing armies facing each other on various sections of the lines would have different resources and logistics issues (and yes, I know that Germans sometimes used metal stakes and British sometimes used wood). It's a nice detail as I imagine a lot of production crews would just throw up universal barbwire scenery -- but here they took it into consideration that different sides would be doing the actual set up of barbwire in real life.
This scene becomes more heartbreaking when you realize that, with perhaps a few hermits being the exceptions, each and every one of those corpses had a family and friends who hoped and prayed that they would return alive and well...all for naught.
The part that’s awful and unspoken about this movie is that it’s only 1917. There’s a very good chance that Schofield would not survive until November 1918. There’s also a massive pandemic (the Spanish Flu) coming. These folks did not get a break. Imagine living from 1890-1945.
That was intense. I can only imagine the smell in those fields and all the dangers of unexploded ammo. I read the book "With the old breed" and the author, Eugene Sledge, always would say "war is such a waste of human life"
![Top 10 [EPIC] World War I (1914-1918) massive battles movie scenes (WW1)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/AK7OO97eU3Q/mqdefault.jpg)
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The best part about this scene is watching again after seeing the end where the other battalion was making a new front. All of the trenches and dugouts at the new front are pristine, and the land between the trenches still lush and green. It gives you a sense of scale in terms of just how long the fighting has gone on between these two lines in the beginning. That no man's land took months and months of war to create.
months? more like years lol
That lush and green may be a mistake from the set designer. Or at least i seem to remember that certain poison gasses basicaly dissolved all organic matter. So no grass anywhere near where gas was used.
@@tommiturmiola3682 It was the first battle on a new front because the Germans retreated, it's why it looks completely different
@@NangDoofer I'm just wondering how far that gas would spread when used. Ofcource if there is a story behind all this and it mentions that the ground was largely pristine then it is an annother matter.
@@tommiturmiola3682 nah man, look up aerial photographs of the two frontlines and you will see lush unmolested grass behind both lines of trenches
I like how at 6:23 you can tell the dead soldier is looking right into Scho's eyes, even though we don't see his face. I love Scho's mortified reaction to making eye contact followed by the 'relief' of it just being a dead soldier, rather than a wounded alive one.
The one thing[thankfully]that the film can't convey is how horrible the smell of the battlefield would be.
The reek of putrifying flesh, like ammonia, blood, vomit, faeces and urine (upon death the sphincter muscle in your posterior relaxes, releasing the contents of the bowel)....
I feel like it would just all mix together into a wet sewage smell....
@@abhaybhatt4286 Well, you'd know since you weren't there and know next to nothing about what it smelled like.
@@Evan8787 bro just said what he imagined it would smell like and it’s not far off if you read first hand accounts. why you so tight for ?
@@Evan8787 and you do?
This is the stuff that haunted Tolkien's mind so much that he created the Dead Marshes...
It haunted Robert Graves so much that he rejected patriarchy, the leadership of society by men, blaming them for this disaster, and turned to Pagan goddess worship, incorporating that in his "The Greek Myths" and especially "The White Goddess". His experiences are documented in his "Goodbye To All That".
When I read Tolkien's version of a Necromancer, it also struck me as something that came from his time in WWI.
Basically an entity that feeds and thrives off the deaths of others -- the greater the amount of deaths, the more powerful it becomes.
Definitely something a mind would latch on to after seeing waves of death and carnage.
@@greenfellow1966 why do you hate yourself?
No man's land = Dead Marshes
Little french burning town = Osgiliath
Night French burning town = near Morgul
@@r.b.ratieta6111 it may be a reference to the war itself???
Chemicals in war???
When Schofield and Blake cross No-Man's Land, first they pass dead horses, and then a wrecked tank. It's a brilliant way to visually communicate to the audience that World War 1 was the death of the old world and the beginning of the modern era.
Yes, very interesting choice
You probably know that the Germans used horses extensively in WW2 as well.
@@freddiefreihofer7716 No one said they didn't.
@@aarons6935 My point was that the "Modern Era" in WW2 still employed horses extensively.
@@freddiefreihofer7716
In logistical and support roles, not on the front lines.
And even then the Germans were forced to rely on horses due to how garbage their logistics were.
My favorite moment in the movie. A single shot managed to capture the amount of empty space and devastation caused by a war that lead absolutely nowhere. The giant crater also gave you a good glimpse of how far the war industry had gone back then. Without talking about chemical weapons.
watch the single shot from Atonement
why does it matter that it's a 'single shot'
I don't think it is truly a single shot. There are points where things in the foreground move in the way and you briefly don't see the actors. That is a stopping point for the filming. Clever editing then makes it look like one continuous shot when they resum filming from that point.
