Category: Film Review

Stalker (1979). 

IMDb runtime of 2 hours and 42 minutes, rated 8.1 by 132,000 members of the human comedy.

Genre: Sy Fy

Verdict: Enough!

The write up on the IMDb was interesting but the execution exceeds even the Hollywood gold standard for self-indulgent, incomprehensible nonsense. The intriguing premise is ground into the mud by the repetitive and aimless direction.  

What is that premise? That there exists a place where dreams come true.  Getting there is risky, staying there is impossible, but… of such stuff as dreams are made, just follow the yellow brick road.  Instead of dragons, sea monsters, raging seas, precipitous cliffs, or wicked witches, those who venture into The Zone must get past heavily armed guards (wearing white biker helmets), barbed wire, land mines, and trek through mud and more mud. (There is a lot of mud in this movie.)  Once in the Zone, there is The Room where dreams come true … maybe.

The protagonist is a guide who, for a fee, will lead a few people into the Zone and find the Room, through the traps for the unwary.  He is addicted to the challenge but seems to have no dream of his own to realise.  He is contracted by a scientist and a novelist to shepherd them to the Room.  The scientist dreams of recognition for this work; the novelist wants to restart his career. That is the quest. 

They start and after that it is a sepia dreary ruined world.  The mud, the ruins seen now prefigure Chernobyl.  The visuals are powerful but pointless. Every shot of the mud is attenuated far past the breaking even point. Then repeated. And again. Each repeat is held for nearly 90 seconds. (Yes, I clocked some.)  And then repeated.  One camera set-up yields 3 – 4 minutes of mud each time, and too often more.  That’s entertainment – not! 

This goes on for nearly three hours, and I confess I did not endure it all.  Why should one?  None of the three central characters engage a viewer.  There is no structure once the quest starts. They could be going around in circles for all the audience knows. We never quite get what motivates the guide, but there is nothing else in his life but the Zone. He has sacrificed his family to this neurosis, it seems.  He needs help, preferably off camera.

Why is it forbidden to enter? Unknown. Why do trains pass through it? Unknown.

Who cares? Not me.

After much stumbling about in the aforementioned mud, they come to the Room, but none of them dares enter it.  Oh, 2+ hours for that balk.  So they sit in the mud and deliver long, boring monologues to each other. If that is the payoff, go to a pub.  

At an IMDb rating of 8.1, there are viewers who think it is the greatest movie ever made. There are many tributes on You Tube and the Internet Movie Data Base. Read ‘em and weep for our kind. Serge Eisenstein’s two parts of Ivan the Terrible taken together run but 8 minutes longer than this turkey, and each is far superior in every way.

While the core idea was intriguing it is far from original, and while the staging is effective the whole is less than the sum of those nearly three hours. Much less.  As a 20-minute film on DUST it would have been a winner.  Franz Kafka did this sort of thing in short stories with far greater effect because they punch.  

And yes, I got all the religious imagery that was as subtle as a sledge hammer.

Having watched Ivan in his two parts, the AI Mechanical Turk on You Tube threw up this film, and I was intrigued by the description. Silly me. 

Ivan the Terrible, Parts 1 and 2 (1944 and 1945 [1958])

IMDb meta-data for Part I is runtime of 1 hour and 35 minutes, 7.7 rated by 10,000 cinematizens.

For Part II runtime is 1 hour and 28 minutes, rated 7.8 by 7,400 cinematizens.

Genre: Historical fiction.

Verdict: Compelling.

Ivan (1530-1584) came to the throne amid a court of murderous schemers, the envy of the Republican Party in their depravity, but the hypocrisy of church and state combine in an elaborate coronation. In his acceptance speech Ivan alienates just about everyone by claiming he is Tsar of Russia not just Duke of Muscovy. Period!  Everyone else is a vassal, rich or poor.  Further, he declares his warlike ambitions against any and everyone.  Is this Vladdie’s favourite movie now?  It was Stalin’s.  

This is a matinee idol Ivan, not the pockmarked, volatile reality.  He is honest. He is noble. He is smart. He is, well, a right pain for being holier than all the thous.  

Around him everyone is a lowlife schemer, because ‘Why should he be Tsar, and not me?’ Truth to tell he is the first Tsar, created out of the ambition of his regents. The plots thicken. 

