Monte Cassino
- Episode aired 2001
IMDb RATING
8.2/10
6
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Featured review
Deadly Boot.
None of these episodes really exceeds, or matches, in quality those of the first two seasons, but this one is better than most in the second series.
It's a straight documentary with maps, a few graphics, a narrator, newsreel footage, and no talking heads. The maps are superimposed on still photographs, and it's sometimes confusing because you can't tell for certain whether an image is the toe of the Italian boot or Mark Clark's nose. It's a small thing, but why do it? There's also some repetition in the shots and the narration but that's okay. We can ignore the repeated footage, and repeating the events keeps us up to date with what's happened so far and provides a kind of situation report.
As far as that goes, the narration can get pretty acid. Generals Lucas and Mark Clark come in for most of the criticism. I guess I go along with it, although arguments have been made that, with what he had available to him, Lucas could have achieved one or the other of the two goals he was assigned, but not both.
Clark, on the other hand, was a brave officer who undertook a dangerous secret mission by submarine to North Africa. But he was also evidently an egomaniacal jerk. He always saw to it that the press referred to the Fifth Army as "Mark Clark's Fifth Army," something not mentioned in the film but symptomatic. He also decided to lead what the Ancient Romans would have called a "Triumph" into the Eternal City, rather than trap and destroy an entire German army which, in the event, withdrew skillfully.
It covers not just the battle for the 4th-century Abbey of Monte Casino. It covers the entire Italian campaign, beginning with Sicily. It presents a curiously stereotyped view of events. Yes, "the Allied struggle up the peninsula kept many German soldiers pinned down when they could have been elsewhere." But the same reasoning applies in reverse. Two Anglo-American Armies were deployed in a hostile environment, pinned down, to to speak, that could have been fighting elsewhere.
It doesn't whitewash anyone, and neither does it spare them. It's kind of the way I like to see history done.
It's a straight documentary with maps, a few graphics, a narrator, newsreel footage, and no talking heads. The maps are superimposed on still photographs, and it's sometimes confusing because you can't tell for certain whether an image is the toe of the Italian boot or Mark Clark's nose. It's a small thing, but why do it? There's also some repetition in the shots and the narration but that's okay. We can ignore the repeated footage, and repeating the events keeps us up to date with what's happened so far and provides a kind of situation report.
As far as that goes, the narration can get pretty acid. Generals Lucas and Mark Clark come in for most of the criticism. I guess I go along with it, although arguments have been made that, with what he had available to him, Lucas could have achieved one or the other of the two goals he was assigned, but not both.
Clark, on the other hand, was a brave officer who undertook a dangerous secret mission by submarine to North Africa. But he was also evidently an egomaniacal jerk. He always saw to it that the press referred to the Fifth Army as "Mark Clark's Fifth Army," something not mentioned in the film but symptomatic. He also decided to lead what the Ancient Romans would have called a "Triumph" into the Eternal City, rather than trap and destroy an entire German army which, in the event, withdrew skillfully.
It covers not just the battle for the 4th-century Abbey of Monte Casino. It covers the entire Italian campaign, beginning with Sicily. It presents a curiously stereotyped view of events. Yes, "the Allied struggle up the peninsula kept many German soldiers pinned down when they could have been elsewhere." But the same reasoning applies in reverse. Two Anglo-American Armies were deployed in a hostile environment, pinned down, to to speak, that could have been fighting elsewhere.
It doesn't whitewash anyone, and neither does it spare them. It's kind of the way I like to see history done.
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- rmax304823
- Jun 28, 2011
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