@@capnrob97 ofc it's not a single shot for real 😂
@@Foxgar Pretty sure they meant "a single shot" as an "in one scene", not as in 'one continuous camera roll' XD
When he cuts his hand on the wire and he is staring at it he is worried about a possible infection, but when his hand with an open wound sunk into a dead soldier's decaying, bloated corpse he was no longer worried about a possible infection: it would almost certainly become infected at that point and there's no sense in worrying about something that could kill him in a week when there are plenty of things that will kill him in a second in a heartbeat. God Bless all of our Great-Grandfathers who charged willingly over the top of those Combat Trenches.
Seeing him cut his hand in the barb wire always makes me feel grateful that we have so many tactical gloves options nowadays. To a point where it’s hard to even imagine that how soldiers even functioned without them. All the weird things soldiers had to out their hands on back then makes you wonder how many infections soldiers got.
@@Hitithardify Forget the gloves, the antibiotics and med-kits alone would make you feel safer with a threat as minimal as cutting your hand (I know it wasn’t actually “minimal”, but in the sense of being shot at constantly and running straight into machine gun fire, it definitely seems the most minimal)
@@Hitithardify yes, very much so.
so glad others thought this.
And god bless those who were forced to charge. Or shot because they weren’t stupid enough to die that easily
I always thought about his hand after the movie. It had to have gotten incredibly infected from putting it in that rotten body.
Glad I’m not the only one.
Possibly the only positive thing we can find is, their imunity system after months in the trenches was possibly far superior to people today. Yet, it is pretty possible he would suffer great infection and would lose that hand afterwards. As I read very many WWI memoirs, common soldier took a loss of a hand as an acceptable prise for going home and survive.
@@ondracekivo I think especially since he had just sliced his hand open moments ago
Just cutting it on the wire would have been a likely infection. Around 40,000 soldiers died as a result of infected cuts from sharp metals as the medicine didn't exist at the time. There's an account of one soldier who cut himself on a sharp edge of a bucket and died because of the stains around it infected the wound, the bucket was being used as a latrine.
Oh yeah, even cutting it on the wire would have been enough but adding insult to injury by shoving it into a rotten corpse. And keep in mind anti-biotics are still in their infancy during this period so there is a good to fair chance he’s losing that hand.
I don't remember what book it was, but when I was a small kid I read an account from a soldier who did exactly this, and it went something like "every boot pushed into the earth never knew whether it was mud, putrid flesh, or mushy bone it was sinking into. A glance at the sides of the forward trenches would reveal pieces of uniforms, and sometimes pieces of men, including an arm poking out that we named 'Archie' and used to hang our gear off of, until it decayed to the point where we couldn't hang anything off it anymore." I had nightmares for weeks from this passage, and I think it permanently affected my outlook on life. This scene feels like it was written by someone who read the same thing.
i've often thought of this, that in the mud, the wet, the sheer chaos and messiness of it all with regards to artillery fire and men being blown to bits. that it must just be an absolute swamp, a porridge if you will of body parts. grim
Graveyard humour helps the men to get past the horror. But it affects the mind forever afterwards. Shell shock/PTSD
"All Quiet on the Western Front" was the book, perhaps? Just guessing.
I remember hearing a similar account of Australian soldiers in Gallipoli who would shake a hand sticking out of the trench wall for good luck before going over the top.
@@Markus_Andrew No it wasn't, that's a great book, but this was I think an excerpt from an interview in one of the old Time Life history books, I think. That's the closest I can get to remembering where I saw it.
My great-grandfather fought in this war in the Italian Alps, as a soldier of the Austro-Hungarian army. My father always mentions that his great-grandfather never wanted to talk about the fighting he experienced, but that the First World War changed him a lot. From a cheerful person full of life, he became silent and often searched for solitude even for several days. As a retire from the army, he received a military bicycle, which he very much considered and rode it until his death.
Much respect for you great grandfather and other people like him
No he didn't
@@whatnoitemsnoitemsnopass his great grandfather couldn’t pick which side he was on man, it was a war fought by monarchies based in nationalism, millions were conscripted and forced to fight
@@whatnoitemsnoitemsnopass wasn’t like they were some super villains in a movie
No he didn't
It's incredible to me that actual men lived through this horror and managed to reintegrate civilian life afterwards. Truly, the human mind is resilient.
Actually most of them didn't do so good after the war.
@@garrisonnichols807
And I wouldn’t blame them, it was so horrible
no they did not reintegrate lol
Tell me you haven't heard about the lost generation without telling me you havent
@@nicolelawless3199 yeah I've read up on alot of the history of those times. Many veterans came home with post traumatic stress disorder or worse shell shock. Then there's the people who died from the Spanish flu epidemic that was going on or they were disabled from the poison gas or lost arms and legs. And there wasn't any compensation from their governments.
I remember being nervous about his hand wound for the rest of the film. It’s awful to think that something so petty could take you out even after surviving everything else.
