German siege of Warsaw, Poland 1939; CUs of Poles

Julien Hequembourg Bryan (1899-1974) was an American documentarian and filmmaker. Bryan traveled widely taking 35mm film that he sold to motion picture companies. In the 1930s, he conducted extensive lecture tours, during which he showed film footage he shot in the former USSR. Between 1935 and 1938, he captured unique records of ordinary people and life in Nazi Germany and in Poland, including Jewish areas of Warsaw and Krakow and anti-Jewish signs in Germany. His footage appeared in March of Time theatrical newsreels. His photographs appeared in Life Magazine. He was in Warsaw in September 1939 when Germany invaded and remained throughout the German siege of the city, photographing and filming what would become America's first cinematic glimpse of the start of WWII. He recorded this experience in both the book Siege (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1940) and the short film Siege (RKO Radio Pictures, 1940) nominated for an Academy Award in 1940. In 1946, Bryan photographed the efforts of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency in postwar Europe. Warsaw, Poland 1939, the German siege of the city. LS, a man walks down a deserted city street lined with buildings that are crumbling as a result of the German air raids the camera pans right to capture more of the destruction to individual buildings. CU a Polish propaganda poster encouraging the Poles to fight back against the invading German armies, depicted as a large hand and a swastika. LS, more destruction. A city street is blocked off by a train that has derailed in the center of the street. A Polish soldier stands guard while several civilians help to dig ditches and build barricades. MLS, Polish civilians drag dead horses off the street. Ten men are needed to harness and remove one horse from the road. CU, a fire burning in rubble, a neighborhood destroyed by the German air attacks. Men and women, residents of the area mill about in the debris, gathering what they can salvage from the wreckage. MS, filed on the outskirts of Warsaw where a woman lies dead in the field, caught off guard by German planes while she was picking potatoes. Two women walk past her, her head is covered with a basket, the two women look briefly at the camera, then again at the body, they point to something out of frame, and then move on. Another woman approaches the body then continues on. MS, the camera pans the body again, that Julien Bryan has identified in his book "Siege," a young boy sits on the ground near the body leaning on a burlap sack of potatoes, a destroyed farmhouse is visible in the BG. VS, women and children working the land in the field near the site of the attack, they continue to dig up potatoes. MS, Julien Bryan in the center of the frame, surrounded by a group of Polish civilians who have survived an air attack on their homes. The camera pans the scene of the destruction as Bryan listens intently as a man recounts what happened at the site. MS, a woman continues to explain the attack. CU, an elderly, emaciated woman tells her story directly to the camera. VS of the women recounting the events. Excellent CUs of the Polish people. The footage cuts back to the potato field on the outskirts of Warsaw, two women are crying as they look on the body of the dead women, whose younger sister has now appeared to claim her, the young girl, Kazimiera Mika, kneels beside the body crying helplessly. Cut back to a scene of people kneeling outside of a destroyed church and praying. A credit now appears that reads "THE END." This credit belongs to the film "Siege."