BATTLE OF SAN PIETRO Movie Review

1944 John Huston

According to reference books and anecdotal sources, John Huston's documentary snapshot of one part of the Italian campaign has existed in at least three different versions. One, about five reels or 50 minutes long, was shown to American soldiers during World War II. Then a shortened, 30-minute edition with an introduction by General Mark Clark and a new musical soundtrack was released theatrically. (In a 1962 interview, Huston said that much of the deleted material concerned American casualties, and that the cuts were made primarily to gain wider distribution in theaters. Exhibitors did not want to handle a longer film.) The version now widely available on tape lacks the introduction but retains the soundtrack.

It's still grim stuff.

Using simple charts and a pointer, Huston describes the Liri Valley of Italy, an agricultural region that lay right in the path of the German retreat and the American advance through the country. As he drily notes in the voice-over narration, “Last year was a bad year for grapes and olives and the fall planting was late.” From the end of October 1943, until mid-December, German and American soldiers fought in the region. The Germans were dug into the mountains. To reach them, the Americans had to make their way up unprotected slopes or to attempt flanking maneuvers on narrow twisting roads. Both routes were extremely costly.

To film the action, Huston and his camera crew moved with the soldiers using hand-held cameras loaded with black-and-white film. When shells explode nearby and the image shakes, it's not a special effect. When a G.I. creeping behind a tree suddenly falls, he's not a stuntman. The body half covered with loose dirt is not going to get up when the camera is turned off. Huston presents the slow-moving, back-and-forth tidal swings of the conflict mostly without comment. He describes what's happening, blaming no one for decisions that may have been incorrect and always referring to the Germans simply as “the enemy.” Compared to other Hollywood directors who worked for the War Department, Huston is restrained. He's interested in the human cost of the conflict, not bellicose saber-rattling.

That comes into even sharper focus at the end, when the narration ceases and the haunting images speak for themselves: dead G.I.s being loaded into white body bags, an Italian woman walking carefully down a street with a coffin balanced on her head, a soldier's rough hands hammering dog tags onto makeshift wooden grave markers.

It's no surprise then that Battle of San Pietro has virtually no propaganda value. It will never be used as a recruiting film.

Written by: Eric Ambler, John Huston; Cinematography by: Jules Buck, John Huston; Music by: Dimitri Tiomkin. Producer: U.S. Office of War Information, Frank Capra. Awards: National Film Registry '91. Running Time: 43 minutes. Format: VHS, Beta.