@@rc59191 they didn't antibiotics wasn't a thing until late 1920s
@@rc59191do u just randomly say stuff without even knowing if what ur saying is correct
I actually freaked out and I wanted to faint in theatres because it felt I was there
the moment his hand landed inside the dead soldier, i was so sure he's a side character that gonna disappear soon xD
A big moment that always stands out to me is when he cuts his hand on the wire, and then accidentally falls with that same hand into the corpse. Many died from combat, but so many more died from disease. It's an awesome way of communicating just another way these men could be killed.
This scene alone was worth the price of admission for me, when I saw this in the cinema. Fantastic tension building.
Me and grandmother saw it together and she tells me that I got into an old state just because I fell out with No Mans Land a few weeks before this, I totally regretted it and now we’re back to the way like we used to be
@@nicolelawless3199 what?
@@nicolelawless3199 Come again?
Yes, the cinematography is absolutely fantastic. However, I think this segment is really given weight by the amazing score. Hats off to Thomas Newman. He did a fantastic job scoring this film.
It’s incredible music
That's what I was thinking. The second they get in that huge crater and the score kicks in until the hit the German trench gives me goosebumps errytime. I can only imagine the soldiers death in the barbwire at the top of the crater.
Omg that eerie song that kicks on when they go into that huge crater and the camera sweeps across the water. It's creepy, sad, scary, instense, and has so many emotions attached to it, which makes it so haunting. Amazing score like you said, I completely agree with you.
The first part of the piece is so disturbing, equally as bleak and ominous as the color of the landscape itself
Truly a fantastic scene. The way the camera goes across the pond seamlessly is incredible
It's not a pond mate, that's a blast crater from a mine explosion.
@@baileysadlier4769 well everything in this scene is a blast crater, so the one filled with water haha
The whole scene is cgi.
@@andya6461 NOPE. Only bits of it.
@@chrispile3878 what bits? Pile of horse manuer
Coming back here after All Quiet on the Western Front. Both of these films are such respectful representations of the sheer brutality and human toll of this conflict.
I thought All Quiet on the Western Front from Netflix was a poor, weak version of this fine movie.
@@nasedo3129 Agreed. Netflix messed around with the history to push an exaggerated version of events (last battle in particular) that somehow managed to be less effective than the much more reserved 1917
I remember reading all quiet on the western front when I was in school years ago. As an older man now and one with a son to see that movie and watch how youth were lied to and quickly died in the grinder, for nothing makes me so horrified by the war, and double down on the need to never forget, and never let it happen again.
Me too
@@AllThingsCubeyThe things they added to the movie are historically correct
It is extremely heartbreaking to think about how may brave young men from both sides lost their lives in this mud and are still laying there to this day.
They tried to clean up the battlefields after the war, but there's only so much you can do.
There's probably still tens of thousands of corpses that they didn't find or couldn't retrieve.
No wonder people went insane, having to fight along half buried, rotten and destroyed corpses. The human mind is not made to deal with such things.
I'm lucky and grateful for (hopefully) never having to see such things in life.
Let's hope such things won't happen again.
That was the first time I fell out with No Mans Land and I totally regretted it because it would’ve been with me for 3 years that year and I didn’t want to give up on it. No Mans Land is still with me today 5 years later
I think this kind of war will probably never happen this large scale... With the age of mechanised warfare and advanced warfare, trench warfare is more a tactic for home/ ground defence than any kind of actual 1917 situation.
Just look at Ukraine. They don't really have a solid trench setup right now ( during the 2014 invasion and thereafter sure, but now? It's more foxholes than trenches
And there are not only corpses, but also ammunition that are left. Entire fields in the Somme and around Verdun are still dangerous to cross because of the sheer amount of unexploded shells, grenades and mines. They remove dozen of them every year, but it seems like a task without an end
Well, welcome multipolerism and you'll see it handy.
WWIII is coming soon and it'll make WWI and WWII look like picnics. be ready... judgement is here for the sins of man.
Ww1 was straight insanity, these age old empires fighting with all they’ve got, all this new technology and tactics, and the scale and brutality of it was something the world had never seen before. It literally ended these hundreds of year old empires
It literally changed humanity forever. My only friendly edit to your comment is the "new technology and tactics"... That was the problem with WW1. The tactics were outdated for the new far more advanced technology. They fought a Napoleonic 19th century style war with modern 20th century weaponry. Thus you had a perpetual stalemate with the most brutal killings of any war. It reshaped the political landscape and as you put it, ended empires. Unfortunately, the mishandling of the Versailles Treaty by the allies paved the way for WW2.
