I am at a loss to explain the local reviewers' ecstatic opinions of "Victory at Sea." Their adulation appears to have been brought on by the fact that the film's message is that "War is Hell." Well we all know that, and if having a noble message were all that were necessary to make a great work of art, into this category would fall such disperate items as Sunday sermons. Governor-General's speeches and newspaper editorials.

Despite the picture's avowedly limited aim, presumably, from the title, to deal only with the war at sea, it uses a lot of footage devoted to combat on land and in the air. Much of this we have seen before, though admittedly this fact should not detract from the film's effectiveness if the material is relevant, but as if seeing those same shots from "Fires Were Started," "Bomber Command" and "Target for Tonight", that we always get in war films were not enough to kill our interest, we have some scenes which are obviously studio or from feature fiction films. (One, from the sequence about Pearl Harbour, I am sure was lifted straight from "From Here to Eternity.") Much of the sequences give us close-ups of clean-cut, square-jawed young men grimly prepared to do their bit, all in immaculately lighted photography which contrasts oddly with the actuality material of marines blundering through 'he jungle, of unshaven, war-shocked soldiers staring blankly and uncomprehendingly at the camera, of wounded men writhing in agony and water-logged corpses lying on the beaches or rolling in the tide.

What is so infuriating in the film is the way in which the stock has been misused. While the announcer solemnly delivers a commentary in which Biblical quotation, Watt Whitman, would be blank verse and stiff upper lip are incongrously intermingled—(sincerely) trying hard to convince us of the futility of war. There is the blatantly jingoistic music by Richard Rodgers pounding implacably from the sound track.