The acting and camera work are throwbacks to silent movies, with tight close-ups, exaggerated gestures, bug-eyed stares, shadows that menace, amid the pomp and riches of the Kremlin. Roger Ebert slams it for this and much else. Indeed no nit was too small for him to pick at it from the size of the doorways to the bejewelled garments.  Be that as it may, the whole works.

Of course, Ivan the Formidable was paranoid and unstable to begin with and got more so with age.  He purged the ranks of the boyars (nobles) more than once, while Stalin took notes, and made war on the Kazan (for the stans), Astrakhan (to get those hats), Tatars (for the sauce – oops), Lithuania (for those dumplings), Latvia (for the herring), Poland (for the kransky), Ukraine (for fun), and anyone else handy.  The Turks felt left out and soon he put that right with another war. He also went looking for enemies in Siberia, and found them. He was a devout Christian, clutching a cross, as he went about murdering far and wide.  Amen.  

To make war more effectively he modernised the realm with codes of law (taxes and conscription), personal oaths of loyalty, pay for the army, reduced first the powers of the boyars and then their number, started printing Bibles to reduce the monopoly of priests.  He also confiscated church property to pay for his wars, claiming priests were disloyal.  Henry VIII had the same idea.

He faked an abdication and installed a figurehead to draw out his enemies into a trap. This cinematographic Ivan has a common touch and is much loved by the toiling masses.  Hint, hint, just like Comrade Number One.  

The film is epic in scale in every way.  It is hard to believe that with its cast of thousands it was made during the Great Patriotic War aka World War II when the Nazis were within reach of Moscow, while the Soviet Union was rearming and making a new nine million-man army.  While stylised in black-and-white there is a short scene in colour (made on film captured from a German photographic unit) that surprises the viewers, as director Sergei Eisenstein intended it to do.  

A few tidbits were illuminating.  When going into battle the Russian soldiers each put a coin in a bucket, as above. After the battle each survivor takes one out. The residue indicate the casualties.  Simple and effective book keeping.  

I saw these two at Tuesday film night in graduate school and was awed by them.  Then the other day they appeared on You Tube in restored versions no doubt in much better condition that the prints I saw those years ago. So I had a look.  

Dick Barton Strikes Back (1949).

IMBd meta-data is runtime 1 hour 13 minutes rated 5.2 by 49 cinematizens.

Genre: Spy Fy with Sy Fy.

Verdict: [Did not Disturb – Zzzzzzz.]

Mr Giles has invented Fox News sucking brains out viewers.  All the brainless people around creates litter and fearless – because he has a stunt double – Dick ambles into action.  The fate of the free-world hangs in the balance but Dick has plenty of time to turn his good side to the camera.

Giles had arrived from Prague and nothing good has ever arrived from Prague.  Moreover, he shaved his beard as a disguise.  What a dirty trick that is. Nonetheless Dick and his faithful comic relief spot him.  

The result is more Spy Fy than Sy Fy.  It is included on Scifist 2.0 because of the brain dehydrating sonic beam ear worm that pumps out Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’ without end.  Cruel enough that to bring a smile to faces in the Kremlin. 

The stunt double gets a work out, and for reasons only known to the script writer, the Gypsies did it!  Yep, the Gypsies who run the fun fair are not in it for the fun and certainly aren’t fair either. Red Gypsies!  Bad Gypsies!  At least they held onto their brains.  

Dick Barton started his derring-do on the radio in the 1930s and went on, but did not reach retirement age.  He was James before Bond in his devil may care attitude, but he was also asexual.  His exploits were aimed by prepubescent boys and steered clear of any of the mushy stuff.  

The characters – the good and the bad, alike – stumble around like three stooges but evidently collide in Blackpool Tower which is pretty good work for the stunt man.  The eminence gris has a laptop to control the music, but….   

The direction is snappy, the dialogue atrocious, the setting unusual, the result juvenile.  Dick did not go on because without a stunt double, the star was killed in a car accident returning home (drunk, no doubt) from the wrap party.  Giles did not do it.  Ah huh.  

1. Red String of Fate (2021).

IMDb meta-data is run time of 9 minutes and 52 seconds, rated 7.8 by 17 cinematizens.  

Genre: Sy Fy.  

Verdict: short and sweet. 

A charming short on DUST about a forbidden love between an android and a human, both female.  In a few minutes it gets across more about the character and circumstance than a deafening three-hour long extravaganza from Hollywood or Pinewood.  

2. BackSpace (2022)

IMDb runtime is 7 minutes, rated 5.8 by 19 cinematizens. 

Genre: Sy Fy.