RIP The Kingdom of Prussia 🥺
@@zachphillips3784 Admittedly, the conditions of the Versailles Treaty were either too strict or not strict enough. France, which despite several history re-writings by the anglo-saxon world is legitimately the main victor (and the ally nation which suffered most losses and destruction), wanted to ensure Germany would be splitted and partily annexed by neighbouring countries in order to prevent any... revenge, which would have come either way as the German people hadn't seen any foreign army parading in the streets of Berlin and they believed the conspiration theories of a treason which gave the allies an undeserved victory. But the US and the UK wanted a European continent with no nation which could clearly dominate the others. France, having lost a whole generation of young man in 14-18 would soon earn the consequences of the USA's help to Germany's recovery in the 20's, in 1940... And be called surrendering monkeys by the grandchildren of those who kind of facilitated Germany's victorious invasion. But really, really: WW1 and WW2 were mostly about allowing the US to become an uncontested empire. Korea, Vietnam. Afghanistan, Irak,... many brutal killings yet to come.
L. @@nicolasmartinez7741
Ukranian losses of 2022-2024 and soon 2025 are on scale of WWI. Imagine 1 of 40 of the entire population gone.
My great grandfather told me that the thing that frustrated him the most about video games, and movies depicting war times is that they always show men fighting men, when in the war it was children slaughtering children, the oldest soldier he ever met in the field was 24. He fought in the second World War
The how the infantry got its name. Infant-ry
The cinematography is absolutely amazing and leaves the viewer in awe how they captured the visuals in every scene.
@@F_Vlad_ How did the camera cross the water-filled crater? Not even a ripple in the water but it appears to go right through the middle.
That's thanks to one of the very best in the business, Sir Roger Deakins.
Yep, and the set design.
This movie really makes the horror of ww1 real, the bodies, the wire, the literal desolate landscape, all things you’d see in horror movies, the bit that makes it actually horrific in this to me is the fact that it’s broad day light, the time when there’s not meant to be horror
This scene captured trench visualisation and the atmosphere like nothing I’ve ever watched or played. Terrifying without the whole horror aspect. Raw uncertainty about whether they will be fired upon. Who is around them. The dead the rotting corpses, skeletons, rats. One of the best movies I have ever watched and time and time again it still amazes me.
You must watch Paths of Glory a film that shows the suffocating atmosphere of the trenches and an over the top full frontal attack by hundreds of men. 1917 is benign by comparison.
@@anthonyeaton5153 I’ll check it out tonight so
@@anthonyeaton5153 that’s the movie by Stanley Kubrick right? My English teacher showed us it back in school. Rather interesting movie by all accounts
Now you gotta watch the new All quiet on the western front. Netflix adaptation. My God its....brutal
@@guitarist4life00 watched it. It was incredibly horrifying. The essence of war was rife
My guts dropped so hard when his hand definitely got massively infected. Knowing he's either losing his arm or his life because of a slip...
I remember holding my grief over the war in until the run scene and then I exploded. I’ll never forget how kind and helpful everyone were. Then me and grandmother reunited with them for 1917 a month later
wasn't penicillin invented shortly after? He might have kept the arm.
They start off the scene with the words "age before beauty", which is a perfect foreshadowing for the Hand wound
@@sigurdkaputnik7022a decade after the war had ended, Schofield (if he even survived until November 1918) most likely would’ve been an amputee
I think what makes this stand out so well is the straight record effect. No pauses just 1 frame constantly. (There were pauses but so unnoticeable it’s incredible)
You wouldn't believe it, but there is a hidden cut at 3:17
While filming they couldn't figure out how transition from this shot (crane dolly) to the next one (steadicam), so the actors are temporarily and seamlessly replaced with CG doubles as they climb out of the trench. Amazing work from MPC and the filmmakers!
Now that is pointed out there is something slightly off. Incredible work, you really have to look for it.
Nah there's not
@@sanbornolsen i think you missed the part “hidden” lmao
Wow, that’s amazing! I’m a huge fan of the long take, and study them in films. If what you’re saying is true, that may be the most seamless stitch of all time
@@Jeff-cr9ho How do you know that? I know there are many clever cuts throughout the film where going from dark to light areas, and when extras move in front of the camera for example, but after rewatching your clip many times, I am convinced that is not CGI.
The amazing thing about this scene is that you can cut the tension with a knife, yet, not a shot is fired.
My grandfather William was born in 1887, italian front, Alpini Fiamme Verdi, from Caporetto to Vidor a terrible battle in november 1917. He was a survivor but a piece of his life has been buried on those battlefields. RIP granpa. MV
No he didn't
I can't even begin to imagine how that must have been like to be living in those trenches, starving, wet, rats eating at your ears and toes, and foot rot from soggy boots and socks
"No Man's Land" a destroyed landscape once full of life and greenery turned into a land of dead and shot up tree's, crater's from artillery gun's, barb wire, horse's killed from calvary charge's, soldiers on both sides killed and rotting, and the only thing living are flies, crow's, and rats feasting on the dead.
