Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

bkoganbing The war in Italy was measured in ground gain by yards as the documentary film, San Pietro will show. San Pietro was a village that was at the entrance of Italy's Liri Valley on the way to Rome. Only two ways to get there, over the mountains or through the pass and the Germans were prepared for both.In and of itself the Italian campaign gave lie to Churchill's contention that the way to beat Hitler was the 'soft underbelly of Europe'. What it did do was tie a whole of troops down in Italy that might have been used repelling the Russians who were gaining back their country. John Huston's rich narration is part and parcel of this film's value. A lot of the film was done on the scene, some with some stock footage and some scenes even reshot in Hollywood. It sure looks real enough and in 1945 it reminded Americans of the sacrifices made.It should also be noted that Italy became a sideshow on June 6, 1944 the day after Mark Clark led the Fifth Army into reentering Rome. The cross channel invasion took place and the action really shifted to France. By the time of VE Day, Allied troops were just pouring into Austria.Soft underbelly indeed.

tieman64 This documentary, narrated and directed by John Huston, focuses on the costly battle to capture and liberate a strategic Italian village 40 miles southeast of Rome in 1943.The film was heavily cut by the United States Government - much to Huston's anger - for being "anti-war". Huston's famous response to the American High Command when they accused him of being "against the War": "If I ever make anything other than an antiwar film, I hope you take me out and shoot me." The film was notorious in the 40s for being gritty and hard hitting, but today the film's footage seems very sanitized. Sequences are obviously staged, the camera turns away from the battle's horrors, and though dead bodies are shown, the film dare not look upon the true face of war. We could chalk this up to the various Production Codes of the era, but even today, in our time of relaxed censorship, war footage remains either ridiculously sanitized or romanticized.Still, the film closes with wonderful shots of the liberated villagers. These scenes aren't exultant: Huston thinks the whole affair is a trite, and very sad, waste of lives.Incidentally, this film was produced by Frank Capra. The War Office has a history of suckering cinema's most "commercial" and "crowd pleasing" (ie dumb as rocks) directors into making propaganda films. Everyone from Hitch to Capra to Ford to Spielberg has been looped into this con game. Huston got sucked in too, and though he pretended not to play their game, his film would eventually be used/misappropriated by the US military for training purposes.7.5/10 - The uproar over this documentary would lead Huston to make "The Red Badge of Courage", an anti-war film which was mercilessly cut to pieces (like Huston's own "San Pietro" and "In This Our Life") by fickle producers.

Rob Astyk One reviewer commented that he didn't know how this film ever got released during World War II. It almost didn't.First, you need to know that Hollywood actors, directors and producers were heavily recruited by the War and Navy Departments (the Defense Dept. is a post war innovation). These celebrities got to know a lot of the senior military personnel through their activities in Stage Door Canteens, the USO, recruiting and bond drives. Few were closer to the military top brass than Orson Welles, a close friend of Houston's.Welles told this story on, I believe, a Dick Cavett Show in the late 1960s or very early 1970s. I repeat it as I remember it.According to Welles the War Department censors did not want San Pietro released. They felt that the film was too graphic and that it might have an adverse effect on support for the war. Through Welles' personal friendship with General George C. Marshall he and Houston arranged a private screening at the Pentagon for Marshall, his staff and the censors. Following the screening Gen. Marshall stood up and ordered that the film be released. He said that it was an accurate depiction and that war was horrible. He felt that the American people needed to know that horror lest they romanticize war and become fond of a monstrous act of inhumanity.So San Pietro was released. If Welles exaggerated his role, I can't say. Certainly Houston didn't contradict him. If I have misremembered the tale in some particular, it does not change the fact that San Pietro owed its release to the intervention of Marshall.Even today San Pietro is worth seeing. As has already been suggested, it is a good complement to Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front. I would suggest that it also ranks with two other great movies whose subject is World War I. Those movies are Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion and Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory. And, although it doesn't quiet rank with the three films already mentioned, Philippe de Broca's King of Hearts belongs in the insanity of war film festival we seem to be constructing here. Finally, I would point out that earlier wars are often stand ins for the more recent one as in M.A.S.H. Korea stood in for Vietnam.

Jackson Booth-Millard This short documentary might not be listed as a feature film in the Radio Times film book and stuff, but it features in the book 1001 Movie You Must See Before You Die, and that's good enough for me. From director John Huston, also narrating, this is real footage of the battle on San Pietro, a small village in Italy. It showed all the movements for the US soldiers and Allied Forces many battalions as they positioned themselves to attack the Germans. Over 1,000 of these soldiers were killed trying to take this location, but in the end, it was a successful operation, and even though some of the soldiers retraced their steps for the footage, it is captured well. I suppose it is a real life film about World War II that should be seen, especially as the army detested this film and Huston for creating something "anti-war". Good!