Embedded ’45 – Shooting War In Germany
Picture:
C Sound: C+ Extras: D Episodes: B
Presented
in two-parts, Embedded ’45 – Shooting
War In Germany (2005) has pulled together over 100 minutes of
never-before-seen WWII footage from over 1,000 reels of U.S. government
archival footage recently unearthed.
Even if each reel was 100-ft each in 16mm, that is 2 minutes, 40 seconds
Xs 1000, so this is only a sample.
However, of particular interest is footage of dead U.S. soldiers
censored for reasons of personal consideration, more of the extent to which
Nazi Germany had to be bombed out and additional footage of the Arnoldsweiler
Concentration Camp that offers yet another set of horror stories that need to
be unearthed.
What was
so particularly terrible is when the Nazi soldiers fled in retreat, they made
sure they ran over as many prisoners to death as possible and shot others who
escaped that treatment. There are many
of the same tales here, like Germans saying they were not supporting the Nazis
and that “kind of thing” was happening “only nearby” and the like. However, these pictures do not lie and they
have not been digitally altered. The
cameramen who were along for the trip with the U.S. soldiers did their work
more efficiently than anyone could have ever imagined.
The 1.33
x 1 image is softer than it should be for the condition of the film and is
simply a major transfer error throughout.
That is a shame, because this is good stuff. The Dolby Digital 2.0 is simple stereo and
has two narrating voice-overs. There are
no extras.
- Nicholas Sheffo