Verdict: Too long. 

The good guy wears white and the bad guy, well you know.  

3. Q Ghostly Remote Effect (2020)

IMDb runtime of 19 minutes and 43 seconds, rated 5.7 by 6 cinematizens. 

Genre: Sy Fy.

Verdict: Nice place to visit.

Girl meets android and falls in love.  Cf. Blade Runner.  

From Norway with spectacular scenery.  

Mad Monster (1942) 

IMDb meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 17 minutes, 3.5 rated by 1,750 discerning cinematizens. That’s out of 10.

Genre: Horror; Species: Bore.

Verdict: [Snore.]

Professor Moriarty is not only a stable genius but also a great patriot. In an old dark house near a convenient swamp he experiments on men and dogs to create a savage warrior who will slay our fanatical enemies in 1942. His comely daughter is in attendance and none the wiser.  She seems to have had no mother.  Was she another of his experiments? Her beau is even dimmer.  

Morrie’s ethics clearance application for his Hairy Warrior project was decisively rejected by the third anonymous assessor, that is, Dr No. Without a nationally competitive grant Morrie was of no use to the university in the ratings game, so he was manoeuvred into early retirement. Angry, he continues to conjure a savage murderer out of a gentle giant gardener known as Pedro to everyone except the screen credits which have him as Pietro.  ‘Look, I just work here,’ said the film editor.  

The spectral seminar Morrie holds at the start for exposition is the best scene in the movie. I speak as a participant in such sessions, some to my knowledge and others not. Dr No has had more than one tongue-lashing from yours truly.    

There is a menacing atmosphere in the misty swamp and the transformation of the gentle giant into ravening wolf-man is effective, but he is no Lon Chaney and that hat! Ha! 

The whole film was undercooked in the five days it took to produce it.  Yet it is so slow that it seems almost three hours long. The director must have been taking Rohypnol by the handful.

The daughter-damsel in distress looks almost as bored as I felt, and her rescuing knight was a 10-watt bulb. Neither offered any conviction nor injected any vitality into the proceedings.  

I had read about it in detail on Scifist 2.0; ergo I knew the little I was in for.  It is freely available on You Tube in a so-so print.  

George Zucco was always committed to his roles no matter how ludicrous they were, like this one. He always gave 100 per cent. He alone carries this waste of celluloid but even he limps in the turgid and vague mishmash. By the way, The Great War left him with paralysis in his right arm, where he had been wounded. He always said yes to work and there are 99 credits for him on the IMDb. The name is Greek and he refused to change it to something Anglo, because it was his father’s name.  

Deluge (1933)

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 10 minutes, rated 6.3 by 437 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy.

Verdict: ripped from today’s headlines.

Disaster looms as the weather produces giant storms. Polar ice caps melt. Rivers rise. The earth shakes. Avalanches fall. Volcanoes erupt. Hurricanes strike. This manifold threat divides humanity. One half tries to make a profit off this doom and gloom in Ted talks, religion, business, media, and politics. It is a godsend for these hucksters. The other half denies the reality of the threat even as they perish. Yes, it has a contemporary resonance.

After the tsunami destroyed New York City and most of the rest of the world in a Noah rerun, the film follows the trials of an assortment of survivors.  But by then it is all rather anti-climatic. The few remaining souls set about recreating the society that destroyed the earth. The preacher fulminates; the businessman tries to profit; the politician sows discontent!  

No, I am afraid the focus is more mundane than those stereotypes. A husband and wife were separated by the disaster, and each thinking the other dead, makes other, hmm, arrangements. There is a bully who thinks might is right, a milquetoast wimp whom Bully tramples, and so on.  In the allotted runtime husband and wife are reunited, but … well, he already has a new Eve, double-but: no matter.  It ends with a ménage à trois in the new Eden. Yes, the 1933 National Board of Review, aka censor, passed this dubious moral conclusion. Strange, no?  Strange, yes. 

Unusual to see Sydney Blackmer playing the lead. He made a career out heavies when not playing Teddy Roosevelt, to whom he bore no resemblance but played him – count ‘em – seven times.  See below.    

Never Kick a Man Upstairs (1953)

My Girl Tisa (1948)

Buffalo Bill (1944)

In Old Oklahoma (1943)

Teddy the Rough Rider (1940)

The Monroe Doctrine (1939) 

This is My Affair (1937) 

The special effects for the disaster (as above) are better than in many subsequent films until Ray Harryhausen revolutionised the business. Done with miniature models, and done well though the You Tube print is poor.

