If one has not seen this film, one cannot begin to imagine Pontecorvo's extraordinary achievement. The acting is so natural and convincing that many viewers and even some critics assumed that the movie was a documentary. Only a master director could have taken this raw acting material and gotten such performances out of it. And despite his leftist viewpoint, Pontecorvo neither ridicules or demonizes the French, as does Michael Moore the Americans in his recent putative documentaries Bowling at Columbine and Farenheit 9-11 - though I do a disservice to Pontecorvo to compare his work to that of Moore.
See this movie now that it has been released on DVD in the United States and learn from the history it so brilliantly conveys.
See this movie now that it has been released on DVD in the United States and learn from the history it so brilliantly conveys.