Germany 1945: Sensationally restored film footage by George Stevens

This 17 minute film was created by American film maker George Stevens following Germany's surrender in 1945 , the film takes in scenes from multiple towns and cities across post war Germany.
Stevens went on to have a career in Hollywood directing movies like "A Place in the Sun" and "The Diary of Anne Frank".

The digital restoration of the films used artificial intelligence to give the image resolution and colour quality a natural feel and look of a more modern film.


So much has changed and yet so little has changed in the 77 years since it was filmed.

George Stevens, a filmmaker known as a meticulous craftsman with a brilliant eye for composition and a sensitive touch with actors, is one of the great American filmmakers, ranking with John Ford, William Wyler and Howard Hawks as a creator of classic Hollywood cinema, bringing to the screen mytho-poetic worlds that were also mass entertainment. One of the most honored and respected directors in Hollywood history, Stevens enjoyed a great degree of independence from studios, producing most of his own films after coming into his own as a director in the late 1930s. Though his work ranged across all genres, including comedies, musicals and dramas, whatever he did carried the hallmark of his personal vision, which is predicated upon humanism.
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a reply to: gortex

Fantastic! My brother is a WWII buff. I'm emailing this to him now.

Thanks!

a reply to: gortex

so long ago and yet so close. i find such restored old films fascinating. thanks! to this day, this war casts its shadow. the ideology of the nazis never disappeared but it seems that it is flaring up again in these times.

a reply to: gortex

What struck me was all the bombed out architecture.

That stuff took forever to build and by artists and craftsmen with insane amounts of skills and dedication.

It can't be replaced or replicated. Yet, here you had these mad men running on ego and drugs leading the whole nation into oblivion on power trips. I wonder if Germany would've been better off had they never invaded Russia and consolidated their position, eventually for some kind of peace or had they focused completely on Great Britain.

Good thing Hitler never settled for that.

thanks much for sharing
we get too much of our history from fictional shows and movies
really interesting to see something real from the time.

lots of bicycles!!!

I come from the clothing industry. I worked with 3 sample makers who immigrated here from Germany as teenagers right after the war. They were 60 at the time. They easily sewed all day and went home and sewed, super talented and knowledgeable in all aspects and really nice.