The Awful Truths: Peter Watkins’ ‘The War Game’ and ‘Punishment Park’

“It was because I could not face the responsibility of putting on the air a program which was so shocking that old people living alone, for instance, or people who were somewhat disordered might be so much upset by it that they could go out of their flat and throw themselves under the bus.” —former BBC Director-General, Hugh Carleton-Greene in a 1982 interview about the decision to shelve The War Game in 1966

In 1967, Peter Watkins’ The War Game won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It was an unusual honor for several reasons. Running just 45 minutes, the film was originally made for the BBC to be broadcast on British television. Also, The War Game wasn’t a documentary, at least in the traditional sense of the term. But they didn’t really have a word for the sort of films Watkins—who died last week at the age of 90—made for much of his long career. “Mockumentary” had yet to be invented and “docudrama” remained ill-defined. Yet watching The War Game leaves little doubt it deserved the documentary Oscar. Watkins shows viewers something real, even if what he’s documenting hasn’t happened—or, to frame it more alarmingly, hasn’t happened yet.