La vraie gloire

This is one of the best-regarded of the classic wartime documentaries – another Academy Award winner, as it happens – and, in retrospect, among those that has stood the test of time reasonably well. Co-incidentally, its viewing followed that of THEY WON'T FORGET (1937) starring Claude Rains, who is featured here as one of several uncredited narrators! With this in mind, while one understands that such films were made as collective efforts for morale-boosting purposes, it feels odd to realize who may or may not have been involved only while watching it…or even after the fact (I was not aware, for instance, that the script was by Paddy Chayefsky)! Anyway, its enduring qualities over more dated similar efforts has much to do with the film's very structure – not only the various nations involved in the Allied cause taking turns to provide 'first-hand' commentary throughout, but its detailing the progress towards the end of WWII (from D-Day to the fall of Berlin).

It was interesting, to be sure, to watch real footage of a number of famed battlegrounds which would later be fictionalized as star-studded spectacles by the commercial cinema – the Normandy invasion itself in THE LONGEST DAY (1962), the BATTLE OF THE BULGE (1965), the entry into Berlin following the capture of THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN (1968) and the ill-fated Allied maneuver at Arnhem in A BRIDGE TOO FAR (1977). Other points worth mentioning here are the fact that this was 'presented' by U.S. Supreme Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower (indeed, it is said that the gold statuette on Oscar night was delivered to him personally!), later the 34th American President, and the early harrowing depiction of the realities behind German concentration camps which, as stated in the film itself, removed from one's mind any notion of the futility for such a conflict.

This is probably the earliest example of what you could call a "complete" documentary depicting the end of World War II. Starting with the planning for and then the implementation of the D-Day landings, and using hundreds of different pictorial sources, this takes us on a fairly comprehensive and often quite harrowing journey from the beaches of Normandy to the streets of Berlin. It's introduced by Gen. Eisenhower and he occasionally contributes to the soundtrack, but for the most part this is narrated by the ordinary soldiers, sailors, fliers and civilians whose lives were affected by this huge-scale military and logistical operation. It's that commentary that stands out well here, offering us some poignant observations of their travails over the best part of a year in occupied France, the Low Countries and then finally Germany itself. Some of the comments are stoic and witty but never flippant. Each has a story to tell, an episode to describe, an encounter to recount - and for much of this, it's against an enemy that had most certainly not given up. What's also striking here is the collaborative delivery of it's message. Those under the command of The King, Roosevelt and Stalin as well as those fighting for the freedom of those long-occupied territories speak openly and freely of their inter-reliance and abilities to work hand in glove - regardless of language difficulties, cultural or ideological differences and the archive illustrates that co-operation with a remarkable degree of comprehensiveness. Be warned, however, that those images also depict the ghoulish atrocities of not just the war, but of the liberation too. Of Belsen - and these images are not for the squeamish. They are truly appalling, and described by many who arrived there in 1945 with a degree of disgusted incredulity. Then we move on to scenes of ruin in towns and cities in the Fatherland before witnessing scenes of Göring and other staff officers signing documents and surrendering their weapons in defeat - in an altogether more dignified fashion. It doesn't try to be political or analytical, it tells the story from the perspectives of those folks who fought the battles and won the war and is really worth a watch if you are ever looking for a potted, but potent, encapsulation of the end of the war in Europe.

This fantastic documentary released by the United States Government and co-directed by the great and smart writer-director Garson Kanin and Michael Powell opens with DDE telling us that we are going to see the events as occurred as told by the men and women who were involved and there. This is no talking heads documentary. It essentially covers the journey from the moment the allies land on Normandy till they take Berlin. All the while, a series of voice-overs obviously scripted details the action as they talk. Be it English, American, Canadian, Czech, Russian, female paramedics, black soldiers we are given the whole she-bang. The voices change as randomly as the scene changes. There is a problem though. The dialog is scripted and can sound corny and a bit rah-rah and flag-waving. Everything is optimistic in this cinematic dairy so to speak. Scenes of allies being killed end with voice-over lines "We lost 3,000 but we moved on" and the editors will jump away to scenes of the army defeating or bombing Berlin. They do not linger or failure or tragedy except when it matters at the concentration when we see the dead bodies and survivors. That said, all sides of the human behavior are covered. We see soldiers who would rather shoot the Germans than capture them. You can feel the anger behind the voices of the soldiers as he chants racist mantras at the POWS. Anger, happiness, futility, fear, and foremost of all optimism is covered and the ending tells us that we can together and be one. The sea of flags ending might seem corny but it was made after the Great War. It has a right to be.

Later documentaries and war films have combined to make this piece seem rather outmoded in manner and naively optimistic in tone whilst its powerful images now alas seem all too familiar. At the time of course it must have packed quite a punch. The editing of newsreel footage shared among others by co-directors Carol Reed and Garson Kanin, is superlative. Some of the front line cameramen of course would not have lived to see the film receive its Oscar as Best Documentary. Splendid score by William Alwyn. Lots of familiar and uncredited voices here and the choice of Leslie Banks to declaim the somewhat purple prose is inspired following his role as Chorus in 'Henry V'. An 'uncredited' name as cinematographer is that of Russ Meyer who went on to film 'action' of an altogether different sort! The less successful aspects of the campaign are glossed over in keeping with its propogandist nature and the massive casualties are seen as the price to be paid for a job well done. History has naturally overtaken the film and it is most unsettling now to see Joseph Stalin, who was handed millions of East Europeans on a plate at the Yalta Conference, being described as one of the 'architects of peace'! The following year another of those architects, Winston Churchill, delivered his 'Iron Curtain' speech. Well-intentioned and technically faultless this is a moving testament to human beings 'in extremis'.

"The True Glory" was a feature-length documentary, jointly produced by the US Office of War Information and the British Ministry of Information, telling the story of the war on the Western Front, from the D-Day invasion of Normandy up to VE Day. The film was directed by Carol Reed and uses newsreel footage of the actual fighting, with commentary by multiple first-person narrators, including participants in the fighting, and an introduction by no less a personage than General Eisenhower himself. It was advertised with the slogan, "The story of your victory...told by the guys who won it!"

Although the war in the West may have been over when the film was made, some time in mid-1945, it can still be regarded as wartime propaganda; we are reminded that the war in the Far East was still continuing, and one of the film's messages was clearly "we've beaten Germany, now it's Japan's turn!" Another message can be summed up as "And the Krauts had it coming to them!" The view of Germany presented here is equally propagandistic; the Germans are portrayed not just as cruel and sadistic but also arrogant and full of a self-confidence which was eventually to prove unjustified.

This is very much a film of its time; although the emphasis is on the Western front, the Soviets are still "our gallant allies", and Stalin is even described as one of the "architects of freedom", along with Churchill and Roosevelt. These views would start to look outdated only a few years later, when peace had turned to cold war. Today the film is really of historical interest only. If you want to know the story of the Western Front in the years 1944/5, eighty years of historical research and analysis means that we have today documentaries that are far more detailed, informative and objective and less propagandistic and smugly self-congratulatory. 6/10.