D-Day in Colour (2004 Video) User Reviews

Sensible, sober account of D-Day, 1944

[chaswe-28402 · 9/10 · 8 November 2016]

Wonderful to watch an honest, realistic narrative of the D-Day operations and landings, which makes use of genuine footage of the events, instead of some travesty glorifying America and insulting the British. It's Looking for Private Kelly I'm thinking of, where heroic America wins through. Was this documentary inspired by that fiction ? This, although limited by what happened to be available on colour film, inevitably showing mainly Americans, is lucid, well-organised, and objective in its treatment of the events. No fancy glamorisation of the Allies, or gratuitous denigration of the German soldiers. Just the facts, unvarnished.

Some amusing points are worth noting. We are told that America came into the war in Europe following Pearl Harbour. America's entry into Europe did follow Pearl Harbour, but not because of the Japanese. America came in because the mad dictator Hitler declared war on America. The good old USA was obliged to enter, in spite of the fact that Germany was supported by numerous pro-Hitler, anti-British, Americans, including Henry Ford, Charles Lindberg, Prescott Bush, Ambassador Kennedy and Citizen Hearst, who was solidly convinced Germany would win.

There is muted mention of the behaviour of the visitors, overpaid, oversexed and over here, running down the British, whose resilient defence of civilization, lonely for twenty-six months, had ensured profit for the Yanks, as well as putting the free world in Britain's debt for the rest of the century.

Interesting comment in the subtitles of a Robert Capper. Who could that be ? And who are those people named in a cast list ? Cast ? What cast ?

"This is much the greatest thing we have ever attempted." - Winston Churchill

[classicsoncall · 8/10 · 28 May 2012]

All of the specs attributed to the documentary on the title page here at the IMDb match up with the one I just viewed except for the narrator. It's a TWI (Trans World International) Production, and even though the DVD sleeve itself states "D-Day in Color", the credited title once you begin viewing uses the spelling 'Colour', so I'm pretty sure I've got things straight. The documentary is decidedly of British origin, and the narrator on the version I watched was John Hurt.

Obviously the selling point of this documentary rests in the title. There's not very much footage of World War II in color, certainly not in terms of percentage of total output coming out of that conflict. One of the DVD supplements discussed the way cameramen and reporters covered the D-Day landing and the war in general and it's something I hadn't given much thought before. Unlike movies made about World War II, the action in a documentary may seem unfocused or distant in terms of immediacy. This would only be natural, because the men covering the war were operating under the same battlefield conditions as the fighting forces, and staying alive was an important consideration. Consequently you don't have the kind of close-ups of fighting men or equipment being blown up in the same manner as you'd see in something like "Saving Private Ryan" or "Band of Brothers" where the scenes are dramatized for effect.

I was surprised that the main documentary only ran for about forty five minutes, with a good portion of that devoted to the planning of Operation Overlord. The landing on Normandy is handled almost superficially, and most of the impact is provided by a handful of soldiers who were there, commenting on their thoughts and emotions as they approached their destination and how they reacted to the battle in progress. What you get is worthwhile as far as it goes, but the documentary didn't offer the kind of epic proportion I would have expected.

One thing we do learn is that Supreme Commander of Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower was a major proponent of accurately reporting the news of Allied success back to the folks at home. This was instrumental in fostering support for the soldiers in battle and instilling a general optimism that the effort against Hitler and the Nazis would result in victory. Consequently, a total of four hundred sixty one newsmen were assigned to cover all aspects of Operation Overlord, even though only twenty reporters actually hit the beaches on that fateful day - June 6th, 1944. Yet their courage and determination would help create a lasting record of the largest amphibious operation in the history of mankind. They captured on film for all the world to see and remember - "free men of the world are marching together to victory"