what was that film again?

David Casseres casseres at apple.com
Wed Feb 26 12:46:14 CST 1997


>While we're still agonizing over celluloid holocausts I wonder if there's
>anyone who can substantiate an episode which I'd assumed was common
>knowledge but now that I try to find a reference seems to have come over all
>phantasmagoric. I'm convinced that there was one famous auteur who actually
>followed the Allies into the death camps with the intention of making a film
>of Nazi War Atrocities (presumably government sponsored) but as the body
>count grew higher the project inevitably ground to a halt. I can still see a
>b/w photo of jeep with movie camera on tripod with its path literally
>blocked by a heap of bodies. 
>
>Initially thought the auteur in question was Welles but, that's just silly,
>then checked out Grierson and the GPO film unit, more likely but, no luck.
>Same w. David Lean, Powell & Pressburger, all the usual suspects ..... so
>doubting my faculties I now appeal to the erudition of the list ... am I mad
>or have revisionist historians been rearranging my bookshelves?

I believe President Ronald Wilson Reagan, surely an auteur in life if not 
in movies, once told a puzzled audience that he had been among the first 
American troops to enter Auschwitz, with an Army documentary film unit.


Cheers,
David




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