Customer Reviews

Shooting War - World War II Combat Cameramen

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've been a military history buff all my life and I own dozens of documentaries, and this one has the best combat footage from WW2 (at least from the American point-of-view). The footage was all shot by U.S. combat cameramen who risked their lives (and gave their lives) so that we could have a permanent record of what our brave soldiers experienced during the war. From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima, from the invasion of Italy to the concentration camps in Germany, this unflinching documentary has amazing footage of some of the war's bloodiest battles. Some of the footage is well-known, taken from award-winning documentaries by John Ford and John Huston. But a lot of the footage I had never seen before. The most shocking footage comes from the brutal "island-hopping" battles in the Pacific, where cameramen recorded Japanese soldiers being burned out of caves, or shot while trying to flee the U.S. Marines. You can read about these bloody battles for years, but seeing the footage makes it clear just how chaotic and bloody the battles were. For any history buffs this documentary is a must!

I've had a great interest lately in studying both the history and background of WWII. This video came to my attention after I considered the difficulty presented to pro photographers who covered this war without the benefits of our modern equipment, and with the limitations of film. This is a very interesting account of the part photographers played in recording history. The anecdotal references do a service both to the combatants and the photographers. The details of the DDay challenges with regard to photographing the events and getting the film back to safety were enlightening. I highly recommend this video to any photographer and to those who are interested in learning how some of the more compelling photos (flag raising at Iwo Jima, for example) were captured.

In his book "D-Day", Steven Ambrose mentions that Hollywood film director Ford had collected lots of material taken by several cameramen on the Normandy beaches. Up to the release of Ambrose's book, this material had been searched for without success.
The thought of being able to witness D-Day through the camera lenses of Ford's men made me search the Internet for hints of the mentioned material. Soon I found a Washington Post article which talked about the discovery of previously unreleased film material in one of the archives. "Shooting War" by Richard Schickel is a compilation of this material.
The DVD features a long-bearded Tom Hanks as the anchorman and oral history exerpts of several cameramen who served in various theaters of Word War II. Their comments underline the footage they took more than sixty years ago.
The material covers all of the important war theaters the US Army, Navy and Air Force were involved in. To my disappointment, D-Day coverage makes up only a rather short segment of the whole DVD.
"Shooting War" is in my opinion a good Word War II documentary showing what American soldiers and especially war reporting cameramen went through all over the world. If that's what you're looking for it's worth getting it.

Got this for my 15 year old who is interested in this period. He found it very interesting and entertaining.

The good in this dvd: there is some incredible footage that I have never seen before in any other WWII series. Some of the footage is gruesome and horrific. It makes even me turn my eyes away. There are great interviews with veterans throughout the dvd. The bad: it is not a comprehensive look at the war, it is on a narrow segment. (Combat photographers.) Tom Hank's extremely biased rant against the atomic bombs that barely acknowledges one whole side of the argument is not appreciated.
Overall, this dvd is worth picking up if only for the amazing footage it contains, but also look at "Price for Peace" which gives a much more complete- and unbiased- account of the Pacific War.

Shooting War is the incredible story of the Combat Cameramen during World War II. We always think about soldiers, civilians, and destroyed places when we hear the word 'war'. This time we can se a different side of war, told under the perspective of the cameramen. And their story is deep, sad and often tragic. But in the end, I can tell you that this men are heroes too. Their only weapons were cameras and tripods... And we didn't know about them until few years ago. I highly recommend this DVD.

I studied photography and then photojournalism. I worked in the newspaper business for 10 years and then returned to school and became a history teacher. I thought this video would be right up my alley, but it was really disappointing. The film, for the most part, only covers video photographers that were in in armed services. It completely ignores civilian photographers, which produced many more memorable photos and video. I'm not sure how you can talk about D-Day photographers and not mention Robert Capa (the only one to go on shore DURING the fighting). Robert Capa, David "Chim" Seymour, and Henri Cartier-Bresson are never mentioned. The film devotes about 2 minutes to Joe Rosenthal. That is hardly enough and is more focused on the fact that the Iwo Jima photo was videoed as well as photoed and that Rosenthal got the credit. There is some good footage, but nothing really new. The stories are good, but the entire film is somewhat surface information for anyone with minimal WWII knowledge.

This is NOT a video about WWII, but a series of interviews with combat cameramen relating their activities during the war. The video presented is incidental to that purpose. Much of the black and white film presented is actually easily available in its original color elsewhere and I already have it - in the form of numerous works that I have had for years. Some of the color they do show is of low quality and of scenes or activities that are just "filler". I get the impression the creators of this work picked it up cheap somewhere. To add to my disgust was the casual handling of accuracy, for example the claim that "7000 marines died on Iwo Jima" (vs. just over 5900 in reality). And what WWII-related work from our wonderful leftist elites in Hollywood (Spielberg et al) would be complete without a segment of whining drivel about the horrible immorality and pointlessness of using the atomic bomb? If this mediocrity is something you feel you just have to have, buy it used and don't pay more than five or six dollars.