Its director was a world war one hero, the Royal Navy lent ships to re-create its stirring scenes – and even the Germans liked it. Now, a 1927 silent epic of naval warfare is being rereleased

One hundred years ago, 7,500 miles from London, the British Empire took a bruising knock. Off the coast of Chile near Coronel, on 1 November 1914, squadrons from the German and British navies exchanged fire. The British were hopelessly outgunned and two ships, HMS Monmouth and HMS Good Hope, were lost, along with all the souls – nearly 1,600 – on board. It was Britain’s first naval defeat in more than a century of much-touted supremacy over the waves.

In response, the Royal Navy fitted out two more battle cruisers, HMS Inflexible and HMS Invincible, and sent them steaming down to the South Atlantic to regain ground. A month later, the German Vice-Admiral Von Spee, who had given the order to sink the Monmouth at Coronel, faced another standoff, not far from the Falkland Islands, but this time, as the best war stories say, the British were ready for the enemy…

These two battles are not the best known in the annals of the first world war, and the film that documents them, made 13 years later, in peacetime, has barely been seen since its release. But The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands (1927), directed by Walter Summers, may well be the greatest British war film you’ve never heard of. Made just at the end of the silent era, Battles changed the way that war films were made, and appreciated, in the UK. Now it is being rereleased by the BFI to commemorate the start of the first world war – a chance for modern moviegoers to relish a neglected classic of British silent cinema.

In Summers’s hands, these twinned battles become not a revenge story, but a hymn to Navy values under pressure. As an opening title card sets out, this is the tale of “a victory, and a defeat as glorious as a victory”. In fact, it’s Von Spee, rather the British captains, who makes a play for the audience’s sympathy – he’s a marked man, doomed to follow his orders until the death.

Hollywood had been releasing first world war movies for a while by the time Battles was made: bombastic, slick fictions epitomised by blockbusters such as The Big Parade and Wings. “British audiences used to laugh at American war films,” explains Dr Lawrence Napper of King’s College London, author of a forthcoming book on British film and the first world war. “They were just so unrealistic. It wasn’t details, such as that the uniforms were inaccurate. They would have American troops fighting in battles that they had never been anywhere near.”

British film-makers were more reticent to transform their recent history into a spectacle. The war was closer to home for UK audiences, so British war films were aimed at veterans, a sober way to remember losses and record who did what where. “The previous mode of war films was maps and diagrams and then in amongst it all you would have these little vignettes of brave Tommies who had won the Victoria Cross,” says Napper. “Battles doesn’t do that – there are no obvious heroes and it’s all about building tension and the chase sequence at the end.”

“There’s a spectrum running from documentary to drama, and Summers swings the dial all the way over to drama,” says Bryony Dixon, silent film curator at the BFI. “It’s beautiful, and it’s exciting.” Battles combines artistry – some stunning montage sequences and elegant shots of the glistening water, slow tracks along the hulls of the cruisers – with a relentlessly ticking clock. To ramp up the anticipation of the second battle, telegrams, calendars, clocks and pressure gauges count down the days, minutes, yards and buckets of coal until the bombardment begins. There’s even a little comic relief, mostly provided by the raggedy troop of Falkland Islanders who pitch in to assist the Navy.

“It looks modern,” agrees Napper. “It has taken on some of the genre conventions of a Hollywood war film. And this is the first British film to try to re-create the reality of battle and to immerse the audience in it.”

HMS Good Hope is lost: from The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands. Photograph: Imagenet

There are two reasons why Battles has the ring of truth. First, a film as ambitious as this could not have been made without Admiralty support, and the Royal Navy lent ships, advice and men for the production. Backing up the actors, there are real sailors crewing those ships – signalling, shovelling and swivelling the guns into position. In fact, there is no human cast list in the title cards for Battles, but all the ships are given their right and proper credit. Battles is not interested in individual heroism so much as the rules of engagement. “It’s an opportunity to set the record straight about the battles,” says Dixon, “as well as a memorial to the Navy.” The Navy continues to support Battles, in fact, having assisted both with the restoration and the gala screening at the London film festival, at which the film will be accompanied by the Royal Marines band, playing a newly commissioned score.





The second reason is Summers himself: a keen, not to say gung-ho, soldier who had distinguished himself in the first world war. He fought at Ypres and the Somme, rose to the rank of Lieutenant and earned a Military Cross. A fellow soldier in the 9th East Surrey Regiment described him as “an outstandingly brave fellow. He loved to crawl about No Man’s Land and scare the enemy.” Although he returned to the film business after the war, and directed nearly 40 films, many of them on military subjects, he yearned to fight again, and tried to re-enlist more than once. Summers gained a reputation for his powerful battle scenes: his passion for service was translated into thrilling cinema. “He knew what it was like out there,” says Dixon. “And that shows in the way that the film is shot.”





“I’ve been wondering whether Summers was musical,” says Simon Dobson, who has composed the score for the new restoration. “The fight scenes could have been edited to a tempo, I didn’t have to write any complicated rhythms around the gun shots.” There is a compelling rhythm to the battle scenes, and a terrific amount of gunfire. At the film’s premiere, in the New Gallery Cinema on Regent Street, London, special effects were used to emphasise the shots – leading to complaints about the noise from the shop next door. Dobson’s score has to provide the sound for a film that was clearly designed to be played loud. But even Dobson, who describes himself as a “noisy, dark composer”, was alarmed when one of the players, a Royal Marine no less, passed out, exhausted, during the recording session.

More than glorification: Royal Navy sailors hail comrades in The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands. Photograph: Imagenet, courtesy of BFI

There might be something dangerous about such a film, creating a stirring pageant out of war – and that was definitely a concern that critics of the time, notably the Manchester Guardian’s CA Lejeune, felt deeply. “This is the film that changed Lejeune’s mind,” says Napper. Lejeune had previously been concerned that war films had the ability to rouse military passions in the audience. “We stand up instinctively for the anthem of a nation’s blood. It catches us quicker than thought, quicker than reason,” she warned in 1926. But when Lejeune saw Battles, she dropped her guard, acclaiming it “the best motion picture a British director has ever made” and praising its “beauty” and skill: “His angles and dissolves and distances and the keen pace of his cutting carry the story.”





Dixon, too, thinks that there is more going on here that the glorification of war: “It’s all about morale and dealing with the impact of defeat.” Rather than quickening the blood towards another war, Napper argues that: “It represents the need to take something from the war that is of value. In the end, it’s all about Empire and reminding us that we are the guardians of peace.”





The trick of the film may well be an exemplary ability to satisfy all camps. It is telling that back in 1927, Battles was a hit, not just at home, but abroad. Abridged versions of the movie found favour throughout the Empire and even in Germany. You can’t say fairer than that.









• The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands will be the London film festival Archive Gala screening at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, on 16 October 2014 with the Band of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines. It will open in selected cinemas nationwide on 17 October, and will be available on BFI Player