Can you just imagine the smell of corpses that have been out there for 3 to 4 years rotting away
My favorite piece of ww1 literature is storm of steel by Ernst jünger. There is mutiple times in the book where he describes the dead. At one point they're digging trenches in 1916/1917 and his shovel keeps uncovering bones, cartridges, and bits of uniform from summer of 1914. Even one time he described the hands, arms and legs in no man's land, during the start of the Somme, just sticking out of the ground and into the sky like roots of a knocked over tree. Give it a read its very eye opening as he served from 1915 to March 1918 as an german officer and lived.
Me neither and I’d lose it if I was there. In 2020, it was my first time falling out with No Mans Land and I felt terrible afterwards because we usually get on very well. I hate falling out with it
@@nicolelawless3199 sorry to hear that pretty lady hope everything else is going well for you
@@jacobhunt8379
Thanks, I think we’re back to the old days now and No Mans Land has never let me down but only once
@@nicolelawless3199 Glad to hear it I give you and everyone on that project a lot of credit
I like how some of the bodies just blend in with the mud and dirt
After the constant shelling its likely to have happened.
There were so many casualties after the first couple of months of fighting that neither side bothered to retrieve most of their dead. So the rotting bodies just kind of piled up in no man's land, half buried in the mud or floating in puddles, completely dehumanized
It's movies like these that me appreciate the times we live in.
Fun fact, even tho it did seem like a single shot with no cuts, there actually are cuts to it. it was just so seamless, that it looked like there was never any cuts during the whole shot. digital corridor went over this shot in one of their videos. absolutely stellar.
Love how u can feel how much their gear is weighing them down by just how they move
I recently took a trip to France with my dad to see many of the WWI and WWII battlefields and cemeteries. I saw many of the trenches, shell and bomb holes and tried to imagine them looking like this. Seeing these locations after being healed by nature really gets you thinking about the horrors of war.
Something I learned which I share now so everyone can appreciate it, is the massive amount of accuracy put into these scenes in terms of costume design.
The webbing they have tells you that Schofield has been in the war long before Blake, before we even learn this through dialogue. Blakes leather webbing is supposed to have only been for training purposes, but after the massive losses up to 1916, the standard for who could join up was lowered. No longer were they only takin 'A-1" class men.
This meant that they were taking in much more than the canvas webbing manufacturing companies could handle, which is what Schofield wears, so the army resorted to sending them ahead without it and instead with what they had in larger supply, which was the leather webbing.
That attention to detail alone is mind blowing, especially considering the audience may not even have any idea about any of this! I know I didnt.
Such a horrifying view of 'no mans land'! Every inch is detailed so well.
There's this huge, devastated area full of thousands of bodies of men who once had lives and families at home, but now there is not a living soul in sight. The devastated moonscape combined with the eerie music is haunting to say the least. It almost gives me the feeling that it's a zombie movie and that all the dead bodies will come to life. The destruction contrasts so much with the stillness that it almost feels unnatural. Like something is about to happen. I suppose we're supposed to see how the characters are at a constant state of alert as they could be spotted and shot at any moment. This scene does a very good job at building that suspense!
I've always found the first world war spooky. That cross over between the old world and the new. It's something I can't quite put my finger on. Like a museum at night. This music (especially the part when they go through the deep crater) puts those feelings into sound for me.
You should look in your local library for more information on how these poor buggers survived and died, this was real life for your grandfather and great grandfather, the poem 'in Flanders fields ' if you haven't read it might if you close your eyes after reading awaken your imagination
"In peace time, children bury their parents. In war time, parents bury their children"
Herodotus from Halicarnasum
Best regards from Venezuela 🇻🇪
I know what you mean by that museum at night feel. It was a sloppy war, trench warfare subjected those humans to the worst things imaginable, and for the smallest effect. Just thinking about that war, it must have had the most dead bodies per square mile by far.
This was how I fell out with No Mans Land then back in 2020 lockdown. I randomly got up one night because of my panic attacks and I went on the landing to grieve for those who died but then my mother heard me crying so I spent 5 minutes with her and I was literally struggling to breathe properly because I was so scared of No Mans Land at that point and I never have been before. I didn’t sleep at all that night struggling to breathe because of stress. It was a horrible moment
what I take from that comment is that you've been watching too many zombie movies
My friends: You like 1917? What's your favorite scene?
Me: Yes.
Lmao, I get it 😂
"I liked that one scene"
Idk if its just me, but I lowkey feel like I'm walking through no man's land with them. The thought of a bullet coming any time, feeling the pain of that barbed wire, the disgust of seeing dead soldiers, everything.
