This could have been a good movie, the story was there but it failed. Scene after scene that was just not realistic or believable. I was shocked at how sloppy Pontecorvo was in allowing so many careless takes. The women, who were supposed to be starving, diseased etc. etc. looked exactly like what they were...extras dressed in clean uniforms and fresh from a satisfying lunch at the commissary. When a German machine-gunner guns down thirty or forty people, what should the scene look like? Some motionless dead people, but mostly people in all stages of being wounded, crawling, screaming, some limping away etc.. Pontecorvo gave us forty motionless supposedly dead bodies, almost all face down, then the hero rises up unscathed and walks away. The subplot of the gal's relationship with the blond German officer was not only unbelievable but didn't go anywhere. Susan Strasberg, a virgin young girl goes into the bedroom to give herself to a German officer to gain better treatment, comes back out of the bedroom perfectly made up and looking exactly the way she did when she went in...come on! Sorry, just can't recommend this one.
Review of Kapo
