Victory by Installments

NBC proudly calls its dramatic naval history of World War II "a teledocumentary film." Victory at Sea (Sun. 3 p.m., E.S.T., NBC), in 26 half-hour installments, is an ably edited series winnowed from 60 million feet of film in the archives of ten nations. Produced by NBC especially for television, with the cooperation of the U.S. Navy, Victory boasts a brilliant 13-hour score by Composer Richard (South Pacific) Rodgers, whose music is often the only description the action needs. The narration is thus as prudently sparse as it is stirring.

Victory's first chapter, called Design for War, shows the first feeble, then gradually stronger Allied efforts to beat off Nazi U-boat wolf packs. It leaps breathlessly back & forth between British film and captured German footage. The effect is to personalize the battle. The war becomes a stirring conflict between a Nazi submarine captain, gloating over a new kill as he downs periscope, and a half-drowned British mariner, hauled oil-covered from the wreckage of his torpedoed tanker.

This week, Victory's second chapter, The Pacific Boils Over, had TV critics cheering again. The Pearl Harbor attack is pictured, from a conference of Japanese naval brass all the way through the fateful Sunday morning when the carrier-based Japanese squadrons flew in low over Oahu's mountains. Televiewers are able to watch from enemy planes, as the bombs are released. Then, from harbor vantage points, the film recreates the American feeling of dazed disbelief as the U.S. fleet is crippled.

The entire attack sequence runs without spoken narration or sound effects; the Rodgers score comments on the situation far more effectively than words could. A new sort of musical language was developed for the series. Broadway Arranger Robert Russell Bennett, who orchestrated the score and conducted the NBC Symphony's first-rate performance, gives an example: "All airplanes fly in F minor."

The idea man and moving spirit behind Victory is Producer Henry ("Pete") Salomon, 35, wartime lieutenant commander who collaborated on Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison's 14-volume naval chronicle of the war. Among his other accomplishments, Producer Salomon persuaded Rodgers and Bennett to compose what amounted to the longest score on record. With 17 of the 26 chapters now completed, Salomon and his dedicated team are pushing ahead, averaging a new installment every eleven days.

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