I had that feeling too, that was the most haunting dreams of 1917 yet and I panicked as Schofield gets his hand infected that I dreaded the worst for him
Also, it makes us wondered in this scene: What had happened before?
We never know_
Age before beauty. My Dad already had Connery's autograph from the 60s. They never really knew one another. Decades later at a Manchester Utd game, they were both leaving the Men's Room. Dad said "Age before beauty" and let him go the exit door first as Connery was 12 years older.
The most haunting movie I’ve seen in a long time.
I’m still shaking after 2 years and already knowing what’s going to happen
Watch All quiet on the western front 2022
That one is also haunting
For those who are curios that big crater wasn’t caused by artillery, it was caused by underground mine that the British used to blow up fortified bunkers.
Thank you it was killing me!
There's so much gruesome detail packed into the landscape. It's so impressive what the filmmakers painstakingly did to pull it all off.
When you see the very end of the movie and watch this scene again, you realize the x10 character qualities of every single thing he does.
the one thing that is hard to imagine us that no man's land was actually worse than that. I've been to some WWI battlefields and even today it is haunting
legit feels like an apocalypse film, Everyone and the animals are dead, no one is to be found, the eerie silence... just apocalyptic. Crazy to think stuff like this was real
I have never seen "No man's landing" depicted in such a big and horrific way. It makes you think and relativice how troops might have seen trenches as "home" and "safe spot" with buddies in contrast to the cataclism nature of no man' landing.
And even "home" is littered with the corpses of your buddies, freshly dead and long decayed.
To me the most disturbing bit was that dead solider at 2:47. It looked like he died literally with his mouth open. But judging how him and the other dead solider are in a crater, I am assuming they both got killed by an explosion from German artillery.
Or British. Artillery wasn't like it is now. often times Friendly fire happens
I heard a statistic that Mortars alone accounted for over 50% of casualties in WW2. Artillery accounted for a good portion of that other 50%. I imagine WW1 was the same if not worse. Artillery is a truly frightening weapon! If you read 'Storm of Steel' by Ernst Junger you'll basically get PTSD from his descriptions of a days long artillery barrage alone!
Or possibly from a gas attack, indicated from his mouth being open, maybe he was gasping for breath?
For me the most disturbing scene was when he tried to gain balance and accidentally stuck his wounded bleeding hand in a rotting corpse...
Infection hazzard.
The jaw falls open after you're dead. Might be just that he has been dead for long enough for it to fall open.
I don't think anyone could imagine the smell of that place.
I love the instrumental hype just before they find that its empty
I love the use of music. Usually in cinema music is used to set the tone for a scene. Mystery and wonder with windpipes along with epic scores for fight scenes. However in this movie they use music to, in my opinion, convey the feelings of the characters in the scene. Quiet unsettling music for crossing no man's land not knowing if you are going to survive, scores that make you tense up as they check the trench just for it to cut off when they see nothing. Chills every time.
Once they cross over that trench and look into the white mist of hell .... Beautiful cinema
I could never truly imagine the full horror of the western front in 1917..unless I was there,the constant ever present fear of a bullet or a shell or gas...must have been such a dreadful thought,the freezing cold rain,mud,craters filled with filthy still water,infection everywhere,the bitter cold..thinking every moment could be your last...all those rotting bodies ,,those men had families,girlfriends who loved them once,now they lay there,lifeless in decay buried in the mud so far from home,never to be seen again,mothers who lost so many of their sons to this terrible war..and those who were fortunate enough to survive,would never be the same again..very brave men,may you all rest in peace,much respect to all of you..
I get really stressed out over nothing but then I think about how much the First World War cares about me and I also care about those who served and died
This whole movie was nothing short of outstanding. I am a history buff, myself, and I really enjoyed it and learned a lot. Highly recommend 1917.
Hard to believe 1917 is 3 years old today and I’m literally celebrating the anniversary after nearly being in a bus accident but no one or me were hurt. Glad to be home and got out alive thanks to 1917
02:47 *He's sure to get an infection from the fact that he put his injured hand inside a decomposing corpse.*
@sviero I say yes. The wounding from the rusted Barb Wire alone had a heavy chance of causing (back then) 99% Deadly Tetanus.
Not to mention dipping the Hand into a decaying, Rat- biten Stomach.
Infection: 100% Sure. Possibly not only 1 Type. Survival Chance? Not to calculate, pure Luck.
Fairly sure he died later in the movie anyway
@@theduke9292 he didn't, but im sure he died after the movie because of it. How long would an infection kill you though? Because it took Scofield and Blake 1 day to reach their destination
@@Jargolf86thats most definitely not the only thing to worry about
I could only imagine the horrors those WW1 soldiers had seen, if only we could hear their words today
Then you need to watch 'They Shall Not Grow Old' directed by Peter Jackson.
You can also find a documentary called "The Last Voices of WW1" which has interviews with several of them.
