Vichy-French newsreel about destruction caused by Allied bombing campaigns
Creator(s)
- United States. National Archives and Records Administration. Motion Picture Reference
- France Actualites (Producer)
Scope and Content
A newsreel illustrating the damage and suffering caused by allied bombing raids in France. Title onscreen, superimposed over a statue of a woman: "France Meurtrie" [France ravaged]. The camera pans down from the top of a church to show pallbearers removing coffins from the church while crowds of mourners watch. Women weep as the coffins are loaded onto the back of a truck. The cortege passes a square crowded with mourners. A speaker addresses the crowd. His speech is heard over shots of individuals in the crowd, workmen excavating the still-smoldering ruins of a building, various other shots of bomb damage, people picking through rubble, and a black cat among the ruins. A cortege consisting of many trucks carrying coffins travels through city streets lined with mourners. Several clergymen follow the cortege, which passes badly destroyed buildings before arriving at the cemetery. A new scene, perhaps Paris: spectacularly destroyed buildings, including churches and an apartment house, with people picking items out of the rubble. A woman exits a building and gets into a truck marked "Secours National" which was some kind of relief agency. She drives along the streets of Paris and distributes piles of blankets, candles and other goods to a long line of people. More scenes of destruction.
Subjects
- COFFINS
- TRUCKS
- CLERGY
- BOMBINGS
- PROPAGANDA
- FUNERALS
- CEMETERIES
- FRANCE
- SPEECHES
- WOMEN
- DESTRUCTION
Places
- , France
- Paris, France
Genre
- Film
- Newsreels.