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Documentary film-maker Roy Boulting produced a number of important films during the Second World War covering key battles and military campaigns. This example provides an account of the military operations in North Africa in 1942, climaxing in the Battle of El Alamein. The battle was a decisive turning point for the British Army’s participation in the Second World War, marking the end of a string of reverses at Dunkirk, in Greece and Crete, and at Singapore, and this expertly made documentary film captured the importance of the battle and helped to build the impact the victory had on British and allied perceptions of how the war was going. ‘Desert Victory’ received the Oscar for best documentary in 1943. The success of this film led to attempts to emulate it for other campaigns – the Imperial War Museum Film Archive also holds ‘Africa Freed’ (1943), a British film about the remainder of the North African campaign which was never released, its place being taken by the Capra/Boulting co-production ‘Tunisian Victory’ (1944), and ‘Burma Victory’ (1945). Also held, though not a Boulting film, is ‘The True Glory’ (1945 – another Anglo-American co-production, and another Oscar-winner). These Second World War productions continued the tradition of feature-length “Battle” documentaries established in the First World War by such films as ‘The Battle of the Somme’ (1916) and ‘The Battle of the Ancre and the Advance of the Tanks’ (1917), which had established the genre conventions to which German films like ‘Feuertaufe’ (1940) and ‘Sieg im Westen’ (1941) also conformed. (All these titles are also held by the Imperial War Museum.) |
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