Read Forgotten Voices of the Somme! Also gives you a good impression.
I just love how the music swells up when they were nearly at the German trench. The first time I saw the scene, It was almost as if I could feel the adrenaline that they likely would also have felt at that moment. Whoever composed the soundtrack for this film is an absolute genius.
0:53 i love this moment, shows Blake's relative naivety and innocence, he's still disgusted enough to look back at the dead horse in morbid fascination, while Schofield plows ahead relentlessly
Maybe he’s ploughing ahead thinking of his brother, like no hesitation to go ahead, he couldn’t wait! Just my thoughts 🙂
Well observed though, it’s a special movie, and I’m so glad it paid such special respectful homage to actual people! I was surprised how good it was! In my older age I’m shying away from war movies 😬 but this was different
2:45
Patton: 'When you put your hand in a tub of goo, that a minute before was your best friend's face....you'll know what to do.'
Imagine walking by the body tangled in barbed wire and saying "Congratulations on becoming a lawn ornament."
I feel like I am in an apocalypse, end of the world. These men definitely felt that and more
By 9pm, my street is usually deserted like somethings happened and I was suffering a nose bleed AGAIN but it could be the heat or something. I was so scared the blood would go everywhere again because I was sent home from college due to intense stress levels twice in 3 years
One continuous shot. No cuts. Really amazing.
Just imagine all the bodies never found in that war.
They turn up every year, almost every month. There are Archeology teams that go out now and excavate the remains of the old trenches. Often they find the remains of men who are still manning their posts, having been killed and immediately buried by a close artillery burst. Rarely do they find any that were carefully laid to rest by their comrades.
My great-uncle Joe was a Sergeant in the U.S. Army Expeditionary Force back then. I wonder sometimes what kind of horror he saw.
@@markl2322 my grandfather served in the Pacific theater in WW2 and my father served in Vietnam for 2 tours. They have never once spoken of this other than it was hot and wet. I am happy that they are still looking for those men.
@@ericread2369
I am too, bless them. I visited the war cemetery every year when I was 15 and the war then haunted me for years ever though I wasn’t there thank goodness. November 11th is normally the most haunting day of the year because the world stops to remember them. November 11th is my favourite time of year because of that
A good half of the Australians who died on the western front have no known grave. Particularly at Pozieres where they held a salient with the artillery of 3 German field armies obliterating them from 3 sides.
Most soldiers who died in WW1 were blown apart by artillery barrage, hence lack of graves for all of the fallen, on all sides. 😥😥
The music and pacing of this scene is astounding.
Great film, you couldn’t realistically fault it, you could fault it but you would be nit picking. It’s as great as a WW1 film could be, and they filmed a part of it less than 300 yards from my house.
Seeing the remains of at least one more tank in no man's land would have done it for me.
Instant favorite.
People dont know one thing that the soldiers who survived ww1 did not get the life they deserved after the war. Firstly, the great depression had impacted their already low economic situation. And even worse, some of them said goodbye to their own sons who left home to fight ww2.
That soundtrack is sooo good man…can’t get enough of this movie, should have won best sound track that year…the pictures, the acting, the adventurous story…this is going to be one of those war movies we look back on as one of the greats like Saving Private Ryan…
What I find most horrific about this scene is not so much about the graphic appearances of the dead corpses, but the fact that these were soldiers, that will always be forgotten and unknown, because they were never retrieved after the battle for whatever reason. They were left behind, and the soldiers had names, and their bodies and belongings will never be brought back to their families. These men define “missing in action”
This movie is an absolute masterpiece and it accurately portrays what the horror of the First World War was for those who will never know the trenches…
My Grandfather was born in 1896 and fought in World War I in the United States Army. He was a Master Gunnery SGT in an artillery unit. I still have his helmet.
Had I not scene the photos I would never believe this war happened. It’s unfathomable to be honest
When my friend and I decided to play Battlefield 1, and then find ourselves in an empty conquest server.
Though WW2 was a million times worse and deadlier. there’s some things that made WW1 worse for the common soldier.
Something about having to sneak across a empty silent apocalyptic field full of of decaying bodies, mud and the thought that I could get sniped any moment is more terrifying than almost anything I’ve seen from any WW2 movie.
I love the music that plays here. It really sets the dark mood, and the sense that death could come for them at any moment.
Omg this movie is so anxious. I can't even believe that this was real and a point in time. They shouldn't of had to fight in that war and lose their lives at such a young age.
Imagine crossing no man's land and recognizing one of the corpses as one of you own comrades who was lost in an earlier advance.
There are very few movies that present war as a sort of horror film, and that walk across No Man's Land always puts me on the edge of my seat.
it is said that "horror" as we know it today was born by impressions of artists that survived ww1. Tolkien included, but many others aswell.
when my dad was a boy he had a gardener that was in WW1, in the cavalry. Apparently there was hand sticking out the wall of the trench that they all used to shake as they went past.
