The Battle of San Pietro (1945)
John Huston's Signal Corps record of the U.S. Army's grinding, costly December 1943 assault on the Italian hill village of San Pietro Infine, filmed alongside the infantry during the actual fighting.
The Army shelved The Battle of San Pietro for months, unsettled by Huston’s unflinching shots of American dead being zipped into body bags; only General George Marshall’s intervention got a trimmed cut released at all, and it remains one of the starkest combat documentaries the War Department ever sanctioned.
Background
The Battle of San Pietro is director John Huston’s Signal Corps record of the United States Army’s grinding, costly assault on the Italian hill village of San Pietro Infine in December 1943, filmed alongside the infantry during the actual fighting rather than reconstructed afterward. The Army reportedly shelved the finished film for months, unsettled by how unflinchingly Huston depicted American soldiers killed in the battle, including shots of the dead being placed into body bags.
What to watch for
Watch for how different this film feels from more sanitized wartime documentaries of the period: it was eventually released only in a trimmed form, and only after General George Marshall personally intervened to allow it, since military leadership believed soldiers should understand the real costs of combat before shipping out. It remains one of the starkest and most honest combat documentaries the War Department ever sanctioned for release.
