George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey

The documentary tells the life and the work of the director George Stevens. It was made by his son, George Stevens Jr. Stevens had one of the long careers in Hollywood, with work running from Swing Time and Gunga Din to Shane and Giant. During the Second World War he joined the film unit of the American army and headed a camera crew from 1943 to 1946. The crew recorded the Normandy landings, the liberation of Paris and the meeting of American and Soviet troops at the Elbe on sixteen millimetre colour film. The same crew filmed what was found when the Dachau camp was entered, and Stevens worked on preparing that material for presentation at the Nuremberg trials. The documentary sets those two lives, the studio director and the wartime cameraman, side by side. George Stevens Jr.’s hundred and ten minute American documentary was completed in 1985.