The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands (1927)

This dramatic reconstruction of two decisive naval battles from the Great War is one of the finest films of the British silent era. Filmed in 1927 on real battleships supplied by the Admiralty, scenes of naval warfare have rarely been captured with such a degree of authenticity.

The Battle of Coronel, off the coast of Chile, was a triumph for German Admiral von Spee and the first defeat of the British navy for a hundred years. The retaliatory strike was instigated six weeks later by Admiral Fisher, who sent two large battlecruisers, HMS Invincible and HMS Inflexible, to the South Atlantic to restore British supremacy.

In recreating the dramatic action, no models and no trick photography were employed, although some interiors were recreated in the studio and some animation was featured. It is an astonishingly effective piece of filmmaking, which glories, like Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, in the power and beauty of the machine.

Scrupulously fair in its treatment of the enemy, this stirring film has been restored by the BFI National Archive and is presented with a newly commissioned score composed by Simon Dobson and performed by The Band of Her Majesty's Royal Marines.

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