Alongside fellow directors Frank Capra, John Ford, George Huston and William Wyler, George Stevens journeyed overseas during World War II in order to get a glimpse on what the conflict was like. This film is a collection of some of the things Stevens shot, filmed in color using the same Kodachrome film he made his home movies with. Stevens followed the US Army in Europe as they assaulted the hellish beaches of Normandy in northern France during the largest amphibious attack in history. The highlight of his entire reel (and according to himself, his whole life) was being in the midst of a newly liberated Paris. The charismatic general Charles de Gaulle returns after 4 years in exile, embodying the soul of a resurgent france. Stevens also takes footage of a big military parade being held in front of the Arc de Triomphe, as well as a high ranking German commander surrendering to Allied forces. As american forces push further into europe, Stevens is there with them and documents the Battle of the Bulge, the last major german attack of the war which was launched to give Hitler a straight passageway to the crucial port of Antwerp. The Belgian countryside is devastated, but Stevens records a mass surrender of german troops, an event in which they even gave up 25 generals, as well as some GI's hanging grenades on a Christmas tree. After advancing across the Rhine river into germany, another extremely important event is captured by Stevens, as American and Soviet forces finally meet at the Elbe River in germany. While they were a world away from each other fighting their own separate campaigns, Russian and american cameramen, both tasked with filming the war, get along almost instantly. A much more serious location is next for Stevens, as he and his unit come across the Dachau camp in the south of germany. Here, they discover scores of malnourished prisoners. Thousands are already dead. Many are disease ridden due to typhus. Many former SS guards try to evade capture by wearing prisoner uniforms, but many are recognized and beaten to death by enraged inmates. Stevens ventures on to Nordhausen, where a huge underground complex comprising 40 miles of tunnels is located. The germans have been using inmates and prisoners to build Hitler's wonder weapons that were supposed to change the tide of the war, such as the ME-262 jet fighter and V2 ballistic missile. Lastly, Stevens gets permission from the soviets to go to Berlin, which they are intent on holding on to since 200 thousand russians died capturing it. Stevens would be part of this film unit until 1946. Because of what he saw during the war, his subsequent movies were not as comedic as his past ones. Keep in mind, this is the same guy who wrote jokes for a large amount of Laurel and Hardy films. Overall, I really liked this unique look at history, not only because it was well made and reminded me a lot of World at War, but also since having such important pieces of ww2 history on film is crucial to making sure the lessons of it are not forgotten. Maybe it's not coincidental that I felt like I was watching World at War while viewing this, since Carl Davis did the music. He really did manage to set up the mood of the entire war musically.
