Movie Review: NFB's Paris 1919
Margaret MacMillan Book Is National Film Board of Canada Docudrama
May 5, 2009
Canadian filmmakers have always produced great documentaries and docudramas, and the National Film Board of Canada's Paris 1919 is no exception. Based on the award-winning book by Professor Margaret McMillan, it uses historical footage and dramatic reenactments to trace the events that led to the Treaty of Versailles, the establishment of the League of Nations (which would later become the U.N.), and World War II.
Paul Cowan Writes, Directs Paris 1919 based on Margaret MacMillan Book
The film mainly follows Harold Nicolson (David Lowe), a Canadian diplomat attached to the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference. He was there to assist British Prime Minister Lloyd George (Nicholas Hawtrey) who believed that Germany should be eliminated as a naval and economic power. Privately, Nicolson thought this tactic would do more harm than good, a view shared by British economist John Maynard Keynes (Paul Bandey), whose job it was to figure out how much Germany should pay in reparations.
That view received little respect in a Paris that wanted revenge against the Hun. French Premier Georges Clemenceau wanted to blame Germany for the entire war and ensure that Germany could never again become a world power.
U.S. President Woodrow Wilson had another agenda: he wanted to assemble a League of Nations that would ensure a destructive conflict like World War I would never happen again.
Wilson was a man ahead of his time, but his vision wasn't shared by the 3 other major powers at the conference (Britain, France and Italy), more concerned about punishing Germany and advancing their own agendas. Fortunately, the U.S. was a major creditor for all three countries so they couldn't ignore Wilson's dream. What they could do was whittle down the League of Nation's principles while writing the punitive Treaty of Versailles.
However, the world conference in Paris wasn't solely to put World War I finally to rest. It also proposed permanently marking out the borders of each country.
There were countless conflicting interests: a Zionist delegation wanted a Jewish homeland in Palestine, Japan wanted a piece of Chinese territory, Faisal ibn Husayn wanted to carve out a territory that he would call Iraq, Italy wanted a port on the Adriatic (which was then part of Yugoslavia), and a kitchen worker at the Ritz Hotel named Ho Chi Minh put in a plea for an end to colonialization, and the creation of an independent Vietnam.
Due to the many conflicting agendas, tough compromises were hammered out whose effects are still being felt nearly a hundred years later.
Using a combination of historical footage, entries from the participants' various diaries, plus dramatic reenactments, Paris 1919 shows how the events that led to the Treaty of Versailles came together. It's nothing less than compelling to see the various characters involved. Although some characters are slightly whitewashed – Wilson was not nearly as pure-hearted and naive as the film depicts him – it tries to offer a balanced portrait of the individuals on all sides of the conflict.
The biggest difference between MacMillan's book and the film is that the NFB doesn't even try to pursue her thesis that the Treaty of Versailles wasn't a direct cause of the Third Reich and World War II. Instead, Keynes, who quit the conference in disgust when he realized what was about to happen, is subtly painted as a Nostrodamus for accurately predicting that Germany would end up paying only £11 billion in wartime reparations to Britain. Thus the film implicitly repudiates MacMillan's biggest argument since it was Keynes who labeled the Treaty of Versailles as a critical element that inspired the rise of Nazism and Adolf Hitler.
The Final Analysis
Despite the NFB's attempt to "find a Canadian perspective" on the momentous events that surrounded the Treaty of Versailles, Paris 1919 is still a stunning work of historical reenactment. Anyone with an interest in Twentieth Century history should check out this flick.
It gets an 8/10.
Paris 1919 screened at the 2009 Hot Docs Festival in Toronto, Canada
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