The True Glory

"The True Glory" was a feature-length documentary, jointly produced by the US Office of War Information and the British Ministry of Information, telling the story of the war on the Western Front, from the D-Day invasion of Normandy up to VE Day. The film was directed by Carol Reed and uses newsreel footage of the actual fighting, with commentary by multiple first-person narrators, including participants in the fighting, and an introduction by no less a personage than General Eisenhower himself. It was advertised with the slogan, "The story of your victory...told by the guys who won it!"

Although the war in the West may have been over when the film was made, some time in mid-1945, it can still be regarded as wartime propaganda; we are reminded that the war in the Far East was still continuing, and one of the film's messages was clearly "we've beaten Germany, now it's Japan's turn!" Another message can be summed up as "And the Krauts had it coming to them!" The view of Germany presented here is equally propagandistic; the Germans are portrayed not just as cruel and sadistic but also arrogant and full of a self-confidence which was eventually to prove unjustified.

This is very much a film of its time; although the emphasis is on the Western front, the Soviets are still "our gallant allies", and Stalin is even described as one of the "architects of freedom", along with Churchill and Roosevelt. These views would start to look outdated only a few years later, when peace had turned to cold war. Today the film is really of historical interest only. If you want to know the story of the Western Front in the years 1944/5, eighty years of historical research and analysis means that we have today documentaries that are far more detailed, informative and objective and less propagandistic and smugly self-congratulatory. 6/10.

Obviously, "The True Glory" is propaganda in favor of World War II. Walking away from it, one gets the feeling that this was a war that had to get fought (and when you think about it, it WAS the last war declared by congress - as opposed to the president unilaterally launching it - and we paid for it with high taxes). None other than Dwight Eisenhower* introduces it and reminds the viewer that this is firsthand footage of the war. We get narration from all sorts of people: multiple nationalities, and even multiple races.

But something else caught my eye. Towards the end, we get footage of US troops meeting Soviet troops, and both sides hit it off. Any scholar of WWII knows that the USSR was our ally in that war. Well, a mere two years later, the United States and Soviet Union became enemies. A person seeing this documentary just a few years after its release would've gotten left befuddled at the sight of Ivan and GI Joe happily shaking hands, now that the US considered the USSR the world's #1 threat. But as George Orwell depicted in "Nineteen Eighty-Four", alliances shift depending on which war it is, and memories of previous alliances get erased.

Well, one has to understand that the documentary got released right after the war ended. The footage of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin holding their conference looked heroic (most people didn't know that Truman had ditched FDR's plans for a future without war). It's understandable that the documentary won Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards in 1946. While the propaganda factor may seem over-the-top, I still recommend the documentary as a look at the mindset in late 1945. To think that there was that brief period when it looked as though there would never be another war, and now a nuclear holocaust looks like a real possibility.

Anyway, you should see it (but also watch "The Atomic Cafe").

*It's probably worth noting that as president, Ike taxed the rich at 90% to pay off the war debt and build the Interstate system, defended Social Security, and worked to ease tensions with the Soviet Union. He could never get elected as a conservative nowadays.

Not your average World War II documentary, 'The True Glory' avoids static interviews or impersonal narration, instead presenting collated archive footage from the final few months of the war, played out against real war veterans verbally relating their experiences. While some of the stock footage shown feels awfully familiar, there are several excellent, unusual shots throughout, most notably one where the camera is positioned at the wheels of the plane and a sequence where passers-by on the street walk up to the camera from all different directions. The nighttime footage is remarkable too. Not all of the verbal recounts resonate with a lot of flag-waving dialogue, however, several lines linger long in the mind ("I'm not squeamish... but I'm human") and the documentary refreshingly includes recounts from an extensive variety of personnel. Sure, most of the interviewees are soldiers, but we also get the perspective of an army hospital nurse, a war reporter and the list goes on. The documentary also curiously mentions the prospect of World War III some time in (then) foreseeable future with a reminder that war really can be a horrible thing. Indeed, while the film sometimes feels like the Allies patting themselves on the back for a successful victory, 'The True Glory' does not shy away from depicting how grueling war is and it deserves some credit for that.

This fantastic documentary released by the United States Government and co-directed by the great and smart writer-director Garson Kanin and Michael Powell opens with DDE telling us that we are going to see the events as occurred as told by the men and women who were involved and there. This is no talking heads documentary. It essentially covers the journey from the moment the allies land on Normandy till they take Berlin. All the while, a series of voice-overs obviously scripted details the action as they talk. Be it English, American, Canadian, Czech, Russian, female paramedics, black soldiers we are given the whole she-bang. The voices change as randomly as the scene changes. There is a problem though. The dialog is scripted and can sound corny and a bit rah-rah and flag-waving. Everything is optimistic in this cinematic dairy so to speak. Scenes of allies being killed end with voice-over lines "We lost 3,000 but we moved on" and the editors will jump away to scenes of the army defeating or bombing Berlin. They do not linger or failure or tragedy except when it matters at the concentration when we see the dead bodies and survivors. That said, all sides of the human behavior are covered. We see soldiers who would rather shoot the Germans than capture them. You can feel the anger behind the voices of the soldiers as he chants racist mantras at the POWS. Anger, happiness, futility, fear, and foremost of all optimism is covered and the ending tells us that we can together and be one. The sea of flags ending might seem corny but it was made after the Great War. It has a right to be.

Described by Basil Wright as "a really brilliant example of collaboration of talent on an international level" and bearing the official endorsement of an introduction by General Eisenhower, this blow by blow account of the final year of the war in Europe includes uncredited contributions from both commentator Leslie Banks and combat cameraman Russ Meyer.

Moving at a rare old lick, the frequent dry humour and laconic passion of the words combines with forcefully edited found footage to create an engrossing piece of reportage as fresh as the day it was made (although the actual events depicted probably felt like a lifetime to actually experience compared with the way the film flies past).