Martin Smith

Reviews:

Chris Harvey, The Daily Telegraph, London, 11 November 2020:

'The World at War: TV’s ultimate act of remembrance... I watched the series for the first time during the government’s March lockdown. I’m not sure if it was the sense of the world facing a new existential threat that prompted it, but I quickly became immersed in its epic scale and scope... history becomes real when told by the people who made it happen and those who had it happen to them. ... there was Olga Rybakova, a housewife who had survived the Siege of Leningrad, in which more civilians had lost their lives than the combined war dead of Britain and the United States...
The series changed those who worked on it. Martin Smith [who produced and directed episode 11, Red Star] says, “What working on the World at War did was to make me realise the immensity of it and also the immensity of what it did to the people involved, the families it ruined, the lives it changed, the people it turned into criminals.”

Variety, New York, November 2007:

STEALING KLIMT 'Propelled by eloquent talking heads, this detective tale brims with juicy plot points exposing how 20th-century crimes continue to create unsightly bulges under 21st-century rugs. Elements of serendipity, determination, karma and capitalism put a fresh, galvanizing face on the aggressively matter-of-fact despoilation of Europe's Jews...
This David-and-Goliath saga includes a Rothschild Stradivarius, a bold gesture by Hitler's nephew and willful obfuscation at the highest levels of the Austrian government. Executive producers, Roger Graef, Martin Smith. Directed by Jane Chablani. Written by Martin Smith'

Look Me In the Eye, by Jeremy Isaacs, London, 2006:

"The key to success [of Cold War] was the series producer, Martin Smith. Martin had a fine track record, but it was his character that rang true at every test - honest, hardworking, clear headed, resolute. He proved an inspiring leader; his style was both collegiate (regular screenings and conferring) and authoritarian (notices in the tiny kitchen instructed everyone to do their own washing up - Martin did his. ... Martin Smith's commitment to getting every fact right was reinforced by the scrutiny of our consultants who saw every fine-cut, read initial outlines and commentary script."

From Holocaust and the Moving Image, London, 2005:

"Despite the difficulties inherent in the use of archive film, it has proved popular with curators of Holocaust exhibitions and memorials. ... A trend demonstrated most clearly at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), where Martin Smith and Raye Farr, the television documentary makers and former members of the World At War team were engaged as successive directors of the Permanent Exhibition. Martin Smith's appointment was made after one of the Museum's council members had seen an episode on Poland's Jews from Smith's documentary series The Struggles for Poland (1987)." The Holocaust and the Moving Image, (Eds. T. Haggith & J. Newman) London 2005. Preface by David Cesarani.

Western Mail, Wales, September 2004:

"Wales owes much to its mining traditions ... 'The Terrible Price' gave an insight into a community's grief, something that still runs through the generations. This was a simple ducumentary, but it was all that was needed to tell such a tragic and preventable story."

The Guardian, London, August 2002:

'America's War: Triumph - The Pacific 1943-1945' is the last instalment in a fascinating quartet of programmes which, by all rights, should've been a monumental exercise in flag-waving nationalism. Instead, the visual impact of this series' vintage colour footage has immeasurably deepened our understanding of American troop' experience during the second world war, with all of its actual and cultural horrors...the reading of the period correspondence has made this a sometimes impossibly moving study of how US forces had to "fight their way across the many islands of the Central Pacific".

From The Politics of Tobacco by Peter Taylor (Bodley Head, London):

"Shortly after Death in the West had been shown in Britain [1976], CBS '60 Minutes' expressed interest in showing the film on the American television network. Philip Morris took out an injunction in the High Court in London, preventing Thames television from selling the film or showing it again.
On May 11th 1982 Death in the West was given new life when the NBC affiliate in San Francisco KRON-TV showed the whole film... The response was so great (3,000 calls jammed the switchboard) that the station screened it again. [From Seattle to Boston, from Los Angeles to Chicago and the tobacco states other stations followed KRON's example. According to scientists at the University of California, Berkely, the film and a thirty page curriculum for high school students 'changed those attitudes that lead to smoking among youth, thereby preventing many youngsters from beginning to smoke.']"

Michael T. Kaufman, The New York Times 1988:

"Watching The Struggles for Poland the absorbing new series on public television you may wonder why anyone came up the notion of a Polish joke...The Struggles for Poland takes in all the sweeping action in a format that splices the recollections of witnesses with archival materials. Themes and controversies established in segments dealing with the earlier decades recur and echo later on. Nuances are seen to shift and perspectives to vary and differ... The essence is captured in the harmonies of unfulfilled yearnings, the old snares of romanticism, the obligations of sacrifice, the allure of martrdom, and, above all, the pervasive sense of tragedy."

From The Holocaust Museum in Washington by Jeshajahu Weinberg & Rina Elieli (Rizzoli, N.Y):

"The presentation of Martin Smith's film The Struggles for Poland on public television led to his selection as the Exhibition Department Director. At first Smith was utterly surprised by the unexpected and unusual offer, but soon he became persuaded that it would be an interesting challenge for him to create an historical narrative as an exhibition, in three-dimensional museum space rather than on a two-dimensional television screen. He agreed to come to Washington for two years, and it proved to be a most fortunate choice. His contribution to the shaping of the Permanent Exhibition was invaluable."

Among the publications that have made significant references to Martin's work are:

• 'Look Me in the Eye' by Jeremy Isaacs, Little, Brown, London
• 'History and the Media' ed. David Cannadine, Palgrave Macmillan, London
• The Washington Post, 'Preserving Memory' by Edward T. Linenthal (Viking, N.Y.)
• 'As Nature Made Him' by John Colapinto (Harper Collins, Toronto)
• 'Women, Sex and Pornography' by Beatrice Faust (Penguin, London)
• 'The Holocaust Museum in Washington' by Jeshajahu Weinberg and Rina Elieli (Rizzoli, N.Y.)
• 'The Politics of Tobacco' by Peter Taylor (Bodley Head, London)