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The Bootleg Files: A Bell for Adano

BOOTLEG FILES 624: “A Bell for Adano” (1945 drama starring John Hodiak and Gene Tierney).

LAST SEEN: On cable television.

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Never commercially released in the U.S. home video market.

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: It deserves it.

Watching Hollywood’s war films produced during World War II is often unsatisfactory, if only because much of the gung-ho patriotism that permeated those movies feels corny and propagandistic today. But one film from that era stands out for offer a somewhat harsh and often unpleasant consideration of how the U.S. Army operated in Europe: the 1945 production of “A Bell for Adano.”

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