Saturday, April 18, 2015

Documentary review - "Assault on Salamaua" (1943) ***

Australia's film industry was a very mixed bag in World War Two - barely any features, but some excellent newsreels, such as this one. It's introduced by Damien Parer, who was a newsreel star of the time, given plenty of publicity even before his untimely death - and deservedly so because some of the photography is truly stunning. It's about the battles around Salamaua, one of the many, many battles in New Guinea that weren't Kokoda.

Parer gets right in there - as in, we see grenades being thrown. The biggest jolt for me came from seeing Japanese corpses. There is also some very 1940s attitudes to Japanese locals.

But still, its full of powerful images and is an important film in our cinematic history.

No comments: