Tunisian Victory

Hugh Stewart, Frank Capra: Tunisian Victory (US/GB 1944).

Voitto Tunisiassa / Seger i Tunisien. 

    US/GB 1944. U.S. Army Bureau of Public Relations / British Ministry of Information. No personal on-screen credits. [P+D: Frank Capra, Hugh Stewart. Additional reconstructed footage: John Huston. SC: J.L. Hodson, Anthony Veiller, Roy Boulting, Alfred Black. M: Dimitri Tiomkin. Commentary read by Leo Genn, Anthony Veiller. Voice of US soldier Adams: Burgess Meredith, voice of UK soldier Metcalf: Bernard Miles]. 

    AFI: 85'

    Finnish release: 76'

    The vintage Finnish nitrate print released by Väinän Filmi 60 years ago viewed at Orion, Helsinki, 3 Sep 2005

In Huston and Capra biographies this film is harshly dealt with as a fabrication. Now it does not look any different from the Why We Fight series. Probably the harshness of the criticism is based on the fact that so many involved in the actual battle were able to compare the film with the reality. 

It is a work of montage, as are the Why We Fight films, and it's based on an idea, a concept, and the film is an illustration of the concept. The most impressive points are conveyed via animation. One has to congratulate the way the film manages to convey a strong idea of strategy and simultaneously a feeling of the mess of reality.

The strategic weight of the African campaign is very clearly expressed. It was the turning-point in the Western Allies' war against Hitler.

The triple strike in Casablanca, Algiers and Oran. The heavy weather: the rain season, the winter, the casualties. The strategic air command. The new strategy of the air force. 

The historical links to Scipio, Hannibal. Soldiers at war and play. The suffering of the civilians, the children. The returning civilians. The importance of the mules. A memorable shot of Jewish kids: it's now OK to take the yellow star off.

Rommel's genius and backlash for the Allied. The ingenious Cylinder Strategy of the Allied. Alexander and Cunningham. The magnificent final campaign: Hill 609, Goubellet Plain, Longstop Hill, Djebel Mansour, Takrouna.

A staccato blitz montage of images, in themselves incomprehensible, only made meaningful via the animated maps. "The spark plug was ours", and now they are given all we've got. The Nazis get what they'd been giving us.

Split into four, the Nazis surrender, 266.000 of them, fully equipped. Montages of the wreckage. A montage of the union of nations and people of all countries, laughing children. Africa is free, Europe that much nearer to - the giant V.