ABSTRACT
I had to look through thousands of meters of film before hitting on the sequence of the Soviet army crossing Lake Sivash; and it stunned me. I had never come across anything like it. As a rule one was faced with poor quality films, or short snippets recording day to day life in the army, or else show pieces, which smacked too much of planning and very little of the truth. [...] Suddenly – quite unheard of for a newsreel – here was a record of one of the most dramatic moments in the history of the Soviet advance of 1943. It was a unique piece; I could hardly believe that such an enormous footage of film should have been spent on recording one single event continuously observed.