“Look for the bowing chap, Theres a gap in the wire there”
me: bowing chap?
1:43 ah the bowing chap….
Yeah, it's funny they use all the corpses as landmarks, but still... How else are you supposed to navigate when everything else is gray and blown to bits? Truly terrifying experience in hindsight.
When children dream of war, they can't possibly imagine this
The glory of war for all of you with the war fever in 2022.
It’s devastating what’s happening in Ukraine. The news makes me so depressed because it reminded me of my fall out with No Mans Land 2 years ago which I totally regretted, I love you No Mans Land really and i promise I’ll never let you down again like that
My great grandfather was in this. On his deathbed he would have flashbacks and yell for everyone to get down. He was in the middle of a flashback when he took his last breath. 97 years old. I can’t imagine something so traumatic that it haunts you for nearly 80 years
I can’t imagine what that must’ve been like! Come and See (1985)’s Floyra has watched me have flashbacks of last year when I was ill in hospital almost dying. Now that’s real trauma
This whole scene is like a short movie in itself.
2:39 looking at hand... then the green comes over and gets spooked...so he punches his fist down to gain balance... realizes that his open wound was just inside a corpse..... moves on because that IS war.
The way they made it look like one shot is astonishing
Man ...... What terrible horrific beings we are . I see these images . I watch the sheer absolute horror we inflict on each other, and I realise we are all damned and not worthy of saving . I wait patiently and pray for something to end the nightmare for the darkness is everywhere and inevitable.
2:49 Schofield: Do you happen to have some hand sanitizer with you?
Did they have that back then?
@Myself-yf5do alcohol then?
The art team did a great job for making the no man's land.
Can see a hidden cut at 4:45... the second solider's gait and grip on the rifle change after the thick tree passes the camera. Not a criticism, mind - you have to look hard for it.
I believe you’re right
It's a hidden cut because they obviously can't film the entire movie in one shot
@@going1917 Well... yes.
Love when the score kicks in when there walking around the crater
This really puts into perspective how brutal of a war WW1 was.
Literally fighting in an untended graveyard. Nightmarish.
And how needless it was. At the same time, it showed how extremely outdated the military tactics were with the advancement of (at the time) modern technology and weaponry. Marching in division lines across an open field and calvary charges on horseback were no longer effective tactics when the machine gun was introduced.
@@Sigma0283 It was very needless. A bunch of old politicians sent millions of young men to die for essentially nothing
@@Sigma0283idk about needless, if we never went to war over there. The forces would have taken more land and expanded an army stronger than the USA. Germany's whole plan at the end was to share the USA over it grows stronger and makes a 1 world power. This is why war is needed to keep bad guys from gaining great power to soon dominate a homeland with very little force.
Both Dean-Charles and George did that quick stare back at the bodies perfectly, as if to be horrified that the dead are just sitting there but they have to carry on with their duty and forget about it
Imagine being a soldier killed in a battlefield and your dead body is A) left to decompose in a filthy pond, B) spread out everywhere, or C) just on a grimy, mucky battlefield. You will never get a proper burial, you will not be placed in a casket, your body is left to rot in the middle of nowhere.
This is easily in my top 5 war movies and I've seen many good ones. Even a scene like this which features no action, is filled with suspense and terror.
5:32 ⚠️warning⚠️ if you ever see a mud and dead body infected water do not drink but be smart like the soldiers in this video
A nice detail I just caught was that the barbwire they encounter shortly after leaving the British lines is mostly staked with the metal "pig tail" stakes where as the barbwire they encounter near the German lines is mounted on wood stakes. That certainly makes sense as differing armies facing each other on various sections of the lines would have different resources and logistics issues (and yes, I know that Germans sometimes used metal stakes and British sometimes used wood). It's a nice detail as I imagine a lot of production crews would just throw up universal barbwire scenery -- but here they took it into consideration that different sides would be doing the actual set up of barbwire in real life.
This scene becomes more heartbreaking when you realize that, with perhaps a few hermits being the exceptions, each and every one of those corpses had a family and friends who hoped and prayed that they would return alive and well...all for naught.
Good boys.
You defended King and Country.
Rest In Peace.
the music or soundtrack here at 5:18... anyone know the link or who its by?
The part that’s awful and unspoken about this movie is that it’s only 1917. There’s a very good chance that Schofield would not survive until November 1918. There’s also a massive pandemic (the Spanish Flu) coming. These folks did not get a break. Imagine living from 1890-1945.
That was intense. I can only imagine the smell in those fields and all the dangers of unexploded ammo. I read the book "With the old breed" and the author, Eugene Sledge, always would say "war is such a waste of human life"