They Shall Not Grow Old: a moving portrait of the soldiers of World War I

They Shall Not Grow Old by Peter Jackson, Imperial War Museum (From the collection of 14-18 NOW)

“The museum’s only real brief was to use their archive footage in a fresh and original way,” says Jackson in an interview about the project. “It took me a while to think about what to do … but I just thought ‘why don’t we use this computer fire power to see how well the old World War I footage can actually be restored, cleaned up, and brought back.’” Working with the Imperial War Museum Jackson worked on transforming around 100 hours of footage, employing state-of-the-art technology to transform audio and moving image archive footage. According to Jackson the film shaped itself as it went along, but the process was long and intense. “The thing about colorizing it, was it had to be detailed and labor intensive, and meticulous,” explains the director. “The colorizing we’ve mostly seen is for TV shows with a low budget and a fast turn around. But if you can stop and just do each individual color, painstakingly, one step at a time … it will be rewarded.”

Using only the voices of those involved, the film explores the reality of war on the front line: their attitudes to the conflict; how they ate, rested, and formed friendships in those moments between battles; as well as their hopes and dreams for the future. “We never see fictional World War I films with humor – strangely I don’t think that’s an honest way to treat war,” says Jackson. “Obviously you’re under immense pressure, psychological pressure, almost at breaking point, the thing you’re going to have to resort to is your humor, and that’s what they did.”

They Shall Not Grow Old by Peter Jackson, Imperial War Museum (From the collection of 14-18 NOW)

While the film tells the stories of those fighting in the war, Jackson is keen to point out what’s missing from the documentary. “There’s a set of voices we’re not hearing, which is the voices of the men who got killed and didn’t come back,” says the director. “I think those men would have a slightly different opinion if they could be interviewed, but of course they don’t have recordings of them. So this is the film of the survivors.”

As Jackson’s first documentary and the first film that’s combined archive footage with modern technology in such a way, the director hopes it’s the beginning of something. “If every other archive started to do this, wouldn’t that be fantastic? And not just with war footage, there’s so much historical footage even before the first world war,” he says. “It opens a window to the past, and then we’ll really begin to understand.”

They Shall Not Grow Old by Peter Jackson, Imperial War Museum (From the collection of 14-18 NOW)

The film is a breathtaking tribute and one of the standout successes is the emotion conveyed throughout. “I think it’s important if we want everyone to think of these people as human beings, then this is the way to humanize them. The restoration is the humanizing process,” says Jackson.

See the full interview with Jackson below: