Search - Shooting War - World War II Combat Cameramen on DVD

The best combat footage of WW2!

Dave | Tennessee United States | 02/05/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"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!"

Photographer's view of battle...

C. Thomas Stovall | Centreville, VA USA | 09/06/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"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."

Previously unreleased film documents of Word War II

Christoph Widmer | 09/10/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"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."