Yup, William Tecumseh Sherman Was Right
The War Department in World War Two was, among other things, a film production operation that sent combat cameramen "armed" with 16 and 35 millimeter handheld film machines to record behind the scenes and during the scenes actions in Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Theater of War.
Hollywood film directors like George Stevens, Frank Capra, John Ford, and William Wyler received officer's commissions, shot films showing, in Stevens' case for example, the liberation of Paris in 1944. What sets these short films apart from ordinary war documentaries is the artistic skill of the directors. Their abilities as storytellers in command of their medium meant that the results wouldn't be amateurish. Frank Capra's Why We Fight series is a masterful example of propaganda within the storyteller's art, so good that the viewer may not even realize it's propaganda. These films, having been linked to War Department censorship conditions, were of course subject to fitting within governmentally accepted viewpoints.
What distinguishes John Huston's San Pietro (1945, shot in Italy in 1943 and 1944) from other officially sanctioned American World War Two documentaries is its blunt depiction of violence and the human toll of war. Though the narration implies otherwise, the film stages a battle in an Italian valley that took place in November and December 1943 between German and U.S. troops. Germans, entrenched in and around the small town of San Pietro, had the place surrounded by barbed wire and mines. Several low mountains surrounding the town were also held by Germans.
Huston arrived on the battle's last day, December 16, 1943. Therefore, much of the film shows recreations of American advances up the fortified mountains and against the town through a smoky and foggy olive grove, an image as chilling to watch were it to be depicted in any fictional or non-fictional film. Huston begins the film with images of this olive grove after the battle, blasted by artillery and gunfire, grenade explosions--the trees all lacking foliage, the crop destroyed. This theme of war destroying livelihoods of the native people pops up strongly, but is counterbalanced by the farmers getting back to work in the end. Their town, mostly destroyed by American shelling, looks like parts of modern Syria and Yemen. A shot of a dead woman's body removed from rubble, relatives standing by horrified and grief-stricken, has the punch, and compassion, lacking in so much American coverage of our current endless war. Here and elsewhere, Huston shows what came to be called "collateral damage." This collateral damage, covered in dust and broken stone, has a head scarf, a dress, a name, loved ones, was no doubt active in her community, had gotten married, loved and was loved, until a building fell on her, one effect of a war started by a handful of stupid, irresponsible men.
Huston, upon showing the film to the War Department supervisors who outranked him, was told complainingly by these men that "it's an anti-war movie." They were reluctant to release it. Huston said, "If I ever make a pro-war movie I hope someone takes me out and shoots me."
Wiser heads prevailed, fortunately; the film was first shown to soldiers and then released to the public in early May 1945, the same week the war in Europe ended.
What got the War Department critics heated, apparently, were Huston's images of wounded American soldiers and, even more controversially, dead soldiers wrapped up into blankets or whatever else might serve as a body bag. These scenes, done respectfully but unflinchingly, possess a tragic beauty and are not at all disrespectful of the dead. I recall George W. Bush's policy that incoming American service personnel killed in his war--that we're still stuck in--should never be shown on television when their coffins disembark at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. By contrast, Huston shows us the dead, makes the viewer face death and thus face the choice of going to war.
Some 1,100 American infantrymen lost their lives in this small campaign, which succeeded in eventually pushing the Germans out of the Liri Valley. A poignant shot of a soldier pounding dog tags into white wooden crosses soon to be driven into a cemetery's ground is one of many shots that stick with me. Images of the children of San Pietro, too, make it obvious that all victims of war are the same. I've seen the same look in the eyes of young survivors of aerial bombings in Yemen.
John Huston didn't leave Hollywood, where he made The Maltese Falcon, to go to Italy to make a pro-war movie. For a filmmaker, hired by the War Department, to follow his own instinct of antipathy for warfare, especially during a time when every American was supposed to feel gung-ho about going to war to avenge Pearl Harbor and crush Nazi Germany, is highly unusual for that time and unfortunately it's an unusual viewpoint in our time. Turn on any cable news channel these days and see if you can hear any anti-war voices.
San Pietro, at only thirty-two minutes, delivers more truth of war's brutality, its transformation of the human into the inhumane, than most war films I've seen, with the exceptions of Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line and Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood.
