| Peter Watkins has been censored, banned, erased from encyclopedias and cast into cinematic exile. For many years Watkins' films were impossible to obtain. Recently, a few titles have been daringly released, giving this peaceful warrior a new chance to battle.  | The cool and coherent 1970 film The Gladiators depicts all the military leaders of the world assembled in order to cheerfully direct their troops to kill each other for "The International Peace Games" a Saturday night television program operated by the ICARUS war machine. Any of the entertainment implied by this short description of the film dissolves when the peace game becomes an absurd spectacle of wartime politics, refusing to pander cheap action, or violence, and has no main character.
A steady undertow of suspense, builds towards where one would expect a war movie to go-the killing-but when the moments arise, a piercing beep sabotages the soundtrack or freeze frames are used to prevent a typical war movie climax.
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The imaginative yet simplistic structure allows viewers to see through the cracks in the rigid rules enforced upon most television and cinema. Liberating us from conventional forms and processes of media, advising not to simply surrender to the vastness of the problems or go blind to the simplicity of some solutions.
| A political-fantasy examining the oppression of interchangeable power systems sharing the same self-perpetuating goal, while simultaneously confronting the tendency of anti-war films to glorify what they set out to denounce. The Gladiators forces the viewer to contemplate the way the system swallows us all. Time and time again we see the legend of David replacing the oppression of Goliath. We can join 'em, bite 'em, smoke 'em if we got 'em, but when will we ever beat them? And if we do, what then? |  |
Peter Watkins describes the media crisis and offers suggestions with this intensive public media statement here: Peter Watkins' Statement...
"Society at large still refuses to acknowledge the role of form and process in the delivery and reception of the mass audio/visual media output. …The language forms structuring the message contained in any film or TV program, and the entire process of delivery to the public are completely overlooked, and are certainly not debated." -P.Watkins |
