San Pietro (AKA “The Battle of San Pietro”)
Directed by John Huston (uncredited)
Written by John Huston (uncredited)
1945/USA
U.S. Army Pictorial Services
Repeat viewing/Treasures from American Film Archives DVD
#190 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
[box] War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and imposes the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to make it. — Benito Mussolini [/box]
The army got a whole lot more than it bargained for when it assigned John Huston to make this movie.
This is an account of the Battle of San Pietro Infine which was a major engagement from 8–17 December 1943 in the Italian Campaign of World War II involving Allied Forces attacking from the south against heavily fortified positions of the German “Winter Line” just south of Monte Cassino about halfway between Naples and Rome. The film contains graphic combat footage. We are informed that the Italian campaign was more-or-less a feint to keep the German army occupied while preparations for the D-Day invasion could be completed. Thus, the divisions involved in the campaign were under-manned and under-supplied.
I’ve seen so many war documentaries in the past several months that the combat portions of this film did not seem like anything special. However, Huston narrated the opening sequence as a kind of travelogue describing the green vineyards and olive groves of the countryside and the 700-year-old village and its church over shots of the total wreckage that was left after the battle. The short film ends with scenes of the villagers emerging from their hiding places and attempting to rebuild their lives. Huston’s narration of the abject gratitude of these people to their “deliverers” sounds deeply ironic to these ears. IMDb says that the army felt the original edit was too anti-war and cut it from its original five reels to the current 32-minute version. I would give anything to see the film in its original state.
The film is in the public domain and is currently widely available on YouTube.
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