Vatican City - The Vatican's newspaper has panned Spike Lee's Miracle at St Anna as "confused," saying that the film's story of black US soldiers in Italy during World War II, "slides into sentimentalism and superficiality."

The daily Osservatore Romano, in its edition published Monday, says US director Lee, maker of "noteworthy films like 25th Hour" in 2002 "fails to convince" in his latest effort.

But the article written by Gaetano Vallini, described as "excessive" accusations made by many among Italy's political left, that Lee had re-written history in a "revisionist" manner.

Miracle at St Anna has stirred controversy with Italian anti- Fascist resistance veterans angry at Lee for his portrayal of a fictional resistance fighter-turned Nazi collaborator.

The character, Rodolfo, is shown through his treachery as having had a hand in the real-life 1944 Nazi massacre of some 560 civilians in the Tuscan town of Sant'Anna di Stazzema.

Lee and the film's script-writer James McBride could have made the distinction between fiction and reality more clear, but the films main faults lie elsewhere Vallini contends.

The Italian characters, consisting of partisan and villagers are often "reduced to stereotypes," while the portrayal of the black US soldiers is "more convincing" the article noted.

But ultimately Lee's attempt to denounce the racism in the US military by attempting to tell a "miraculous fable" fails, according to the Osservatore Romano article.