Available on Netflix, this documentary offers transgenerational, moving evocation of eight months of hell, by the prism of those who lived them.
September 1940. Nazi Germany launched a massive bombing campaign on England. Called “Blitz” (“lightning” in German), this attack lasted eight months. Eight months of fire, fear, blood and tears, devastated cities, tens of thousands of dead and nearly 150,000 injured. Figures that may seem harmless with regard to the 60 million victims of the Second World War. However, bruising remains deep in the history of Great Britain.
As part of the 80e anniversary of the final capitulation of Nazi Germany on May 8, 1945, Great Britain in front of the blitzBig documentary by Ella Wright, returns, by the prism of images of restored archives, of fictional sequences made so as to offer viewers a more immersive experience, and many testimonies, on the hell experienced by the English during this battle. Even though they thought they were sheltered by their insularity.
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“It was a dreadful shock, to discover that the enemy was so close, to understand that he was trying to destroy us”recalls this native of a popular district of London, 5 years old during the attack. “I felt like I attended the Last Judgment, as described in some old books”adds this other, former firefighter, barely 17 during his baptism of fire. “We were suspended dead”insists a third. The documentary maker and producer Ella Wright is not at her first work.
An assumed storytelling
He owes him films on the September 11 attacks, the assassination of JFK, Donald Trump or the rise of the Nazi regime, a minister also available on Netflix. His very documented works are a “tale of facts”, an assumed dramatic power story. The genre is hybrid and potentially subject to surety, having regard to the need for respect for historical fact. Especially in recent years.
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“We are extremely rigorous on the dosage. History, on the one hand, which does not suffer any gap. The reconstruction, of the other, which has no other objective than to support and give life to the words ”she explains. The bias is here that of the testimonial, memorial and the way civilians have crossed this test. A difficult choice insofar as its vast majority witnesses have disappeared. The writings, fortunately, are numerous.
Like that of Joan Wyndham, whose memories punctuate the story, and which, forty years after the Blitz, published the diary that she was holding. From the inside, the viewer discovers how the evacuation of London is organized, children sent by hundreds of thousands in the countryside to the collections of the prestigious Tate Gallery via the animals of the zoo. He takes the measure of the relentlessness of Hitler to bend Great Britain, of the energy deployed by women to participate in the war effort, of the desire to fight it with the misfortune, of the popularity of Churchill, of the vital impetus of this nation and immense solidarity.
Great Britain in front of the blitz is the second collaboration between the production company 72 films and the streaming giant around the Second World War after 39-45: humanity at warrewarded with an Emmy Award.
