everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Absolutely Fantastic

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

*Spoiler/plot- 1944, A film showing the operations of many Allied units to support the eventual Sicilian Italian campaign.*Special Stars- Director: Frank 'Sicilian' Capra *Theme- Cooperation and planning wins wars.*Trivia/location/goofs- American documentary. Some information on General Patton's Kassarine Pass early tank victories against Field Marshal Rommel is included here.*Emotion- An enjoyable documentary made up of live action combat or newsreel footage. However, there are the unpleasant shots of injured Americans and killed Germans. But it is extremely educational and does what a narrative simulated war film can do.

It's a broad outline of the last campaign in Africa, in which the Germans were driven out of Tunisia and a complete victory finally achieved. Much of the footage was new to me, the musical score includes Rachmaninoff, and the narration -- mostly by Leo Genn, Bernard Miles, and Burgess Meredeth -- is nicely written. Just enough detail is given about personalities and units to keep the viewer from being confused.This being a wartime documentary (1944), you won't get anything closely resembling an ambiguous picture. We're good; they're bad; we won, despite handicaps. Of course every Allied documentary is a story of victory despite temporary setbacks because, when the smoke cleared, who was left standing? So you'll see points made here without qualification. Nothing about the conflicts among the top brass. At Kasserine Pass, "the Allied armor withdrew." Nothing about the Allies having broken the Italian naval code so that we were able to destroy most of the shipping designed to support the Afrika Korps. (Rommel was reduced to draining his undamaged tanks of fuel and abandoning them in order to keep his remaining tanks running.) Nothing of General Freyberg's mishandling of Crete.But that's to be expected in 1944. Some clichés are unavoidable, given the time: mail call, Christmas services, giving chocolate to the children, the returning refugees humble but grateful. Yet it's an exciting documentary -- energizing and gripping in a way some others of its type were not, like "Attack: Battle of New Britain," which consisted mostly of shots of soldiers slogging through mud and jungles with very little action. Many of the same people were involved in the production -- Frank Capra, Leo Genn, Burgess Meredeth -- but the result was dull. Maybe one of the reasons is that we didn't "take" New Britain but called off the assault and left half the island to the Japanese, so there was no clear victory and the requisite climactic celebration was absent.In any case, this film is better shaped and uses clear graphics so we're never lost about where we are or who is doing what. A good boxed set of the North Africa campaign is available in the "Battlefield" series.

Director Frank Capra's war-time documentary of the first allied-UK US & Free French-air sea and land assault on Nazi occupied territory being the Vichy French controlled areas of Nortrh Africa.With the Nazis and their Japanese allies staging a coordinated nut cracker-like military operation in order to split the allies-US UK & USSR-in two and take over the oil rich reserves of the Middle & Near-East it was decided by the allied high command that the only way to stop it from happening is by knocking out the vaunted German Afrika Korps under Field Marshall Erwin Rommel. The first part of the operation was to stop Rommel from capturing Egypt and the Suez Canal in the ferocious and see-saw battle of El Alamein which took place some two weeks before the allied invasion. With Rommel's battered Panzer units now in full retreat in Libya the US-UK-Free French plan is to cut him off in neighboring Tunisia and keep Rommel and his troops and armor from escaping by sea from the country's northern ports. Rommel did in fact make it out of the country but the majority of his famed Afrika Korps, some 250,000 German & Italian troops, didn't ending up for the most part POWS; Prisoners of War.Most of the action in the documentary takes place on the rocky slopes and hill country of Central and Southern Tunisia with the Afrika Korps fighting for its life against overwhelming allied land sea and air power. It was Rommell in not being able to get the much needed fuel that he desperately needed for his Panzers that was one of the major reason for his ultimated defeat. The one chance Rommell had to put the allied forces to flight-the battle of the Kesselrine Pass-came to a screeching halt not because of any allied counter-attacks but the fact he ran out of fuel for his tanks and planes! At the time the Afrika Korps was on the verge of both splitting and annihilating the allied forces whom it badly mauled in the battle but because of fuel shortages was forced to stop short in its tracks before it could finish the job.With Hitler pouring tens of thousands of troops into Tunisia to reinforce Rommel's Panzer and Mechanized Divisions the Afrika Korps, in a number of skillful and dogged holding actions, was only able to hold out a bit longer but still be able to inflict well over 70,000 casualties on the attacking allied troops. But in the end the fresh and battle hardened German troops were all lost to Hitler in any future combat in Western Europe Sicily and Italy where they well could have turned the tide against the allies. By late April 1943 with the US Army finally capturing bloody Hill 609 and pouring, together with Free French & British troops, into densely populated Northern Tunisia all the avenues of escape, Tunisian port cities, were captured by the Anglo American and French forces. That all made a Dunkirk-like escape by sea virtually impossible by the hard pressed and exhausted Axis troops. This left the Afrika Korps with only two choices: death or surrender. Wisely enough they took the latter and lived to see, not die or fight, another day!

Tunisian Victory (1944) ** 1/2 (out of 4) This WW2 documentary was produced by the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the British Film Unit. Frank Capra and Hugh Stewart filmed and directed the majority of the movie but before it was released, parts of the print were damaged so John Huston went back and reshot those scenes. The documentary starts from the very beginning of this legendary battle until the victorious end when the Germans were forced out of Africa. If you've seen any of the various WW2 docs out there then you know what to expect. There's a lot of great action footage, which is probably why most people are drawn to these types of films. We also get a good understanding of the battle plan laid out by the British and we get to see how it went over so well to lead to a victory. The best moments of the film are when we see the soldiers celebrating Christmas. These scenes are very heart warming and it's great seeing the soldiers having fun in the middle of all the chaos that goes along with war. Winston Churchill and President Dwight D. Eisenhower appear in the film as well. Burgess Meredith does the narration of the American soldier.