YOU WANT I SHOULD KICK HIS SMUG ASS?

now that we are old ya know...

👍

I WOULD KICK SOME ASS FOR YOU MY SWEET; yes INDEED

but one of the finalists said Mt. Etna so I don't feel so bad...

very exciting.

But the "gorges" part was something I didn't understand.

in a few minutes

It’s continually overlooked in lieu of stories involving D-Day and the drive toward the Rhine.

But the Italian campaign in 1943 was a doozie. John Huston made his incredible documentary “The Battle of San Pietro” (held back in release until 1945, deemed too bloody and unflinching for the gov’t.). 1100 GIs died in that one battle.

Good guess, though, with Mt. Aetna.

disaster. I was traveling with a small group in early December. We thought it would be a great idea to go up Etna so we hired a driver to take us up. Ponder the words "Sicilian driver." Well, we encountered snow a ways up and finally had to turn around and go down. Oh boy, our driver had never driven in snow before. He was yelling "Sono pazzi" (they are crazy) all the way down. Oh, well...

Pondering the words “Sicilian driver” indeed. That’s a terrific tale — halfway up Etna is far better than no Etna at all!

Only volcanoes I’ve seen are on the Pacific side: Hawaii, California, Oregon, and Washington.

as you would imagine it gets more and more desolate as you go further to the top. But interestingly, I saw flowers growing up near the top! It was nearly poetic....imagine, flowers growing atop Mt. Etna, an active volcano...which I learned is a GOOD thing, volcano wise...

But to Huston's credit, employing Hollywood tricks and slick editing, he created a more then believable, and incredibly accurate film.

SAN PIETRO

It may surprise some viewers to know this, but what is considered the best documentary to come out of World War II, "as good a war film as any that has been made," according to James Agee, was largely a reenactment. Just how much was staged and whether that makes a great deal of difference to the film's undeniable impact has been a matter of some debate.

In Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War, his 2014 book on the Hollywood directors who filmed documentaries for the War Department, Mark Harris notes that John Huston, then a captain in the Signal Corps, was told by his commander, Colonel Frank Capra, to go to San Pietro Infine, about 50 miles north of Naples. The small town was the site of a major and bloody December 1943 engagement between Allied troops and the German forces that had established a heavily fortified position there. The Allies eventually succeeded in taking the stronghold after ten days of brutal fighting that destroyed the town, a victory crucial to the drive north to liberate Rome. Capra, an Italian immigrant eager to show the war in his native land, wanted a film of this key event.

When Huston and his crew arrived there, however, the battle was nearly over, although according to accounts by English author Eric Ambler, who was with Huston, they did come under artillery fire. But the filming didn't actually begin until the fighting was done, a logical enough decision considering the near impossibility of a film crew trying to capture it live. The resulting half-hour, black-and-white documentary, San Pietro, bears an end title that acknowledges: "All scenes in this picture were photographed within range of enemy small arms or artillery fire. For purposes of continuity a few of these scenes were shot before and after the actual battle of San Pietro."

Harris and others, thanks to research in the years since, suggest that more than just a few scenes were staged. In the book, Harris describes seeing outtake footage in the National Archives in which soldiers generally behave like actors, falling dead on cue. Does it matter?

<more>

http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article.html?isPreview=&id=1112957%7C1104934&name=San-Pietro

Atlantic Ocean and where could he get a flight to do that? Wow, that's a real good story and I don't doubt it one bit, but jeez...that's amazing...

Before Italy, he made an Army film in Alaska titled, 'Report from the Aleutians'.

If you have Netflix, you can watch a real interesting film, 'Five Came Back', a 2017 documentary examining the work of five Hollywood directors who joined the military to make (propaganda) films: John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra, and George Stevens (all members of the U.S. Army Signal Corps)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Came_Back_(TV_series)

Netflix also has all the individual films made by them.

in WWII. Geez, what a mission...

tonight.

No. I don’t think I’ll ever be over Macho Grande.

Well played