The films making up the Victory trilogy are perhaps the most lasting legacies
of the long career of filmmaker Roy Boulting - more famous for his fiction
features made with brother John. In fact, one of the brothers' early short films
had been the sober and interesting rural documentary Ripe Earth (1938). But
alongside Roy Boulting's later, lightly satirical farces, Desert Victory,
Tunisian Victory (1943) and Burma Victory (1945) were deadly serious in intent
and effect.
The Oscar-winning Desert Victory was a co-production of
the service film units first set up in 1941. It recounts the second Battle of El
Alamein, in which General Montgomery's Eighth Army forced the retreat of Field
Marshall Rommel's German and Italian forces. Miles of footage shot by frontline
cameraman (and some captured German footage) were honed into coherent shape
under Boulting's supervision, combined with maps and an intelligently lucid
commentary. Frequently musing on subtle shifts in Rommel's strategic thinking,
the narration betrays the same grudging admiration that Montgomery himself
reputedly had for his German counterpart. Otherwise, the Axis forces are treated
with matter-of-fact dignity, but no pity or regret is wasted on them. For every
Commonwealth casualty there were five on the enemy side: 'bombed, blasted and
machine-gunned, they tasted what they had administered in France and Poland'.
Attention is focused on the common British soldier. The unquestionable
highlight is the sequence covering the initial offensive - beginning with the
sights of the troops' last evening before the battle, followed by night
descending (the frame plunged into ominous darkness, the soundtrack hushed) then
the tension exploded by shells and gunfire mingled with roaring voices, while
flares illuminate swiftly moving soldiers. This sequence was constructed from a
mixture of the material sent back to London from Africa, and shots filmed in
Pinewood. As with the 'over-the-top' sequence of the previous generation's The
Battle of the Somme (1916), this unforgettable sequence is a continuing
reference point for debates about the ethics of documentary staging.
Patrick Russell
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