174. Battle Of San Pietro (1945)

Directed By John Huston

Synopsis

The story of a battle in WWII around the village of San Pietro in Italy.

Review

This is a documentary which takes about 30 minutes to get finished. In the meanwhile it is a pretty surprising thing, you would hardly expect an American film from 1945 to be so unflinchingly realistic and so not a propaganda film.

This short film shows war a pretty ugly thing, there are people dying on shot, there are plenty of images of corpses, even towards the end there are shots of some Italian villagers exhuming the corpse of a lady who one of the men, completely distraught, kisses. And then you have countless shots which you have seen before lifted straight from here into countless films. In the end the film is more interesting than actually a pleasure to watch, but it does live on its own merits.

The American troops never come off as invincible or inherently superior (only morally) to their opposition. None of the tanks survives, there are several failures to take the hills around the village and it comes across as haphazard. This is probably why the film would later become a training film, to show troops the reality of they could expect and not some idealised fiction of war. Fascinating.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film is unflinching in its realism (showing people dying on the field) and was held up from being shown to the public by the United States Army. Huston quickly became unpopular with the Army, not only for the film but also for his response to the accusation that the film was anti-war. Huston responded that if he ever made a pro-war film, he should be shot.

General George Marshall came to the film's defense, stating that because of the film's gritty realism, it would make a good training film; subsequently the film was used for that purpose. Huston was no longer considered a pariah; he was decorated and made an honorary major.

You can get the whole film on Youtube, here is Part I of VI: