America's First Official War Newsreel (1918)

On July 1, 1918 America's first official war newsreel was launched. Distributed in the United States by Pathé, the Official War Review contained scenes from wartime Europe, shot by military cameramen of the U.S. Signal Corps and other Allied countries.

Film poster Official War Review (USA, 1918)

Link to low res image

The Official War Review was produced by the Committee on Public Information (CPI), America's propaganda agency. As described in our book American Cinematographers in the Great War, the newsreel had a difficult start. The CPI intended to offer the newsreel to all film companies on equal conditions and the same price. This hardly suited the competitive American film industry which wanted to show exclusive pictures. Pathé finally was contracted to distribute the best of what the CPI could offer to show a weekly official newsreel on the American soldiers fighting in France.

Copies from Pordenone Silent Film Festival

By modern standards America's first official war newsreel lacks the fast moving images we are used to watch today. The shots are mostly static and there is little real battlefront footage. But for the American audience back in 1918 this was their weekly update on what happened at the front in Europe. The Pordenone Silent Film Festival in 2015 showed six newsreels from this series, which are from the National Archives in Washington, D.C. These films were originally shown in the American theaters between September 1918 and January 1919. An interesting issue is Official War Review No. 9 which has a scene showing the enormous German long range guns that were put into action to shell Paris during the Spring Offensive of 1918. The intertitle asserts the American forces turned the tide of battle and saved Paris.

Apart from the American contribution to the Great War the newsreel offers views of other European armies, such as the Italian Alpine soldiers and the British Expeditionary Force in France. In addition the Official War Review shows some interesting scenes from Siberia where the Americans had joined an international expeditionary force to fight against Germany.

Original film from this World War I newsreel is hard to find, so we have uploaded all six issues to our YouTube channel to give you an idea how the Great War was screened in 1918-1919 in America.