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 20 minutes, rated 4.6 by 2,200 cinematizens.

Genre: SyFy; Species: women without men.

Verdict: A Golden Raspberry.

The usual crew (square-jawed captain, drooling comic relief, and oily Romeo) set off on a mission in a NASA launch film clip. Along for the ride (on the hospital bed that seems to be standard equipment on the flight deck*) is Paul Birch, holder of the Order of Sy Fyist Premier Cru for his many contributions to the genre, excluding this one. The mission is to deliver milk to the orbiting space wheel from Conquest of Space (1955).

Drooler is too busy memorising his gag-lines to notice as they veer off course and land on Venus in a snowfield.  (This footage, too, comes from another film – Mission to Mars [1953]).  When they come across a road sign directing them to Venus City, they realise all that the textbooks about the second planet are all wrong.  

It gets worse. It is a planet without men! (Note, Venusians have had this problem before, watch for a forthcoming review of the Ship of Monsters (1960) for enlightenment on this recurrent problem.) This occasions so many stupid remarks that they are impossible to list, and better passed in silence. Suffice it to say that the dialogue is so sexist and misogynist that some critics suppose it was meant to be satire. I wish, but I don’t think so. In any event, it is all consistent and all played straight. The women are decked out in short, short skirts and high, high heels, and so on and on.

In such a shoddy production with such cement-direction that it takes 15-minutes to get going it is surely presumptuous to ridicule anyone else, but there it is.  All the costumes and props look familiar because they had been used in previous movies, like the grey on gray uniforms from Forbidden Planet (1956), like the ray guns from Missile to the Moon (1958), like the (miniature) rubber spider from Cat Women of the Moon (1953), like the women’s costumes from World without End (1956), and the list goes on.  Likewise the orienting shots, the snowfield landing, the city in the distance, the cosmos, the space station wheel, the initial rocket launch all come from other movies and no effort is made to conceal, integrate, or explain the obvious discrepancies in size, scale, or colour.  

One might think this is bad but there is more. Hang onto those steak knives. 

It fails the elementary Bechdel Test on criterion #3. The planet may have only women but they talk only of men.  On this test…, well, look it up. 

All in all, in comparison it makes Quark (1977) look like a quality production with a thoughtful script and convincing acting.  (Psst, if you haven’t seen Quark, don’t!)

The inner pedant requires that I say the lead is not the queen, and the queen is on Venus not in Outer Space. 

It is hard to believe that this concoction represents the combined creative efforts of Charles Beaumont, Ben Hecht, and Edward Bernds, who each have many other, far superior credits before and after this movie.  Beaumont wrote some real chillers like The 7 Faces of Dr Lao (1964) and many episodes of the Twilight Zone.  Ben Hecht created Hildy in His Girl Friday (1940) as well as writing Notorious (1946), Walk on the Wild Side (1962), and scores of others.  Bernds specialised in short comedy as a director, writer, and designer with hundreds of credits.  None of that pool of talent is visible in this widescreen, technicolor release, which looks like an A-movie and plays like a D-movie, those made to go directly to the drive-in theatre screens.  

Women without men is a niche market that is well served by film producers with arrested development.  It seems to be a frat boy fantasy that somewhere, somehow there are gorgeous women so starved of men that the frat boy will look good.  Dream on, Bro. Here is a list of some to prove the point:  

Jungle Women (1944)

Captive Women (1952)

Untamed Women (1952) 

Cat-Women of the Moon (1953)

Mesa of the Lost Women (1953)

Women’s Prison (1955)

Fire Maidens from Outer Space (1956) 

Missile to the Moon (1958) 

Wild Women of Wongo (1958) 

Women of the Prehistoric Planet (1966) 

Mars Needs Women (1966) 

Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968)

Chain Gang Women (1971)

No doubt there are others. Some of these are superior to the film under consideration and most do not take themselves as seriously.   

• The bed is there because there was no fourth recliner seat in any other science fiction movie to borrow so the bed was wheeled in from the studio infirmary.  Most of the budget went to the leading lady’s salary, leaving little or nothing for the props and costumes. These insights are from the gossip about the backstage of the film on the IMDb.

These are the Damned 1962 aka The Damned.

IMDB meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 27 minutes, rated 6.6 by 3,744 cinematizens. 

Genre: Sci fi; species Nuke paranoia.

Verdict: Lugubrious. 

