George Stevens: D-Day to Berlin

George Stevens: D-Day to Berlin (1994)

*** (out of 4)

Entertaining documentary covering director George Stevens as he signed up for WW2 and ended up filming some of the most memorable footage of the war. The director and his crew (known as Stevens' Irregulars) ended up filming, as the title says, the landing on Normandie and the eventual surrender in Berlin. Along the way we also see and hear about the men's journey into a concentration camp, which changed their lives forever. For the most part this is a very fascinating documentary, although there's no denying that it has since been passed by better items. With that said, the color footage here shot by Stevens is the main reason to watch this as we get some incredibly beautiful shots of the battle fields. We also get some very graphic scenes at the camps with bodies piled up on one another and we also see some German soldiers who had their heads beaten open after the prisoners were able to get free. The documentary runs a very quick 46-minutes and for the most part it talks about the various missions that Stevens and his men went on. There's a little talk about the impact of filming this stuff had on the men. For example, Stevens was mainly a comedy director but after the war he felt he couldn't film laughs anymore and turned to darker subject matters. This only gets a very brief mention but more of an examination of this would have been very interesting and especially since the running time was pretty short and could have used some more stuff. With that said, fans of old WW2 footage will certainly want to check this out.

This is a superb documentary film of D-Day. It provides a coherence not found in most other WWII documentaries and you get to see images that are confronting and very educational - the footage of the captured german soldiers and the cheering crowds as the allies entered Paris was though provoking.

Best of all there are no talking heads giving their opinion of what it must have been like - they weren't needed and where dialogue was needed to capture the thoughts of those actually there during the filming, it was done with a voice over, much like Apollo 11.

This film also includes color footage from the Dachau concentration camp, including the stacks of dead bodies, execution of SS Guards cowardly hiding among the inmates, spraying with DDT in response to a typhus epidemic, and the key prize which Mr. Stevens father seems to have procured as he left, the Dauchau date stamp used at the Dachau post office.

George Stevens Jr. produces, narrates, and directs this documentary of the Allied advance from Day-D to Berlin using the notes and films from his Hollywood director father who was part of the Army Signal Corps during the war. Obviously, this is something personal and something historically important. Much of the footage is in color. It does not shy away from the brutality of the war. It's absolutely important to preserve this witness to history.

This is an excellent film. It only touches a little on The invasion of Normandy, and the German invasion, with most of the film depicting the passage of "Stevens' Irregulars" through the war as motion picture correspondents. Highlights of the film include rare color footage of the worlds largest underground factory at Nordhausen, which was used to build V1 and V2 rockets as well as the Messershmitt 262. At this time in the film, the narrator incorrectly identifies a Messershmitt 262A as a Messershmitt 216 which, to my understanding, does not exist. It concludes in Berlin with footage of the segregation of the Allies and Russian forces, which of course fueled the beginning of the Cold War.