The Diary of an Unknown Soldier

“The Diary of an Unknown Soldier (1959) is a remarkable amateur film by any standard, but from the perspective of hindsight, its importance to Watkins' development as a filmmaker cannot be overestimated. Unlike most American directors who were rarely involved in the amateur film scene, British directors often used their amateur films as stepping stones to professional careers. John Schlesinger, Ken Russell, and Peter Watkins were all hired by the BBC on the basis of their amateur films, and many of these films reveal much about their later styles as feature filmmakers. The use of crowds, for instance, in John Schlesinger's first amateur film, Black Legend (1948), is markedly similar to the construction of crowd scenes in Far From the Madding Crowd (1967); and Ken Russell's camera choreography and experiments with music to define mood and reinforce theme appear as early as Amelia and the Angel (1957). In The Diary of an Unknown Soldier, however, Watkins initiated a style of filmmaking which he has consistently developed and experimented with in all of his professional films. The Diary of an Unknown Soldier deals with some of the same themes found in Journey's End, but whereas Sherriff allowed the conventions of the stage to limit his action to a claustrophobic dugout in the British trenches before St. Quentin, Watkins refused to be constrained by comparable cinematic conventions. Even at this stage of his career, he was quick to understand the nature of his medium; in this film, he freed the camera from the limitations of a fixed vantage point and forced it to take part in the action so that he could create strikingly realistic, almost newsreel-like, effects and directly involve the viewing audience in the events it was witnessing. The Diary of an Unknown Soldier, however, is not limited strictly to techniques of realism. It contains a curious, almost uneasy, mixture of expressionist and documentary styles, and one suspects that the financial and physical limitations that Watkins faced because of equipment and location problems played a major part in the evolution of this syncretistic approach. Synchronous sound was not possible for financial reasons; little of the surrounding countryside near Canterbury resembled the trenches of World War I, and a cast of fifteen to twenty had to give the illusion of being five times that number.

A carefully written script for the film existed before any footage was shot; and, after the film was edited, Watkins added an optical soundtrack of realistic effects and a commentary - presumably from the diary of the nameless protagonist who is about to face the front for the first time. The opening line of the film, "last day of my life," establishes the narrator's bizarre perspective and even suggests the film's expressionist mood. The remainder of the commentary complements and clarifies the film's visuals, and the rapid pace at which Watkins himself speaks these lines creates a sense of relentless urgency that reflects the protagonist's constant condition of tension. Occasionally, the pace is a bit too frantic. As a result, some images (trees metamorphosing into bayonets) seem to be a cliché imitation of Sergei Eisenstein's techniques. Also, certain overly emotional sections from the commentary ("The most terrible thing about war is not just the fact that we have to kill men so much like ourselves, but that we have to hate them and keep on hating them ... It seems so bloody pointless. We go forward to those guns. God only knows what will happen to us. God only knows.") reduce rather than increase the impact of the film's message. In all of his future films, with the exception of Evening Land (1977), Watkins would employ some form of narration, but never again in this obvious, olidactic manner.

The strength of The Diary of an Unknown Soldier rests with its striking visual impact. Much of the film, photographed by Watkins himself, consists of close-ups and extreme close-ups of the protagonist or what the viewer sees from his perspective. These shots are noteworthy because of Watkins’ unique framing. He frequently frames the top of the shot below the hairline rather than cropping at the top of the head in what is often called a "Warner Brothers close-up." Indeed, Watkins intentionally creates disturbing shots in this film by ignoring a standard rule which indicates that a proper balance for large close-ups is achieved by framing the subject's eyes just above the imaginary horizontal center. Throughout his early career, Watkins experimented with this framing and by the time he made Punishment Park (1970), he had come to definite conclusions about the framing of close-up shots. "Normally the weight of most camera and most television shots is down-loaded. You always see air over the heads [in Hollywood films] ... I close the air off over the head to stop the strength of the scene going out. You can see more of the body. The whole thing is [more] solid, and you are forced to look at the person - into their eyes ."

Most of the other shots of the soldiers in the film are close-middle shots, and the frequency of this kind of shot was probably dictated in part by the limited number of cast members and by problems with location. The sequence depicting soldiers leaping into the mud of "no man's land" as they advance toward the German lines, for instance, was filmed in a cast member's backyard, after an eight-foot-square plot had been dug up and hosed down with water. Watkins, however, had more in mind than simply making do with what was available. By moving the camera in an adventurous manner, he made it a “participant” in the battle sequences. As Tony Rose, Britain's foremost amateur film authority, wisely observed, “... he went in close with his camera, filled the frame with writhing bodies and hurtling feet, allowed the lens to be jostled and jumped over and practically trodden into the mud. The result was magnificent and it looked like war as the soldier sees it." This aspect of the film impressed others as well, and Watkins won an “Oscar” in the Ten Best Amateur Films Competition of 1959.”