In Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War, his 2014 book on the Hollywood directors who filmed documentaries for the War Department, Mark Harris notes that John Huston, then a captain in the Signal Corps, was told by his commander, Colonel Frank Capra, to go to San Pietro Infine, about 50 miles north of Naples. The small town was the site of a major and bloody December 1943 engagement between Allied troops and the German forces that had established a heavily fortified position there. The Allies eventually succeeded in taking the stronghold after ten days of brutal fighting that destroyed the town, a victory crucial to the drive north to liberate Rome. Capra, an Italian immigrant eager to show the war in his native land, wanted a film of this key event.
When Huston and his crew arrived there, however, the battle was nearly over, although according to accounts by English author Eric Ambler, who was with Huston, they did come under artillery fire. But the filming didn't actually begin until the fighting was done, a logical enough decision considering the near impossibility of a film crew trying to capture it live. The resulting half-hour, black-and-white documentary, San Pietro, bears an end title that acknowledges: "All scenes in this picture were photographed within range of enemy small arms or artillery fire. For purposes of continuity a few of these scenes were shot before and after the actual battle of San Pietro."
Harris and others, thanks to research in the years since, suggest that more than just a few scenes were staged. In the book, Harris describes seeing outtake footage in the National Archives in which soldiers generally behave like actors, falling dead on cue. Does it matter?
It's important to remember that the films produced for the government by directors Capra, Huston, John Ford, William Wyler, and George Stevens were not meant to be merely journalistic documents of actual events. Real-life moments were captured, of course, but these were primarily propaganda pictures designed to stir morale and give the homefront a sense of what our troops experienced on the front lines. What is remarkable about this film, chosen for preservation in the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1991, is best summed up by critic-historian David Thomson in a New Republic article on Harris' book: "It is that rare work, made by the military but regarding war with horror."
What Huston shows here, beyond the battle, are the immediate outcomes of war, the actions that follow: enemy mines being cleared, graves being dug and shrouded corpses laid into them, soldiers nailing dog tags onto rudimentary grave markers, and just as heartbreaking, the people of the village emerging from the caves where they hid during the fighting--old people, women, and children, some of them breaking down on discovering loved ones buried in the rubble of ruined homes.
Like his earlier Report from the Aleutians (1943), in which he showed the daily drudgery of military life, Huston had to fight to include scenes that didn't fit the heroic and triumphant image the War Department wanted to put before the American public. He didn't get all the footage he wanted into the final version, and the film wasn't released until almost the end of the war. When the original cut was shown to his superiors, Huston later recalled, irate viewers walked out according to rank. One story has it that a general told the director, "This picture is pacifistic. It's against war. Against the war." Huston is said to have replied, "Well, sir, whenever I make a film that's for war, you can take me out and shoot me."
The groundbreaking documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker (Don't Look Back, 1967; Monterey Pop, 1968) claimed San Pietro as an influence, saying he viewed it many times "because it has a lot of vitality to it, a lot of excitement.... That's as up-to-date a film as is being shot now. There's nothing around now that's as well done as that."
The music in the film was performed by the Army Air Force Orchestra, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and St. Brendan's Boys Choir. General Mark Clark delivers an on-camera introduction and dedication at the beginning.
Director: John Huston
Producers: John Huston, Frank Capra
Writing: John Huston
Cinematography: Jules Buck, John Huston
Editing: Gene Fowler, Jr.
Cast: Mark Clark (Introduction), John Huston (Narration)
By Rob Nixon
