Filming the Camps, from Hollywood to Nuremberg: John Ford, Samuel Fuller, George Stevens Exhibition in Mobile, Alabama
Monday, August 29, 2016 Monday, January 16, 2017
In 1945, the world discovered the films made by the Allies in the concentration and extermination camps. We may have their images, but we know little, if anything, about the people who made them and even less about the conditions in which they were produced. We have decided to follow the paths of three Hollywood directors: John Ford, Samuel Fuller and George Stevens.
George Stevens and his team, France, 1944 © Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California
The Shoah Memorial exhibition that will be presented in the Gulf Coast city of Mobile, Alabama focuses on a little-known aspect of the work of three major American directors.
The makers of great films such as The Grapes of Wrath (Ford), Shane (Stevens) and The Big Red One (Fuller) spent time in uniform in Europe during the Second World War.
Photographs taken in the Dachau camp by the SPECOU, May 1945 © Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California
They filmed the war’s daily grind and the opening of the concentration camps. Their images are an essential visual testimony about the conflict’s reality. The editing of their films shows the liberation of Dachau accompanied by notes they wrote.
A photographer from the
Naval Field Photographic
Reserve, n.d.
© National Archives,
Washington D.C.
Cover photography: © Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California