Vic Neptune
The War Department in World War Two was, among other things, a film production operation that sent combat cameramen "armed" with 16 and 35 millimeter handheld film machines to record behind the scenes and during the scenes actions in Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Theater of War.
Hollywood film directors like George Stevens, Frank Capra, John Ford, and William Wyler received officer's commissions, shot films showing, in Stevens' case for example, the liberation of Paris in 1944. What sets these short films apart from ordinary war documentaries is the artistic skill of the directors. Their abilities as storytellers in command of their medium meant that the results wouldn't be amateurish. Frank Capra's Why We Fight series is a masterful example of propaganda within the storyteller's art, so good that the viewer may not even realize it's propaganda. These films, having been linked to War Department censorship conditions, were of course subject to fitting within governmentally accepted viewpoints.
What distinguishes John Huston's San Pietro (1945, shot in Italy in 1943 and 1944) from other officially sanctioned American World War Two documentaries is its blunt depiction of violence and the human toll of war. Though the narration implies otherwise, the film stages a battle in an Italian valley that took place in November and December 1943 between German and U.S. troops. Germans, entrenched in and around the small town of San Pietro, had the place surrounded by barbed wire and mines. Several low mountains surrounding the town were also held by Germans.
Huston arrived on the battle's last day, December 16, 1943. Therefore, much of the film shows recreations of American advances up the fortified mountains and against the town through a smoky and foggy olive grove, an image as chilling to watch were it to be depicted in any fictional or non-fictional film. Huston begins the film with images of this olive grove after the battle, blasted by artillery and gunfire, grenade explosions--the trees all lacking foliage, the crop destroyed. This theme of war destroying livelihoods of the native people pops up strongly, but is counterbalanced by the farmers getting back to work in the end. Their town, mostly destroyed by American shelling, looks like parts of modern Syria and Yemen. A shot of a dead woman's body removed from rubble, relatives standing by horrified and grief-stricken, has the punch, and compassion, lacking in so much American coverage of our current endless war. Here and elsewhere, Huston shows what came to be called "collateral damage." This collateral damage, covered in dust and broken stone, has a head scarf, a dress, a name, loved ones, was no doubt active in her community, had gotten married, loved and was loved, until a building fell on her, one effect of a war started by a handful of stupid, irresponsible men.
Huston, upon showing the film to the War Department supervisors who outranked him, was told complainingly by these men that "it's an anti-war movie." They were reluctant to release it. Huston said, "If I ever make a pro-war movie I hope someone takes me out and shoots me."
Wiser heads prevailed, fortunately; the film was first shown to soldiers and then released to the public in early May 1945, the same week the war in Europe ended.
What got the War Department critics heated, apparently, were Huston's images of wounded American soldiers and, even more controversially, dead soldiers wrapped up into blankets or whatever else might serve as a body bag. These scenes, done respectfully but unflinchingly, possess a tragic beauty and are not at all disrespectful of the dead. I recall George W. Bush's policy that incoming American service personnel killed in his war--that we're still stuck in--should never be shown on television when their coffins disembark at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. By contrast, Huston shows us the dead, makes the viewer face death and thus face the choice of going to war.
Some 1,100 American infantrymen lost their lives in this small campaign, which succeeded in eventually pushing the Germans out of the Liri Valley. A poignant shot of a soldier pounding dog tags into white wooden crosses soon to be driven into a cemetery's ground is one of many shots that stick with me. Images of the children of San Pietro, too, make it obvious that all victims of war are the same. I've seen the same look in the eyes of young survivors of aerial bombings in Yemen.
John Huston didn't leave Hollywood, where he made The Maltese Falcon, to go to Italy to make a pro-war movie. For a filmmaker, hired by the War Department, to follow his own instinct of antipathy for warfare, especially during a time when every American was supposed to feel gung-ho about going to war to avenge Pearl Harbor and crush Nazi Germany, is highly unusual for that time and unfortunately it's an unusual viewpoint in our time. Turn on any cable news channel these days and see if you can hear any anti-war voices.
San Pietro, at only thirty-two minutes, delivers more truth of war's brutality, its transformation of the human into the inhumane, than most war films I've seen, with the exceptions of Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line and Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood.
Vic Neptune
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