“Stalingrad”
was written and directed by Yuri Ozerov. It was co-produced by the Soviet Union
and East Germany. Ozerov directed the “Liberation” series as an answer to “The
Longest Day” which he felt short-changed the Soviet contribution to victory in
WWII. “Stalingrad” is a sequel to his film “Battle of Moscow”. In 1965, he was
awarded the Honored Artist of the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist
Republic). Warner Brothers agreed to help finance the film if the American
actor Powers Booth was cast. Many of the extras were Soviet soldiers.
The
movie starts with Hitler telling Gen. Von Bock about his plan to take the
Caucusus. They will be the first of many famous WWII figures to appear in the
film. The plot is going to jump between German command decisions to Soviet
ones. Stalin (Archil Gomiashvili) meets with his generals, including Zhukov
(Mikhail Ulyanov). The movie was made during Perestroika, so it was safe for
Ozerov to accurately portray Stalin as not believing the Caucusus was the
target of the German summer offensive. There is some combat between the
headquarters scenes. There are plenty of tanks roving the countryside. Maps
with arrows provide background.
The
movie is basically a series of vignettes about the battle. Some of these
include a Spanish soldier serving with the Red Army receiving a medal and
breaking into a song. Stalin compliments a general for bayonetting 22 Germans.
He tells him “Cruelty is a necessary quality for a front commander.” (I have
seen a lot of Soviet movies and I can tell you this is not the way saintly
Soviet officers are depicted.) Khrushchev’s son kills a comrade when trying to
shoot a bottle of his head. Churchill visits Moscow. Hey, where’s the second
front? Germans cross the Don River. The action is epic, but lame. Every time a
tank is destroyed it is from an explosion in its rear. There are also a lot of
buildings that get blown up. Naked Soviet women soldiers are sprayed. Full
frontal nudity in a war movie. I guess that was glasnost. Stalingrad is bombed by very fake-looking
planes which makes sense since the city is a model. Powers Boothe is Gen.
Chuikov! The Russians make an anti-tank minefield by planting Molotov cocktails
that are then shot when the tanks get near. Hey, AI. Russian infantry make
frontal attacks against machine guns to patriotic music. A German pilot is
given to civilian women. This will not end well for him. A German tank runs
over a statue of Stalin. (Very gutsy, 1990 Soviet filmmaker.) Pavlov’s House
gets a brief shout out. House-to-house fighting. Zhukov launches the
counteroffensive. Goering’s air supply effort fails. Manstein fails to break
through to the Germans trapped in the city. German prisoners march by. Stalin
refuses to trade Von Paulus for his own captured son. A narrator criticizes
Stalin’s tyranny and cult of personality!
“Stalingrad”
is educational for those unfamiliar with the battle. It covers the battle from
preliminaries to the end. It does this by covering commanders as well as some
common soldiers (not any Germans). The film does a good job depicting the
German perspective. This was probably to attract a German audience. It is the
rare WWII movie that portrays Stalin, Hitler, and Churchill. The acting is
nothing special and surprisingly, Boothe takes the trophy. He is good as Gen.
Chuikov and he gets to say: “Well fuck their soul into God.” The combat is
brief in the first half, but picks up in the second half. It is marred by silly
deaths. It turns out that real soldiers do not know how a soldier dies. It’s
not just an extra problem. There is a subplot involving spies that goes
nowhere.
The
movie is one of several movies about the Battle of Stalingrad. It is somewhere
in the middle of the pack. It’s fairly accurate, but it does throw in some
head-scratching stuff like the Molotov cocktail minefield. It get Stalin right,
so if you hate him, this movie is for you. The movie did not do well probably
because by 1990, Stalin was not looking so bad. Or maybe because the film is
not very entertaining. Here is my ranking of them:
1. Stalingrad, Dogs Do You Want to Die?
4. Stalingrad (1990)
GRADE
= C
