I do not want to linger on this film. I caught it on UK television by accident and saw within a brief space of time image after image of unbelievable horror. Fragments of people's destroyed lives and a collage of male voices voicing comments ( mostly American, nothing from Russia. Only a few remarks and images of Russians and given their losses that ran into millions this was to me inadmissible. And no women's voices but then I saw only most of this film and may have missed them. No voices of Germans and yes there were voices to be heard there as ' innocent ' men and women were caught up in the maelstrom of all this bedlam despite their nationality ) I saw a brief few images of the concentration camps but only a discreet nod to people of ' other ' religions!!! Not the single word ' Jewish ' and of course this being 1945 no mention of ' homosexuals ' or ' gypsies '. It is a film of its time when prejudices were rife and people could either not be mentioned or clumped into a stereotyped format. A convoy of slave labour passed by at one point and this was blithely mentioned and glossed over. Their agonized faces were equal to the liberating soldiers, but just a glance and a mention while we watched the soldiers. Every image was soaked in humanity in its filth and pain, yet the end of the film speaks of the ' true glory '. A black and white film in every sense. Glory is the last word to use when millions of innocents on all sides died and suffered and lived those long years under appalling conditions. And of course this being so-called objective no analysis about how we slid over long years into this morass of evil and unendurable pain. I give it 2 for the agony of the pain, and parts of it that must have been an education for some at the time.
Review of The True Glory
