George Ercole, "Pathé News" War Photographer

George Ercole, circa 1923

Half Irish, half French, George Ercole ranks among the most prominent newsreel men in early film history. Because he wasn't American we considered him "off limits" and didn't mention him in our latest book on the American cinematographers of World War I. This weblog is to set the record straight and give Ercole the credits he deserves.

At the outbreak of war in 1914, Ercole was working in France as a cameraman for Pathé. The film company sent him to Belgium. He was at Mons (Bergen) in August 1914 when the British Expeditionary Force made their famous stand against the invading German army. During this engagement a British major approached Ercole and told him that if he didn't make himself scarce he would be shot. None of his Belgian films saw the light. In 1915, Pathé sent Ercole as a special correspondent to Russia. He was assigned to the Skobelev Committee that set up a film propaganda division for the Russian government, and was provided on the railways with a special coach and military passes.

Filming the Siege of Przemyśl 

Ercole's first assigment took him to area around Przemyśl in Poland, a fortified city that was under siege by the Russian army. After a harsh winter campaign the Austrian garrison inside Przemyśl surrendered to the Russians on March 22, 1915. Ercole's films of the siege of Przemyśl - long considered lost - were recently discovered in the Russian archives and have been uploaded on our YouTube channel.

In the CBS collection of the National Archives in Washington, D.C. we also found a film report taken by Ercole at Przemyśl, showing a staged attack by Cossack cavalry. These scenes were shown in the British newsreel Pathé's Animated Gazette and still have the original intertitles:

Near Tarnow, while filming an artillery engagement on the Eastern Front, Ercole was hit by debris. A second wound was sustained at Vladova during the retreat from the Austro-German attack later that summer. The Tsar decorated Ercole with the Cross of St. George because of his bravery. He next was commissioned to join the Black Sea fleet and filmed the bombardment of the Turkish navy and the forts along the Bosphorus. While marching with the army of the Caucasus, Ercole also covered the capture of Trebizond in April 1916. When the Armistice was signed in November 1918, Ercole was in Siberia where he covered the landing of the Allied Expeditionary Force with his movie camera.

Pittston Gazette, June 2, 1915

After the War

After the war Ercole continued to work for Pathé News from Paris. Together with journalist Arthur Ransome he covered the Russian civil war. Ercole scored a spectacular news beat in 1922 when he filmed the burning of Smyrna (Izmir) at the end of the war between Greece and Turkey. This remarkable film report was uploaded last year by British Pathé on the Internet.

Ace Newsreeler Ariel Varges Revisited

Ariel Varges, circa 1935

Link to high res image

Among the most prominent, pioneering film cameramen of World War I Ariel Varges (1890-1972) deserves a special notice. As we described in our latest book on the American cinematographers of the Great War, Varges came to Europe in December 1914. By using his close contacts with Sir Thomas Lipton, he got on a ship for the Serbian front and filmed the war in the Balkans. From 1916, he became an official cinematographer for the British army and filmed in Greece and Mesopotamia.

Varges was among William Randolph Hearst's ace newsreel cameramen, both during the Great War and long afterwards. We were fortunate to have written a section on Varges in our book, although a biography on his life and work is long overdue. On the Internet we found additional information on Varges and his family, like the picture shown above, taken in the 1930s when he was filming wars for the Hearst newsreels in China and Ethiopia.

Greek boys carrying the rifles and equipment of newly landed French soldiers, Thessaloniki, February 1916, © IWM Q 31776. Photograph by Ariel Varges

As a result of the centennial of the First World War, the Goethe Institute has uploaded a unique series of war pictures from the collection of the Imperial War Museum, taken by Varges in 1916 when he recorded the activities of the Entente Expeditionary Force at Thessaloniki, Greece, against the Bulgarian army. These pictures were part of the exhibition War and Peace in the Balkans.

Here is a link to the catalogue of this exhibition.

Back to 1915: Reconstructing W.H. Durborough's Historical World War I Film

Durborough filming the Great War, 1915

Link to high res image

In the April 2015 issue of the Journal of Film Preservation, Jim Castellan has described his extensive research on Wilbur H. Durborough's remarkable First World War documentary On the Firing Line with the Germans. Starting from scratch, nearly all film segments of this historical movie have now been located and identified from various film sources both at the National Archives and the Library of Congress. As a result, this historical feature documentary allows us to revisit the Great War, as seen through the lense of an American war correspondent who was a close witness of the German offensive on the Eastern Front in the summer of 1915.

Reconstruction Project

The Library of Congress has started a reconstruction of the Durborough film, with an intended completion in October 2015, one hundred years after it was first shown in the United States. We will ofcourse keep you posted on this interesting project!

Jim's article for the Journal of Film Preservation can be read and downloaded here.

U.S. Signal Corps Cinematographers Online

Lieut. R.F. Lyons of 79th Division Photographic Unit in observer's seat of one of 90th Aero Squadron planes, 79th Division. Colorized picture, courtesy Harry Kidd

Link to original high res image

From the collection of the National Archives in Washington, DC, an impressive selection of World War I pictures has been uploaded on the Internet. These all show the work done by the Photographic Division of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, which was assigned to record the First World War in 1917-1918. Some of these pictures have been used in our latest book American Cinematographers in the Great War to accompany a chapter on these official cameramen from the U.S.A.

Signal Corps Cameramen

Among these pictures are also many interesting photographs showing the Signal Corps cameramen behind their photo and film equipment, such as Lieutenant Lyons of the 79the Division getting ready to make aerial moving pictures above the frontline, reproduced above. The weblog also has the last pictures taken by Lieutenant Estep, recorded by his camera shortly before he was killed in November 1918 on the Western Front.

To view these Signal Corps cameramen in action, here is the link.