Siege

As American correspondent and filmmaker Julien Bryan was in Poland when Germany invaded in September 1939, he gave us some of the earliest World War II footage. This short film (10 min.), which focuses on the siege of Warsaw, illustrates the horrors of war from a perspective of terror-stricken civilians. Air raids, fire-bombing, and food shortages all demoralized the defenseless population. Relentless bombing by the German Luftwaffe left hundreds of thousands homeless. Churches and hospitals were not spared; four-day old babies were already exposed to the horrors of war. By the seventh day of hostilities, one-third of Warsaw was already wrecked. To raise morale, Polish radio and newspapers published false reports of victories, but retreating soldiers told a different tale. Civilians had to be impressed to help dig barricades around the beleaguered capital. One man was stopped six times on his way to a store to buy a loaf of bread. People fled on anything they had – horses, wagons, baby carriages, etc. In a poignant scene, six women, digging for potatoes, were machine-gunned from airplanes. They were caught between a rock and a hard place, for if they did not dig, their families would starve. See the confused child sitting next to his dead mother's body. See the tortured faces of the victims. Near the very end (9:33 ff.) a Polish teen-aged girl is crying helplessly after losing her sister. One wonders what ever happened to her. Just a few days after the film-shoot the Russians invaded from the east, and Warsaw fell. Poland, finished less than four weeks after the start of the war, was divided between the Germans and the Russians. World War II had begun in Europe.

Photo-journalist Julien Bryan narrates his own short feature as he spends a few days in a Warsaw that is under siege from the approaching Nazi war machine. It is almost three weeks since the city started being indiscriminately bombed leaving it's buildings, hospitals and churches in ruins whilst it's population risk random strafing from enemy aircraft as they try to gather potatoes from fields on the outskirts of what is left of their homes. Some of the images are frankly quite harrowing, especially towards the conclusion of this film and the sight of a young lad, with all he possesses in a makeshift sack, sitting next to the corpse of his recently mown down mother is a poignant and impactful image amongst many that we see here. It packs quite a punch in just ten minutes.

"Siege" is a 1940 documentary short about the Siege of Warsaw by the Wehrmacht at the start of World War II. It was shot by Julien Bryan, a Pennsylvanian photographer and cameraman who later established the International Film Foundation.

This is a crucial piece of film, because although the United States was not directly involved in WWII until 1941 (and not in Europe until 1944), we ere clearly aware of what was going on, and not just through second-hand reports.

"Siege" was nominated for an Oscar for Best One-reel Short at the 13th Academy Awards in 1941. Somehow it lost to "Quicker'n a Wink", a short film about strobe lights... not sure what the voters were thinking.