The War Game

Peter Watkins builds the aftermath of a nuclear strike on Britain in the grammar of a news report. The camera is jostled, people are interviewed in the street, experts cut in between sequences. None of it is real. It was shot in Kent and most of the cast were not professional actors. You still never quite shake the sense that you are watching a documentary, because formally that is exactly what it is. What it shows is brief and specific: a firestorm, people blinded by the flash, armed rationing of food, the shooting of those too sick to save, and what a week does to the survivors. The BBC commissioned it and then refused to broadcast it, calling it too horrific for television. Watkins resigned in protest. After a limited cinema run it won the Oscar for best documentary feature, yet it was not shown on British television until 1985. Its weakness now is not its brutality but its brevity. Forty eight minutes, and the argument is handed to you. Who it is for: anyone interested in nuclear history and formal experiment. Who it is not for: viewers who would rather not be shaken.