CinemaSerf

There’s something more personal about this wartime feature as, narrated by Henry Fonda, it shows us a normal American town going from never believing they could be attacked to dealing with the aftermath of Pearl Harbour and beyond. The ordinary lads who train using second hand kit and wooden machine guns soon depart for the Philippines and there meet the full force of the encroaching, highly trained and well armed, foe. Many are killed, many are taken prisoner and the message for those at home is to persevere. Initially, bad news is the exception and it doesn’t really govern the behaviour of the majority. Sadly, though, those devastating telegrams become more frequent and so the efforts to recycle just about everything and the encouragement to buy war bonds goes into overdrive. The choice of Fonda to voice this story works effectively as a man who could be anyone’s neighbour, friend, or parent and his understated commentary is punchy without being jingoistic. As a piece of film, well we have seen much of the archive used here before and it’s not really very imaginatively exploited, but it still brings home something of the terrors of warfare and as it says on the billboard: “fat makes explosive” so nothing goes to waste.