America Goes Over

"...America Goes Over...is the best pictorial record of the war I have ever seen." — General John J. Pershing. America Goes Over is the first officially sanctioned documentary about the United States' involvement in World War I. Using footage taken by the Army Signal Corps while under fire in France, it tells the story of World War I like no film before or since. America Goes Over was originally intended as a piece of pure propaganda encouraging young men to enlist. Cameramen follow the American Expeditionary Forces commanded by General John J. Pershing as they persevere on the Western Front. Remarkable scenes of our soldiers in combat are shown, as well as their lighter moments during downtime, doing KP and even putting on a drag show(!) By the time the film was completed, the Armistice of November 1918 had ended the war, so it was quickly repurposed as a history of the entire conflict. Footage from foreign theaters of war in which America never participated, such as the Italian Front and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, were added before its release at the end of 1918. Years later in 1927, the Signal Corps made a deal with the Eastman Kodak Company to distribute a new 16mm version of America Goes Over for the burgeoning home movie market. The government was most likely interested in re-releasing the film to combat the growing backlash against World War I during a period in which our country was highly isolationist, and remind the people just what they had fought for. The intertitles were changed to remove some overtly propagandistic content, and footage not dealing with the American theater of war in France was shortened. It is this version which survives today. Even in this truncated form, America Goes Over remains a remarkable document of what was, at the time, the bloodiest conflict our nation had ever participated in. Sadly, it would not be the last.

This documentary was produced in 1918 by the Signal Corps of the U.S. Army, and specially released by the War Department to the Eastman Kodak Company in 1927.

PLUS: A.W.O.L. (1918): This charming animated short tells the story of a WWI soldier desperate to get home after the Armistice is signed. It was created by Charley Bowers, the innovative silent comedian and animator whose work has been rediscovered and re-evaluated by film historians in recent years.