John Huston's expository documentary The Battle
of San Pietro (1944) was commissioned by the Department of Defense and nearly
censored because of the ambiguous nature of the message it relays concerning
the costs of war. Several instances can be seen where there is a tension between
the imagery on the screen and the commentary Huston is providing. This tension
complicates the 'voice' of the film enough to warrant a close examination to
determine what it is that Huston is suggesting, both with his images as well
as his words, about the harsh realities of war.
The first image we are presented with is an introduction and dedication of the
film by General Clark. This was tacked on to the finished film in order to give
the views of an Army command, at once afraid of the course of the war, as much
as the film's message. One of the most ironic images in the film is this segment
where the General talks through the side of his mouth. His assertions, while
attempting to underscore the Departments fear that this film would be seen negatively,
do little to reassure us that the "costs were not excessive." The fact that
it was General Clark who ultimately insured that this film would be seen, and
that it should be shown to would?be combatants as part of their training, says
as much for his integrity as a leader, as it does for the fears he was trying
to ally.
The film opens with a framing sequence, which is often described as being in
the style of a travelogue, where the physical sense of place is established.
This is a tremendously important series of images, for even though we do not
yet know this is a war documentary, other than through General Clark's introduction,
we can see in these images the ravages of war. The countryside is depicted with
olive groves, their limbs twisted and broken and with fallow fields full of
blasted craters. The narration implies that these are the result of a "bad year",
that the crops were simply "not planted." When in fact these are the first glimpses
of a landscape devastated by the machinery of warfare. In the narration, what
follows is a description of the town, while the images on screen show us the
fallen walls and rubble of the same. The tension between these words and the
images is further heightened when we are shown the broken roof of St. Peter's
and told to, "notice the treatment of the chancellery." Treatment by whom, and
why, is the unvoiced question viewers are left with as the film shifts to documenting
the battle.
The battle for San Pietro Will not be one fought by air, nor will it be fought
primarily with artillery, it is a battle fought man to man, hand to hand with
small arms. Huston points us towards this awareness by stating it is the job
of the 143rd Infantry to take San Pietro while showing a bayonet being attached
to a rifle. The 143rd had landed at Salerno and fought nearly non?stop for a
fortnight to arrive at the mouth of the Lorrie valley, before the entrenched
fortifications of the German occupied San Pietro. A colossal tactile error will
cost them nearly the entire battalion in the attempt at a frontal assault. That
error guaranteed their casualties in this assault would be "excessive," contrary
to General Clark's assertion.
The Italians had attempted and failed to take Mt Lungo, a strategic height that
provided a view of the valley floor, which consequently allowed the defenders
a complete picture of any forces assaulting the town. The decision to not take
Mt. Lungo after the Italians defeat would insure countless lives and machinery
would be wasted on the frontal assault of San Pietro. The ineptitude of this
decision is subtly offered within the commentary, "that height provided a key
point to the enemy defense," and in the description of the following assaults.
In the narration of a tank assault, the fact that the attackers travel down
a thin mountain road in sight of the defenders the entire time, unequivocally
calls into question the decision of the allied commanders to forgo their attempt
to take the heights of Mt. Lungo. Of the sixteen tanks starting down that well
observed road, only "four returned to the bivouac area." For the same reasons
the 143rd's continued assault on the entrenched positions around San Pietro
were thwarted time and again. Their advances halted a few hundred yards from
where they began; they were forced to take, "such cover as the quaking earth
could offer."
"The decision to attack (Mt. Lungo) being reversed," continues the critique
of those in charge of the assault. In fact it is only with the combined forces
of all artillery in the vicinity, in addition to another Italian attack on Mt.
Lungo, that the tide of the battle begins to change. The fact that this does
indeed change the outcome of the heretofore stalemate of the Allied assault
on San Pietro advances the assertion that Huston is making not just about this
battle, but about the costs of war in general. This is perhaps where the Army
brass would have preferred the film to end, but the argument which is the 'film's
voice' is not finished, for there is a missing element in this tragedy. This
element is a human element, a local element, one which is neither the defenders
nor the liberators, but those to whom San Pietro is home.
The images of these liberated souls are a continuation of Huston's critique,
but so are the way in which he describes them and their relation to the motives
of the liberators. "In the military innocence of these people, they thought
we had come solely as their delivers," while in the view of the Allies, "saving
them was merely incidental." An image as powerfully telling as the ruined chancellery
in the opening sequence is the depiction of the ruined town, reduced to rubble
by the Allied barrage on Mt. Lungo, in the words of the commentary, "it was
ours for the taking."
Much has been made of the imaging of the dead in this documentary. Huston goes
out of his way to avoid showing the faces of dead Allied troops. This may be
a result of pressure from the Army brass that felt that their voices would be
far too painful to bear, especially for their families. In consequence the only
dead faces we see are of the defenders ("enemies") and the images of Allied
dead are crafted in such a way as to centralize their extremities and not their
personalities. What is more striking to me is the depiction of the living -
those denizens of San Pietro who, once the battle ends, come crawling out of
caves to great their liberators.
One of the few times we actually see blood in this documentary is on the hands
of one of the villagers as he and several others work to exhume his wife from
rubble caused by the explosion of a mined building. This is an explicit condemnation
of one of vagaries of war; those who often are harmed or scarred for life by
this insanity called war are non-combative. Their lives are changed forever
by the battles which rage around and about them, their homes and villages are
destroyed in the tug-of-war between artillery and air campaigns, their fields
lie fallow, their orchards broken as the forces wage about them this chess game
for personal valor and national glorification.
The images of the children are the most damning, especially in context to the
tension of the narration. "Children are able to forget quickly," which is to
say their pain is transient and therefore of little consequence. One need only
look at the hollow face of the young girl of perhaps eight that carries what
is possibly hers or someone else's orphaned infant. The strongest image though
is of a young boy climbing stairs, his movements suggest fear as he carefully
makes his way cowering as near the wall as he can manage. The look in his tortured
eyes does not agree with the commentary about smiling children," but suggests
instead that his eyes have seen horrors beyond what any child should see and
that the experience will remain with him forever; most of all though, his eyes
say to the viewer, that this has aged him well beyond his young years.
The last scenes suggest a truth, which does little to alleviate the horror of
the battle and its aftermath. They show once again the agrarian village life,
a copse of olive trees in an orchard, verdant and heavy with leaves, a plow
tilling the fallow fields so that, "next year will be a good year." These images
are as important to the voice of the film as the opening sequence is to alerting
us that we are about to see the battle that caused all this destruction. In
essence they say, even though man will continue to fight one another over this
land, for honor and pride or greed and envy, the lives of those who live here
will continue on much as they have for millennia before. Anne Fischel surmised
the message of our liberation of San Pietro as, "we didn't save it, and we can't
destroy it."