Seven - The Victory Scripts’ Poetics

Summary

Six weeks into Victory's first run producer Henry Salomon explained to a reviewer, “I want the audience to hear the narration in their subconscious. I want them to feel the words rather than listen to them.” Previously, at an October 1952 press preview he had explained, “we have developed motion pictures for television rather than use television to exhibit motion pictures.” Still earlier—at which time the series was only half complete—Salomon had further described his intentions:

Along with this pioneering emphasis on music to reinforce the impact of the pictures has gone a corresponding de-emphasis of the script. The narra-tion, as conceived for “Victory at Sea,” is to serve as an unobtrusive guide to events on the screen, not as a continuous commentary. It will be heard only where absolutely necessary for explication, and will be withdrawn whenever the pictures and music can tell their own story, which is most of the time. By thus assigning new proportions to the basic elements of film-music-script we hope to achieve entirely new effects.

Salomon held true to his vision of letting film and music tell the story whenever possible. Victory's scripts average barely 1,300 words each, leaving at least sixteen of each episode's twenty-six minutes narration-free and only the occasional sound effect intruding upon Bennett's orchestral scoring.

Several reviewers singled out the poetic tone of the Victory's scripts. It was a notable departure from the style of the then-recent wartime newsreels and the WWII documentary TV series which Victory eclipsed: 1949's Crusade in Europe and 1951's Crusade in the Pacific (see chapter 11). With Victory's critics focusing on its most-previewed early episodes, however, none seem to have remarked upon a distinguishing feature of the scripts: literary quotations from sources both common and uncommon.

The handful of biblical citations would have been familiar to many viewers: “For everything there is an appointed time” (EP18, 1:38; Ecclesiastes 3); “They have fought a good fight; they have finished their course” (EP18, 18:40; referencing 2 Timothy); “When Joshua heard the sound of the people shouting” (EP18, 25:20; Exodus 32:17–18); “Come unto me, all ye who are weary and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (EP20, 24:12; Matthew 11:28); “How are the mighty fallen” (EP22, 24:59; 2 Samuel 1:27).