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GoodGuy -> RE: World War II in Colour (12/11/2011 4:06:31 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Rabbitman
I just saw this documentary for a great price on ITunes.
Would people recommend this?
Works out as approximately $1.07 an episode, for 13 episodes. ($2.99 to buy each episode seperately)
I'm not sure wether this was made by the same producers that made "World War I in Colour" or not, but they must have used the same software/technology that was used for the WWI documentary.
I saw "WWI in Colour - 2. Slaughter in the trenches", and I gotta say, even though the colors in some scenes were somewhat "off", means a bit too "colorful", as they looked almost like b/w pictures that were colorized for postcard production (including some "piggy" looking skin colors [:)]), which were quite popular at the time, seeing battlefields, trench warfare and inf or armor attacks in color was pretty amazing.
The process of porting such old b/w footage into color material is cumbersome and lengthy, and it took numerous trial and error testing to get to halfway realistic results. The results are amazing, though.
There are several WW2 in Colour features out there. If I'm not mistaken, some of them contain either newly-discovered (somewhere during the last 12-15 years) color footage, or the well known rare color footage (say like the Normandy scenes - where you can see the useless rocket bombardment from US ships [they didn't hit the beach installations, but fell short into the water], or footage from the Italian theater). Still, most of that material does not cover actual fighting, it even contains rather "boring" "homefront" or aerial/rear-area footage.
The US Army/War Department got a Hollywood director (forgot the name) to produce at least 1 almost feature-length documentary (covering the Italian theater, somewhere around the Gustav line , IIRC), where you can see several units that are tasked to take a hill), which actually comes across more like a newsreel or even PR/propaganda, as it contains quite some pathos. Still, some battlefield scenes made it into the reel
Some tv/mini-series on IMDB:
The Perilous Fight: America's World War II in Color
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0915733/
The Second World War in Colour
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212694/
I've not seen any of those, nor do I know what material had been used, but ratings or reviews are pretty good.
There are chunks of "World War II in Colour" on youtube, so if this is the same doc you are referring to (and if it's produced by NMP Productions/IMG Entertainment), I'd go for it, as they seem to have used the same techn. that was used for the WWI flic I described above.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Bluuwia10I
I've skipped through the first part and some other parts, and there's well known original b/w footage along with b/w footage I've never seen before, but all in color now.
One of these bits is a piece of footage where you can see a huge coastal gun (during the Battle of Hongkong 1941, it's hard to verify the nationality of its crew, most likely British tho) firing, so there's quite some unusual footage around.
The narration is halfway accurate, but it does not offer a comprehensive historical/military outline, it's way too compressed to achieve that. Still, the first part goes even back to WWI, explains German resentments against Communism and the following support for Franco's fashist movement, and even explains Mussolini's rise to power and gives rough outlines of his adventurous campaigns in Ethiopia, Lybia and on the Balkans.
I came across one or another factual error (when I was skipping through a couple parts), when the narrator does not mention that it's still on debate how many Germans had escaped the pocket of Falaise (and when he drops the fact that a vital part of the German force successfully fought its way east to escape the pocket), for example, or where he (over-)emphasizes that the Brits who were trapped in Singapore actually outnumbered the attacking Japanese forces 3:1, making it the British Ground Forces' "biggest disaster", without mentioning that the Japs did have light tanks at their disposal and that the perimeter around and north of Singapore could not be fortified as good as say French cities by the Germans.
The first part of the 2nd episode of the series contains footage supposedly showing a German airfield with crews preparing bomber and fighter sorties right before or during the invasion of Poland. Actually, some of this material looks as if it was filmed 1 year later during the campaign in France, as the film quality is very good, almost "too good", it looks like a color war movie from the 50s. Whatsoever, no matter whether these scenes are really scenes from 1939 or if they are from '40 and had been added to up the dramaturgy, the material looks really impressive in color, now.
Footage with ground troops meant to depict scenes in Russia 1941 are obviously from either late 1943 or 1944, as they were filmed around the Russian attack on Belarus.
Despite, such (rare) errors, it's worth to get the material, especially at that price.
My 2 cents.
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