Dr Tom is on vacation from General Hospital when he encounters caveman Ollie on the one day of summer in England. Adventures for both follow. Dr Tom engages in some safe activity with Ollie’s squeeze who has trouble remembering her name, and Ollie loses face and much more.

Spoilers ahead.  

As this well-worn trope unfolds, in a parallel line we meet C with his artistic mistress who carves driftwood into members…of her collection.  These two are so posh, few dare approach them. But wherever C goes men with military ranks dog his steps with reports.  He may be in donnish mufti but he is one big kahuna for sure. 

These two story lines collide when, with Ollie lumbering after them in slo-mo pursuit, Tom and Squeeze accidentally take refuge in C’s cliffside lair on the fatal shore. Ollie makes three.  

Ever wondered what happened to the Village (of the Damned) children?  It seems, C adopted them for his science experiment and has them locked away in a stone chamber (aka lair) where nary a geiger counter is heard.  In the cave the children are monitored by Big Brother’s television cameras, and occasional nocturnal visits by some of those army officers in heavy duty radiation suits to give them nightmares. Ambiguity intended.

Yes, these sweet innocents are radioactive, and bred to be that way so that they will survive tomorrow’s nuclear war. C is not only a mad scientist, he is also a stable genius whose progeny will inherit the dust.  

Tom, Squeeze, and even Ollie get all paternal with the cute kiddies, but recoil when they discover that the kids are icicles. In some Geordie-speak earlier we know they have been infused with radiation so that they will survive in a post-apocalyptic world, and that makes them radioactive to a fatal degree in a normal person. Their blood is uranium enriched! This fact gradually sinks into the would-be rescuers who have exposed themselves. Gulp! Ollie is quicker on the uptake than Dr Tom with all his degree-mill papers. One side effect of the radiation is that the children are colder than ice, but after a while everyone forgets that.  The other side effect is that one hug, and you are dead.  

The three (alleged) adults act spontaneously to escape with the tots without a plan or a clue and it ends accordingly.  

There are nice touches. The children are very well integrated into the story, and penultimate scene when in a downbeat ending they are forcibly rounded up and reincarcerated is disturbing.  It is not quite the SS in the ghetto but evocative of it.  In a way the children drive the action because they are not all the docile sweetness and light that they have convinced C they are when he spies on them. Knowing that he is watching, they have worked out how to avoid that. If C has secrets, they have more.  

The inevitability of Nuclear War shadows everything, as it did for us all at the time, and that became the justification for many unsavoury things without a doubt.  

C is even colder than the children when he casually murdered his mistress because she learned too much about his work, criticised it, and beat him at scrabble. Three strikes and she was out!

British censors accepted the word ‘Damned’ in titles like the ‘Village’ (1960) of that name, and film producers rushed to get it into titles to titillate audiences. It was even easier to get that word than to get a coveted X-rating to lure in the gullible cinematizens.  This film evokes the Village and its sequel, but stands on its own for a viewer who has not seen the others. The children are all posh white bread from the same casting agency.  No cockney, no Pakistani. no Geordie, no West Indian, no Irish, no Nigerian….  All home counties.  

Dr Tom is as unlikely an action hero as George Sanders was in 1960.  He also knows precious little about radiation, it seems, despite his decades at General Hospital where he mostly looked wise.   

Ollie tries to look smouldering but mostly looks hungry – bulimia warning.  The portrayal of the biker gang members is, well, silly.  They are all martial when Teddy Boys were rebels (without a cause) against authority.  Ollie wears a tweed sports coat and the gang biker members leather, that is how we know he is the boss. For those who must know ‘Ted’ comes from Edward, as in Edwardian. Suffice it to say that tweed is not Edwardian. Look it up!  I did. 

The direction by expatriate blacklisted American Joseph Losey is excellent even if the story is disjointed. Kenneth Cope as one of the bikers conveys his love for Squeeze without a word or deed in a few superb moments.  You might remember him as Hopkirk, deceased, a few years later.

There is no resolution at the end, which I took to be a reference to the end of Dr No. 

———-

The Atomic Submarine (1959)

IMDB metadata is run time of 1 hour and 12 minutes, rated 5.1 by 1,600 generous spirits.

Genre: Sy Fy.

Verdict: Numbing.

Set up: The fabled northwest passage is big business with cargo submarines passing beneath the Arctic ice cap on a polar route.  But then disaster strikes: I watched this movie!  Curiosity will kill not only cats. Will I ever learn to leave the unseen unseen? Probably not.  

