The Battle of San Pietro

The Battle of San Pietro was a documentary produced by The Army Pictorial Service and directed by John Huston. It was about the efforts to take Italy. There are two different versions of the documentary. One was approved by the U.S. Government and the other one wasn't. In class we watched the one that was approved by the government, so that is the one I will be writing about in this blog entry.

The crazy thing about The Battle of San Pietro is that it was all real. There are no reenactments, it is all 100% real. There are some really amazing shots that made me think, "how did they do that." They got these amazing shots because the camera men were really in the trenches with the soldiers. In fact, some camera men were killed during the making of this movie. When the director finished filming the movie he realized how terribly violent the war was. He decided to show what war was really like.

It was really hard for me to figure out what exactly the director was trying to do with this film when I first saw it. On the surface it was war propaganda made by the government. But underneath the surface there were little hints that the director was trying to tell us that war is terrible. One thing that stuck out for me was when the soldiers went out to make sure the civilians in Italy were alright. The narrator says something about the kids will forget about this in days and it shows shots of the demolished city and dead parents. Obviously the kids were not going to forget about this. Obviously they were not going to be o.k.

I think this movie was very clever in giving the government what they want while still expressing the ideas of the director, John Huston