Educational Media Reviews Online

Originally released in 1969, The Gladiators depicts the running of game 256 in a series of war games designed by the United Nations to discourage warfare and defuse humankind’s aggressiveness. The game is staged at some time in the future in Sweden, a traditionally neutral country. The game is computer controlled, sponsored by a pasta company, and televised live to an international audience. Essentially, the participants in the games are two opposing international teams of combatants tasked with reaching the computer control room while keeping the opposing team from obtaining the very same objective. The teams are advised by senior military officers from the Cold War eastern (Soviet bloc and China) and western (Britain, France, U.S.) countries. A Swedish general is available to oversee the game, make small talk with the other generals, and communicate with his lower-ranking, bored functionaries who run the game from the computer control room. Watkins tells this intriguing story from the participants’ several points of view by cutting back and forth from the teams, to the generals, to those in the control room, as well as to those Swedish troops incidentally involved in with the combatants as embedded observers.

Though there are concepts in the film which may be a trifle obscure to younger viewers (Cold War, the draft, East and West Germany, South Vietnamese Army) and though all viewers will have been exposed to more immediate, more graphic combat scenes than those in this film, the messages of The Gladiators clearly point out the horrors of war, the failures of the military to recognize their duties beyond blind obedience to orders and identification with national interests, and finally the absurdities involved in the scheduling proxy wars to prevent international conflicts … even though it may be great entertainment! The DVD format has allowed seamless transition from 35 mm film and many extras that place this production within film history and within the films of Peter Watkins. A second version of the film is included accompanied by the expert audio commentary of Dr. Joseph A. Gomez, Director of Film Studies at North Carolina State University. His insights complement the stunning visual impact of a great film which has been unavailable to the public for nearly three decades.

New Yorker Video has done us a great service by re-releasing Watkins’ films on DVD (The Gladiators, Punishment Park). These are thought provoking, quite affordable and of excellent quality. The Gladiators DVD also includes a Watkins amateur film, The Diary of an Unknown Soldier, easily one of the most psychologically chilling anti-war films available today. The films themselves are important assets for film studies, the commentary and self-interview by Peter Watkins included a booklet that accompanies the DVD are additional important study resources. The Gladiators on DVD is an important resource for study or for repeat recreational viewing.

Awards

• Winner of the Grand Prix at the Trieste International Science Fiction Festival