The Enchanted Circle (Der Magische Gurtel) VHSPAL | Documentaries

Star Review

The Enchanted Circle is both a priceless historical record of the destruction of merchant shipping during the Great War and a revealing insight into the use of film for propaganda. It has never before been available.

The title comes from the phrase that Churchill used to describe the hold that German submarines had over Allied shipping at the time. The film itself is the visual record of a German submarine sinking merchant shipping during April and May in 1917. It is powerful and uncomfortable and still has the capacity to shock. Even when first shown to selected German audiences the film was greeted with ambivalence because of the gross waste depicted - both of the ships themselves and the cargoes they were carrying. Somehow the film fell into Allied hands and in 1919 was shown as retrospective counter-propaganda under the title: The Exploits of a German Submarine (U35) Operating in the Mediterranea. Essentially the film is the same but appears with English intertitles that give a wholly different context to the scenes shown.

Der Magische Gurtel is also an insight into warfare from another age - the captain and crew of a defeated steamer rowing across to the victorious U-boat, an explosives party from the submarine rowing to the ship to plant explosives. We then watch as the explosives detonate and the ship gradually sinks until with the final explosions of her boilers, she is beneath the water. The sinking is then repeated with other shipping - the steamers Maplewood, Asuarca and India, the schooner Miss Morris in full sail, the Stromboli, the Brisbane River. After the latter the U-boat Captain asks for Lloyd's Register of Ships and is seen joking as he crosses out the ship's name.

The video is accompanied by a 220 page book that gives shot-by-shot descriptions of the films and a wealth of background material. As restorer Kevin Brownlow writes in his introduction, Films showing the way we lived - and fought - nearly a century ago are priceless. To be able to acquire as rare a title as this is an immense privilege.

Graeme Hobbs on 16th April 2003
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Film Description

Incredibly rare account of the work of a German submarine during WW1. The shots of sinking ships have a terrible grandeur which makes for compulsive viewing, all the more so because it is real action. The VHS also includes 'The Exploits of a German Submarine (U35) operating in the Mediterranean' - a later British editing of the same material with English intertitles that give an entirely different slant to the film. Restored by the Imperial War Museum.