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.

D-day to Berlin is a very special documentary. Almost for the first time we are able to see the horrors of World War 2 like it was for the people who experienced it: in colour. We follow the American troops from d-day in june `44, until they stand in Berlin in may `45. We see the horrors of the war in a way, which we have never been able to see before. We see dead people lying along the roads, dead people in the concentration-camps, dead Wehrmacht-troops, dead civilians, dead Americans and all the pain, which was present during the war. But we also get to see the real joy of the people who were liberated from the Nazi-regime. This is a unique unique colour film, and don`t refuse to see it.

DON`T FORGET HISTORY....................

Alongside fellow directors Frank Capra, John Ford, George Huston and William Wyler, George Stevens journeyed overseas during World War II in order to get a glimpse on what the conflict was like. This film is a collection of some of the things Stevens shot, filmed in color using the same Kodachrome film he made his home movies with. Stevens followed the US Army in Europe as they assaulted the hellish beaches of Normandy in northern France during the largest amphibious attack in history. The highlight of his entire reel (and according to himself, his whole life) was being in the midst of a newly liberated Paris. The charismatic general Charles de Gaulle returns after 4 years in exile, embodying the soul of a resurgent france. Stevens also takes footage of a big military parade being held in front of the Arc de Triomphe, as well as a high ranking German commander surrendering to Allied forces. As american forces push further into europe, Stevens is there with them and documents the Battle of the Bulge, the last major german attack of the war which was launched to give Hitler a straight passageway to the crucial port of Antwerp. The Belgian countryside is devastated, but Stevens records a mass surrender of german troops, an event in which they even gave up 25 generals, as well as some GI's hanging grenades on a Christmas tree. After advancing across the Rhine river into germany, another extremely important event is captured by Stevens, as American and Soviet forces finally meet at the Elbe River in germany. While they were a world away from each other fighting their own separate campaigns, Russian and american cameramen, both tasked with filming the war, get along almost instantly. A much more serious location is next for Stevens, as he and his unit come across the Dachau camp in the south of germany. Here, they discover scores of malnourished prisoners. Thousands are already dead. Many are disease ridden due to typhus. Many former SS guards try to evade capture by wearing prisoner uniforms, but many are recognized and beaten to death by enraged inmates. Stevens ventures on to Nordhausen, where a huge underground complex comprising 40 miles of tunnels is located. The germans have been using inmates and prisoners to build Hitler's wonder weapons that were supposed to change the tide of the war, such as the ME-262 jet fighter and V2 ballistic missile. Lastly, Stevens gets permission from the soviets to go to Berlin, which they are intent on holding on to since 200 thousand russians died capturing it. Stevens would be part of this film unit until 1946. Because of what he saw during the war, his subsequent movies were not as comedic as his past ones. Keep in mind, this is the same guy who wrote jokes for a large amount of Laurel and Hardy films. Overall, I really liked this unique look at history, not only because it was well made and reminded me a lot of World at War, but also since having such important pieces of ww2 history on film is crucial to making sure the lessons of it are not forgotten. Maybe it's not coincidental that I felt like I was watching World at War while viewing this, since Carl Davis did the music. He really did manage to set up the mood of the entire war musically.

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.

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.