New Picture

Crusade in Europe (MARCH OF TIME), a film history of the Second World War in the West, based on General Dwight D. Eisenhower's bestselling book (TIME, Nov. 22), is the most ambitious film yet made for television. Sponsored by TIME & LIFE, it will begin this week over the ABC-TV network, will be seen over stations in 32 cities. Crusade will be released in 26 weekly episodes of 20 minutes each; the whole series may then be repeated twice."

The film is a skillful editing job of footage shot chiefly by military photographers, both Allied and Axis. In selecting the material, MOT film editors looked at some 65 million feet of war film. About 80% of the pictures have been restricted, and never shown to the public. The amount of good footage available to illustrate each military operation has necessarily determined the shape of the film; in turn, the film has often gained in comprehensibility by giving shape to the shapelessness of war. The words of the book, where possible, have been used as commentary to the pictures; for the rest, MOT has filled in the story in a useful, modest prose.

The result may be debated for months to come as art, as history, as journalism and as entertainment. But MOT has turned out what is unquestionably the best film thus far made for television.

The selection of material is ruthlessly right. The war story, for most of its path, crashes like a hurtling tank through the forest of events. But the hard unity and rounded drama of each chapter brakes the rush, preserves a sense of direction, and imposes a feeling of historic logic. The pictures themselves satisfy, or fail to, in about the same degree and frequency as actuality itself. Yet now & again, as actuality can, a few moments blaze with the fire of art. Items:

> A suspenseful view of the port of Algiers, innocently sleeping in the light of early morning, before the Yanks storm ashore.

> General Eisenhower turning suddenly to Vichy-French Admiral Darlan during the early days of the much-discussed Darlan deal. He jabs Darlan in the chest with a peremptory forefinger, snaps an instruction, and strides away.

> A food riot in starving Naples, in which the camera plunges into a crowd of women, there catches a frieze of violence as fierce and eloquent as light conversation among the Furies.

> Nazi Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, driving off in a staff car during the Italian campaign, and giving the camera a jolly-good-fellow grin. But at that instant the sun strikes the gold knob of his baton, and flashes across his features a demoniac glitter.

The whole of the film transcends its parts. Crusade in Europe's true importance is that it offers to a broad part of the nation a broad, vivid view of the war.

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