Blast from the Past: Peter Watkins “The War Game”
Nearly all the films of pioneeering director Peter Watkins (who passed away in October 2025 at the age of 90) combine dramatic and documentary elements to recreate significant historical events, which bear urgent implications for the present and future.
Defined by strong political contents, these films-essays often present radical ideas about the mass media in nontraditional styles, forcing the viewers to examine their own perception of “reality,” or rather what passes as reality, events that are image-controlled (and thus dangerously manipulative) by the power elite.
Culloden, his first one, portrayed the Jacobite uprising of 1745 in a documentary style, as if TV reporters were interviewing the participants and following them into battle. La Commune, in 2000, reenacts the Paris Commune days using a large cast of French non-actors.
Arguably, his most influential and best known work is The War Game, in 1965, disturbingly harrowing documentary that depicts the aftermath of a hypothetical nuclear attack on Great Britain by fusing raw journalism, political commentary, and unrestrained terror.
Written, directed and produced by Watkins for the BBC, it caused dismay within the BBC and the government and was withdrawn before the provisional screening date of October 6, 1965 due to being “too horrifying.”
The film premiered at the National Film Theatre in London, on April 13, 1966, and was then shown abroad at film festivals, including Venice and New York, eventually winning the Best Documentary Feature Oscar in 1967.
The first segment depicts Britain’s nuclear deterrence policy of threatening would-be aggressors with devastation from the Royal Air Force’s nuclear-armed V bombers. Due to the number of V bomber bases, and civilian targets in cities, Britain is described as having more potential nuclear weapon targets by area than any other country.
In September, American forces in South Vietnam are authorised to use tactical nuclear weapons in response to ongoing Chinese invasion. The Soviet Union and East Germany threaten to invade West Berlin if the U.S. does not change course.
As a result, the British government declares emergency and transfers the running of Britain’s day-to-day to a body of regional commissioners. The first task of the emergency committees is the mass evacuation of children, mothers, and the infirm to safer areas, including Kent.
Under threat, homeowners accommodate the evacuees, while unoccupied properties are requisitioned by the government. Rationing is implemented, and booklets on how to prepare for nuclear attack are distributed. Sirens are tested, with estimates to provide 3 minutes’ warning until impact, or under 30 seconds in case of attack.
There are no government-built shelters, and there are obstacles to build private ones due to the shortage of construction supplies.
On Sept 18, the Soviets and East Germans invade West Berlin, and NATO launches a counterattack, which is overrun, resulting in the use of American tactical nuclear weapons. The Soviets then launch their own nuclear weapons at strategic targets; their above-ground liquid-fuelled missiles are vulnerable to NATO first strike.
In Kent, a one-megaton warhead explodes in air burst just miles from Canterbury, and the city is struck by intense heat from the blast. At one house, a defence worker and a boy in the yard are struck by the heat wave, melting their eyeballs. Furniture inside the house catches fire, causing panic. Twelve seconds later the building is destroyed by them shockwave.
A boy suffers blindness as a consequence of looking directly at an explosion 27 miles away; his father carries him inside and hides with his family under a table as the house is shaken by distant shockwaves of successive explosions. In Rochester, an airburst causes a firestorm, which sets the town ablaze.
The attack overwhelms Kent’s emergency services–each surviving doctor must treat at least 350 casualties. The worst-affected victims are left to die alone or shot by police as mercy killing. Cases of PTSD occur among the survivors, and bodies are being burned. To prevent relatives from interfering, destroyed areas are sealed off, and police are armed. Radiation sickness is rampant and essential supplies are non-existent.
The majority of Britain’s remaining food supplies are reserved for those maintaining law and order, causing riots to break out over access to resources. The riots turn into armed skirmishes between the authorities and desperate civilians, who seize a truck carrying of weapons and a food warehouse.
Individuals convicted of civil disturbance or obstructing government officers are executed by police squads; the father of blinded boy are among those shot. Due to food shortages, scurvy emerges due bto lack of vitamin C.
On Christmas Day in Dove refugee facility orphaned children are asked what they want to be when they grow up; they either “don’t want to be nothing” or remain silent. One child has only seven bedridden years before dying from chronic illness like leukaemia, and a pregnant woman exposed to radiation is unsure if she will suffer stillbirth.
In closing, the real-world press says nothing about the dangers of nuclear weaponry.
Over the end credits, a damaged recording of the Christmas hymn “Silent Night” (Mohr and Gruber, 1818) can be heard.
The story is told in the style of a news program, wavering between pseudo-documentary and drama; the characters acknowledge the presence of the camera crew in some segments.
and others (in particular the nuclear attack) filmed as if the camera was not present. The combination of elements also qualifies it as a mondo film. It features several different strands that alternate throughout, including a documentary-style chronology of the main events,[9]\
There are reportage-like images of the war, the nuclear strikes, and their effects on civilians. Some brief contemporary interviews, in which passers-by are asked about their extent of knowledge of nuclear war issues. As expected, the optimistic comments from public figures contradict other images in the film.
The voice-over narration describes the events as plausible occurrences during and after a nuclear war. The narrator aims to inform the viewing audience that the authorities have not prepared the public for such events, and so it lacks any understanding of nuclear matters.
The British population dangerously rely on the government, and are not fully convinced of the dangers of nuclear war until the final hours before the attack.
The image of wedding rings from dead bodies to aid their later identification is explicitly linked to a similar practice seen after the 1945 bombing of Dresden. And the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are cited in discussing the physical and mental decline of survivors.
Watkins had said: “In this film I was interested in breaking the illusion of media-produced “reality.” My question was – “Where is ‘reality’? in the mad statements by these artificially-lit establishment figures quoting the official doctrine, or in the madness of the staged and fictional scenes in the rest of my film, which presented the consequences of their utterances?
The film was shot in the Kent towns of Tonbridge, Gravesend, Chatham and the Grand Shaft Barracks, Dover.
The cast was almost entirely made up of amateur actors or non-actors, the casting was done via public meetings months earlier; more than 350 individuals took part in the production.
Peter Graham is the narrator, and Michael Aspel is the reader of the quotations from source material.
The War Game was finally broadcast in the UK on BBC2 on July 31, 1985, as part of a series entitled After the Bomb, which was Watkins’ original working title.