One after another of the cargo subs is blown up.  No reason to be in a hurry and after about ten explosions the US Navy oozes into action.  Slowly, very slowly.  The budget cutters have been here.  Not only is Navy impoverished so is this production.  

We got this far with a ponderous voice-over of plastic models in fish tanks.  Commies in the aquarium! It is all Cold War with icicles. Brrr!

America’s finest are recruited from the Retired Actors Home, shorn of their canes and crutches, and sent into action as the A for Arthritic Team. Some of the cast and crew of geriatrics started in silent movies, while others pre-date film itself.  

Fortunately the screenplay does not require them to move often from the floor marks however when they do the creaking sounds are their joints not the cardboard submarine set. I ask you what kind of submarine movie is it when the captain does not once say ‘Scope up!’ and so never says ‘Scope down.’  

It is almost beyond the pale yet has, surprisingly enough, some merits.  First is an ongoing argument between a gung-ho sailor who wants to shoot first and a pacifist civilian scientist.  We have, of course, seen this debate before, and seen it better done, but the surprising thing is that it is here at all in this paper thin screen play. Moreover, in this offering the sailor is a hot head while the scientist is the voice of reason. Some marks for good intentions on this point. 

The only time the visuals rise above the high school play level is when the intrepid leads find and enter the alien ship, which is a submerged flying saucer, which we all figured out long before any of these droolers did.  It is all very German expressionism and cheap, no lights, no sets and the better for it. 

By the time the sub-Arctic Sea saucer was found, I realised it belonged to James Arness, aka the Giant Carrot, from The Thing (from another world) (1951), a far superior movie, having sunk through the ice, making Jim an ET with no way to get home.   

There is also an echo of the Odyssey, Ripley. Don’t see that often in B minus movies. 

Most of the acting is squinting with furrowed brow. Lead Arthur Franz never made it to the A-List and in this film the chip on his shoulder about that is starting to show.  He almost as disdainful of his lines as I am.

The alien is a hand puppet but upstages the actors, and it has better dialogue. No wonder it got a second gig with The Simpsons. Kang did not use the lowest bidder to build the flying and submersible saucer spacecraft that is self-repairing like a living being.  

Even so our heroes blow it up! It does take them three or four efforts to do so, turning a torpedo into a Polaris missile with some duct tape, but they succeed and we can all heave a sigh of relief because the film grates and grinds to a halt. They make not the slightest effort at technology transfer – theft – from the alien ship while they stumbled around on it.

Overall, it’s so bad that … it’s bad.

I was tempted to watch it after reading a biography of Hyman Rickover, who built the Nautilus, the first atomic powered submarine which transited the North Pole in 1958. There are several other atomic sub movies, but this is enough for now.  

6 June 44 – The Light of Dawn (2014)

IMDb meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 45 minutes, and nothing more.

Genre: Documentary.

Verdict: Impressive.

On that day 7,000 ships, 11,000 airplanes, and 1,200,000 men converged on a 45-mile stretch of the French coast.  More than 7,000 vehicles soon joined the throng. What an organisational achievement.

In such an enormous and unprecedented undertaking what could go wrong did go wrong. The sea and weather interfered. The tide came earlier and heavier than anticipated and caused havoc all along the strand. Scores of those soldiers drowned in the resulting surf. Machinery broke down; nervous men made mistakes; unexpected obstacles emerged; the bluff at Omaha beach was more than ten feet higher than estimated. Ships collided. Aircraft engines failed. Earlier in the pre-dawn darkness half the 20,000 airborne troops missed the drop zones, many were killed, lost, captured, and ineffective. Maps were misread and Field Marshall Sir Bernard Montgomery took a month to reach his first day’s objective, Caen. A few days later storms in the English Channel disrupted supply.  

This documentary features a trove of archival film that I have not seen before. Among the footage is one odd and oddly moving sequence of a uniformed, bespectacled, battered, lone Wehrmacht soldier playing a Brahms requiem on an organ in a bombed-out Normandy church at 1 hour and 23 minutes. Solace of a kind, perhaps.

The narrative is cool, detached, and factual. None of that juvenile breathless ‘Now it can be told’ recitation of trivia from the History Channel and its ilk.  

Despite its outstanding high quality it evidently did not have a commercial release. That would explain the voids on the IMDb entry.  There are no ratings because raters did not see it.  I came across it on You Tube.