Frankly, pretty bad
Charles Poncet | Geneva Switzerland | 01/09/2001
(2 out of 5 stars)
"This is a remarkably bad presentation of the "great battles" of World War II. To begin with, in an alleged introduction to the causes of WW II - probably written at a time in 1946 when the Soviets had to be pleased - the authors do not EVEN MENTION THE SOVIET-GERMAN PACT OF 1939 !!!! The rest is a superficial, long winded, boring collection of news footage and other pictures, with poor sound and rudimentary texts. To be avoided."
Interesting historical films worth about what you'll pay
Charles Poncet | 12/26/1999
(3 out of 5 stars)
"The packaging provides virtually no information about what the box contains, which turns out to be three of Frank Capra's official postwar propaganda films covering some of the major campaigns. "Great Battles" is really a misnomer because for example the D-Day film covers not just the beaches but the entire reconquest of western Europe other than Italy. The films are well made and contain some interesting footage and commentary (the first-person accounts seem to be spoken by actors), but on two of the discs the visual quality is poor, either because the original film has deteriorated or because of a poor transfer, or perhaps both. In any case the light colours have become so bleached out that some of the scenes and maps don't give much information. There are some noticeable gaps in the continuity as well. The extra features are perfunctory -- just a few text screens. For the price this is not a bad set, but don't expect anything of archival quality."