Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

In honor of Memorial Day, I decided to watch some John Huston documentaries made during World War II. Before the film begins, a General Mark Clark makes some comments on the worthiness of what is depicted in the picture. Then narrator Huston guides us through what went on in the title village of Italy as the American soldiers try to break the German blockade of our troops. Quite compelling battle footage even though a later disclaimer mentions how staged some of it was before and after the actual battle. There's also much somber footage of dead soldiers and many survivors digging graves. But there's also some joyful scenes of women and children smiling at their rescue and many grateful local men as well. I have to also note how surprised I was at some breastfeeding shots as well! This seemed even more worthy of this commemorative day than Huston's previous doc, Report from the Aleutians, as the stakes were higher. So on that note, San Pietro is recommended.

This documentary, narrated and directed by John Huston, focuses on the costly battle to capture and liberate a strategic Italian village 40 miles southeast of Rome in 1943.The film was heavily cut by the United States Government - much to Huston's anger - for being "anti-war". Huston's famous response to the American High Command when they accused him of being "against the War": "If I ever make anything other than an antiwar film, I hope you take me out and shoot me." The film was notorious in the 40s for being gritty and hard hitting, but today the film's footage seems very sanitized. Sequences are obviously staged, the camera turns away from the battle's horrors, and though dead bodies are shown, the film dare not look upon the true face of war. We could chalk this up to the various Production Codes of the era, but even today, in our time of relaxed censorship, war footage remains either ridiculously sanitized or romanticized.Still, the film closes with wonderful shots of the liberated villagers. These scenes aren't exultant: Huston thinks the whole affair is a trite, and very sad, waste of lives.Incidentally, this film was produced by Frank Capra. The War Office has a history of suckering cinema's most "commercial" and "crowd pleasing" (ie dumb as rocks) directors into making propaganda films. Everyone from Hitch to Capra to Ford to Spielberg has been looped into this con game. Huston got sucked in too, and though he pretended not to play their game, his film would eventually be used/misappropriated by the US military for training purposes.7.5/10 - The uproar over this documentary would lead Huston to make "The Red Badge of Courage", an anti-war film which was mercilessly cut to pieces (like Huston's own "San Pietro" and "In This Our Life") by fickle producers.

One reviewer commented that he didn't know how this film ever got released during World War II. It almost didn't.First, you need to know that Hollywood actors, directors and producers were heavily recruited by the War and Navy Departments (the Defense Dept. is a post war innovation). These celebrities got to know a lot of the senior military personnel through their activities in Stage Door Canteens, the USO, recruiting and bond drives. Few were closer to the military top brass than Orson Welles, a close friend of Houston's.Welles told this story on, I believe, a Dick Cavett Show in the late 1960s or very early 1970s. I repeat it as I remember it.According to Welles the War Department censors did not want San Pietro released. They felt that the film was too graphic and that it might have an adverse effect on support for the war. Through Welles' personal friendship with General George C. Marshall he and Houston arranged a private screening at the Pentagon for Marshall, his staff and the censors. Following the screening Gen. Marshall stood up and ordered that the film be released. He said that it was an accurate depiction and that war was horrible. He felt that the American people needed to know that horror lest they romanticize war and become fond of a monstrous act of inhumanity.So San Pietro was released. If Welles exaggerated his role, I can't say. Certainly Houston didn't contradict him. If I have misremembered the tale in some particular, it does not change the fact that San Pietro owed its release to the intervention of Marshall.Even today San Pietro is worth seeing. As has already been suggested, it is a good complement to Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front. I would suggest that it also ranks with two other great movies whose subject is World War I. Those movies are Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion and Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory. And, although it doesn't quiet rank with the three films already mentioned, Philippe de Broca's King of Hearts belongs in the insanity of war film festival we seem to be constructing here. Finally, I would point out that earlier wars are often stand ins for the more recent one as in M.A.S.H. Korea stood in for Vietnam.

San Pietro (1945) *** (out of 4) John Huston's second of three documentaries made during WW2. This one shows the graphic battle of San Pietro where more than 1,100 American soldiers died. I had heard a lot about this film over the years and while it was a good movie I was somewhat letdown due to some of the hype I had heard. I watched the 32-minute version, which was included on the Treasures from the American Film Archives collection, but I believe there are a couple other longer versions out there that feature more footage of the dead soldier. The U.S. government called this film "anti-war" and I wouldn't say that but the film does show the viewer the casualties of what's going on. The digging of the graves was an eerie sight. A lot of people praised Huston's narration but I found it to be quite distracting.