The Price of Victory Backdrop Blur
The Price of Victory Poster

The Price of Victory

U.S. Vice-President Henry Wallace narrates a patriotic, propaganda short designed to boost morale in the the early days of World War II.

Top Cast

  • Henry A. Wallace

    Henry A. Wallace

    Self - Narrator (voice)

Overview

U.S. Vice-President Henry Wallace narrates a patriotic, propaganda short designed to boost morale in the the early days of World War II.

Rating

7.0 / 10
3 Reviews
0 Popular

1 Reviews

  • CinemaSerf
    CinemaSerf
    5 Jul 19, 2025

    Now I’ve seem some rousingly patriotic propaganda from both sides of the Atlantic, but this has to be the most akin to a party political broadcast. From the mouth of US Vice-President Wallace, we hear a speech that is clearly intended to galvanise a free world to face the war, without remotely recognising that a great deal of the free world had already been fighting it for some years! Then there is the briefest of stories about three men in a boat, but quite what happened to them after they landed on a remote desert island isn’t explained. Finally, he starts quoting bible verses about empowering the faint and the weak which does seem to be somewhat incongruous as we look at scenes of Jewish persecution or Japanese intervention in an Asia that was only ever Christian in the first place because the Western powers imposed it on the population. It’s an address proclaiming how “we” must all pull together, about how “we” must strive to improve production through extra effort, owning farmland, building aircraft. Essentially it’s a lecture on the necessities of industriousness delivered in a the most sterile fashion and isn’t really a film at all.

Recommendations

Night Will Fall

When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".

Night Will Fall

7.6 2014
The War on Democracy

Set both in Latin America and the United States, the film explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. Pilger says that the film "...tells a universal story... analysing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called "war on terror". According to Pilger, the film’s message is that the greed and power of empire is not invincible and that people power is always the "seed beneath the snow".

The War on Democracy

7.5 2007