How villages of Pas-de-Calais found themselves at the heart of the plot of “1917”

• The film 1917 could well be the big winner of the Oscars ceremony which takes place Sunday, February 9 in Hollywood.
• The action takes place in the battlefields of Pas-de-Calais during the First World War.
• If several villages of Pas-de-Calais are more than mentioned in the film, no scene was shot on site.

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The film is a hit the world over. At the box office, 1917 has already reached 250 million dollars in one month of operation. A commercial success, popular but also critical. Named in ten categories, the film directed by Sam Mendes could well be the big winner of the Oscars this Sunday, February 9 in Los Angeles.

Far from the glitter and the red carpet, 10,000 kilometers from Hollywood, the village of Ecoust-Saint-Mein and its 500 inhabitants will be very attentive to the results. The plot of 1917 takes place in and around this village in Pas-de-Calais, which was completely destroyed during the First World War because it is located near the trenches of Artois.

No scenes from the film were shot on location

If the village has no less than four British cemeteries, in homage to the soldiers fallen on the front lines, no scene of the film was shot on the spot although spotting was carried out in all discretion by the film crew. Suddenly, in the village, nobody was aware of the existence of the feature film before its release in French theaters in mid-January. From there, word of mouth did its work.

“During the vows ceremony, a lady came to me to tell me that a film was about Ecoust-Saint-Mein. I was a little surprised especially that a shooting had taken place last year near here. Information taken, it had nothing to do because it was a film with Benoît Poelvoorde which has not yet been released. So I went to see 1917 to see me, ”says Michel Guidez, the mayor of Ecoust Saint-Mein.

A film that sticks to reality despite some inconsistencies of location

And after viewing, the first magistrate was able to compare reality and fiction. Among the true things: the geographical progression of the character and the names of villages like Ecoust and Croisilles, with the exception of their pronunciation. “We pronounce Ecou and not Ecouste like the English do in the film,” smiles Michel Guidez.

In the radius of total inventions is the topography of places. We had beautiful search on the spot: no trace of a large river and even less of waterfalls in which the hero almost drowned in the film. As for the Bois de Croisilles, which is discussed a lot in 1917, it clearly looks more like a grove than a forest.

The story of the days before the bloody battle of Bullecourt

Still, specialists on the subject agree that the film is fairly faithful to what happened on the scene over a hundred years ago. “The first part of the film in the trenches and no man’s land is quite precise. Nothing shocked me. On the contrary, a lot of things like the rocket launcher or the flashlight used by the soldiers are very faithful to reality. I never told myself that it had nothing to do there, ”recognizes David Querin, cultural mediator at the Bullecourt museum.

The site of a bloody battle of the First World War, the village of Bullecourt, located just next to Ecoust et Croisilles, is never mentioned in 1917. The days preceding the battle (April 6-7, 1917) are at the heart of the plot. Although Sam Mendes took some liberties with the timeline.

“The German withdrawal of the Somme towards a new reinforced front line is real, but it lasted two months and not a day. It was the British who stayed at Ecoust and not the Germans. On the other hand, a planned assault by the British, mentioned in 1917, indeed had to be postponed, but the soldiers were not to be warned of the way in which the film tells it ”, underlines Gilles Durand, author of Bullecourt 1917, in search of missing soldiers and also journalist at 20 Minutes.

Impossible to turn on the spot because many bodies are still buried

The first battle of Bullecourt caused the loss of more than 3,500 men in six hours of combat, April 11, 1917. A carnage which undoubtedly explains why Sam Mendes preferred to make his film in the studio and not on the old battlefields.

“It’s very complicated digging trenches here for the purposes of a film. There is a huge amount of ammunition that has been dumped on this territory. But there are also still plenty of buried dead. More than 4,000 bodies of British, Australian and German soldiers are estimated to have never been recovered. These are all skeletons that you can fall on while digging, ”explains Aurélie Le Cadet, head of the Bullecourt museum.

Suddenly, everyone understands on the spot why the film was not shot in Artois. However, in the event of a hit at the Oscars, Ecoust, Croisilles and Bullecourt hope to benefit from the tourist benefits of 1917. Even if it means having a dream: that of welcoming Sam Mendes and his whole team to the scene of success, even without waterfalls at the rendezvous.