"THE RAMPARTS WE WATCH"
(R.K.O.)
FOR their first full-length picture, the "March of Time" people chose the title of a treatise by a certain Major. :Bliot, "The Ramparts
We Watch: A Study of the Problems of American Defence." The film, however, is little concerned with the outward and visible signs of American defence, such as "flying fortresses" and battleships; it deals almost wholly with the events leading up to America’s entry into the last war, and the sentiment which favours intervention in this one. As plainly as they can, the editors of "Time" and " Life," who shaped the idea, say that America has no business being neutral. The film opens with a shot of waves washing over a rock carved with the figures 1620 (consult history books for reference) and then proceeds to take a presumably representative American community, many of its members foreign born, and tracé the effect on them of growing war sentiment. When the Armistice has been celebrated, with’ toasts to a brave new world and the spirit of democracy, we move on to 1939 and 1940, to find that these same Americans are just as proBritish and anti-German as ever they were. The film is made up partly of story, partly of snippets from newsreels, pieced together in familiar " March of Time" style. The highlight is undoubtedly the extract from the German film "Baptism of Fire," which the Nazis took as they swept through Poland. One gets the impression that this must have
been severely cut, as it is hardly a record of horror, and in its present form is not likely to have filled the neutrals with overpowering terror. However, it contains interesting glimpses of the German war machine in action, one sequence, taken from the nose of a dive-bomber hurtling perpendicularly down at a railway junction, being particularly effective.
One American critic accused. " The Ramparts We Watch" of " pulling its punches." I imagine that that is hardly fair. The position rather is that it is impossible to maintain the tension and high-pitched interest of a "March of Time" short for the whole length of a feature film.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19410221.2.31.1.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 87, 21 February 1941, Page 16
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353"THE RAMPARTS WE WATCH" New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 87, 21 February 1941, Page 16
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