SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7 @ 11:15 PM (ET)
Academy Award-winning Director George Stevens spent the 30s and early 40s directing films like Alice Adams, Swing Time, Gunga Din, Penny Serenade, Woman Of The Year, and The Talk Of The Town. In 1943, General Eisenhower picked him to lead the Special Coverage Unit, a team of top Hollywood professionals tasked with making the official cinematographic record of the D-Day invasion and subsequent drive to Berlin. While shooting 35mm black-and-white film for the official record Stevens simultaneously shot his own personal filmed record on hand-held 16mm Kodachrome-a striking color record of his historic trek. Amazingly, these reels remained undeveloped until 1980, when they were discovered in storage by the director’s son, producer George Stevens, Jr. He has skillfully assembled the footage and included narration, as well as including audio excerpts from interviews with surviving veterans of “Stevens’ irregulars,” including writers Ivan Moffat and Irwin Shaw, Director Hollingsworth Morse and cameraman Jack Muth.
Stevens was aboard the H.M.S. Belfast to record the first salvo of the D-Day invasion, fired at 5:30 am on June 6, 1944. The film proceeds chronologically as the allies land at Normandy and push through France. The liberation of Paris is particularly well
documented, the shots of delirious crowds accompanied by the reminisces of that joyous day. There’s also the parades: long lines of triumphant soldiers marching down the Champs-Élysées and straight out of town to resume the offensive. This stuff is mostly shot hand-held from a street-level point-of-view. The camera is jostling for position with the rest of the crowd, and it makes for a real sense of immediacy.
Ahead lay the Battle of the Bulge, the crossing of the Rhine, the link-up with the Soviet allies at Torgau. But before the conclusion of the trek to Berlin, the unit is summoned to make a side-trip to hell. They are ordered to the town of Dachau to document the discovery of a new depth of human evil.
After a visit to Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s Alpine retreat, the long and winding roadtrip to Berlin finally ends, and the unit documents the utter devastation-the familiar landmarks ravaged, the streets filled with rubble and the bucket brigades of Germans hauling it out. Again, we get intimate looks at the faces of defeat up close and personal.
