Anzio

Anzio (Italian: Lo sbarco di Anzio), also known as The Battle for Anzio (UK title), is a 1968 Technicolor war film in Panavision, an Italian and American co-production, about Operation Shingle, the 1944 Allied seaborne assault on the Italian port of Anzio in World War II. It was adapted from the book Anzio by Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, who had been the BBC war correspondent at the battle. The film stars Robert Mitchum, Peter Falk, and a variety of international film stars, who mostly portray fictitious characters based on actual participants in the battle. The two exceptions were Wolfgang Preiss and Tonio Selwart, who respectively played Field Marshal Albert Kesselring and General Eberhard von Mackensen. The film was made in Italy with an Italian film crew and produced by Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis; however, none of the main cast were Italian, nor were there any major Italian characters. The film was jointly directed by Edward Dmytryk and Duilio Coletti. In the English-language version, Italians speak their native language. German military commanders speak English. Plot During a shipboard meeting with American General Jack Lesley, commander of the Allied forces set to land at Anzio, war correspondent Dick Ennis (a thinly disguised Ernie Pyle) tells Lesley (who has admired Ennis' combat reporting for years) that his journalistic efforts at the front lines has been motivated by his life long quest to discover why men go to war. He confesses he has yet to find an answer but he rejects Lesley's explanation that it is all a matter of survival. Ennis is assigned to accompany US Army Rangers for the upcoming attempt to outflank the tough enemy defenses. The amphibious landing is unopposed, but General Lesley, is too cautious, preferring to fortify his beachhead before advancing inland. Previously, Lesley and General Carson (a thinly disguised US Army General Mark Clark) agreed at an impromptu press conference in Naples that there would be no repeat of the near-fatal landing at Salerno the previous year when the Allied commanders grossly underestimated the German opposition. Ennis and a Ranger drive in a jeep through the countryside, discovering there are few Germans between the beachhead and Rome, but his information is ignored. As a result, the German commander, Field Marshall Kesselring, had time to gather his forces and launch an effective counterattack.