Victory At Sea - Vol. 5 DVD

A 26-episode World War II documentary from the American perspective, Victory at Sea is one of the most important series in the history of television. Made in 1952, the show was a huge success, winning many major awards and even spawning albums featuring the orchestral score by Richard--South Pacific--Rodgers. Produced with the full cooperation of the US Navy, each 26-minute programme consists of black and white wartime film edited to a narration by Leonard Graves. Each episode contains at least one powerful stand-alone sequence in the tradition of Serge--Battleship... Potemkin--Eisenstein, these action-suspense set-pieces giving the programmes an urgent, surprisingly modern feel. Indeed, the emphasis is at least as much on entertainment as information, the factual content delivered in poetic narration, the score transforming the war into a more than usually serious Hollywood adventure. The documentaries are wide-ranging, including everything from the Atlantic convoys and U-boat "Wolfpacks", to war in Alaska, the South Atlantic, the Far East, the Pacific War and the Fall of Japan. The very dated narration gives a fascinating insight into how America saw WWII in the early 1950s, while the dynamic cutting and often genuinely remarkable wartime footage make Victory at Sea still gripping today. 20 years later Granada's The World at War would become the definitive television WWII history, but this release offers a unique opportunity to see a series of great importance from the very early days of television. --Gary S Dalkin [show more]

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