The film 1917 covers the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg line.

It's just a movie, but how good is its history?

How true to life for the characters and the regiments it depicts?

Does it show a real landscape of the Great War?

And how does it connect us to the battlefields along the old front line?

Something a bit different on the old front line this week, we're going to look at the film

1917 that came out in the cinemas last year. This Sam Mendi's film follows the story of two infantry runners,

Blake and Schofield, who were given a mission to take a message to an infantry unit

that's about to make an attack towards the Hindenburg line in the spring in April of 1917.

It's a powerful, beautifully shot film with incredible attention to detail when it comes

to aspects of the First World War. And in some respects, that's what's prompted this podcast

because it's come back in the news again. It was one of the top-selling films for 2020, which, considering that most of us couldn't go to the cinema beyond March of last year that's not probably much of a surprise because it was one of the biggest films that came out in the early part of the year but over Christmas I think it came up on some of the subscription services, possibly Amazon Prime,

and a lot of people either watched it for the first time or re-watched it. And this has prompted

quite a few questions that have come in to the podcast headquarters, either through Twitter or

via email. So, rather than just answer those individually, i thought we'd have a look at the film

and we'd essentially do 1917 uncovered and because this is not just a first world war history

podcast it's also a podcast that looks at the battlefields of the first world war will tie that

into some of the connected battlefields to this

film. So when we watch a film like 1917, we know it's fiction, we know it's a movie, but we do ask

ourselves when it's set in a real time frame, in this case the Great War, is it based on a true

story? So this film by Sam Mendez is not based on a true story?

So this film by Sam Mendez is not based on a specific story of the Great War, but is based loosely on his grandfather, Alfred Mendez, who served with the First Battalion King's Royal

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