Stalingrad
by Joseph Vilsmaier
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Dana V?vrov?, Dominique Horwitz, Jochen Nickel, Sebastian Rudolph, Thomas KretschmannDirector: Joseph Vilsmaier
Brand: Genius
Producer: Joseph Vilsmaier
Writer: Joseph Vilsmaier
Producer: G?nter Rohrbach
Producer: Hanno Huth
Writer: Christoph Fromm
Writer: Johannes Heide
Writer: J?rgen B?scher
DVD: 2 Layers, Region Code 0
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; German (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled)
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Letterbox, 1.66:1
Running Time: 134 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1998-11-03
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Fox Lorber
Movie Reviews of Stalingrad
Movie Review: Minimalist View of a Great Battle
Summary: 3 Stars
Certainly is interesting to see the German perspective of WWII, the Eastern Font was much greater in scope and even importance than the Western Front. Stalingrad is probably the bloodiest battle ever fought and the stakes were certainly high, this battle marked the high water tide for the German side and the losses the Wehrmacht and the Axis forces suffered could never be recovered thus leading to the loss of the war with the Soviet Union.
This being said, you would expect a much larger movie in scope, I know this is not a documentary and you should appreciate the art of the film making but I certainly did no gain a new insight on the battle after seeing it. This is because the scope is of the battle seen from the point of view of a platoon. We are never explained how the battle was fought and why it was lost. The battle scenes are few and far between, I can recognize these were well crafted but they are preceded and followed by a generic moralistic story of a young commander comming to terms with handling a much more experienced platoon of soldiers and running afowl of Nazi officers who mistreat prisoners. The officer in question tries to get help for a gravely wounded soldier in his platoon by resorting to violence, this lands him in a penal batallion (together with some members of the platoon)and has to endure starvation and penury. Later he redeems himself by fighting against the odds with a Soviet tank column and destroying it, this is the best part of the movie. We have some side stories dealing with a child and an improbable quasi-romance with a russian woman-soldier. In the end the platoon attempts to scape by trying to be airlifted with the wounded and failing this by trying to infiltrate the Soviet lines and trying to gain german lines through the worst possible winter conditions and in the end everybody perishes.
You have to see the plight of the platoon as a representation of the suffering of all the German 6th Army. I am a war film buff but this film somehow bored me, as I said before it needed to convey a wider spectrum of the battle, you needed to gat a feeling of the strategic implications for both sides. In the end you get a very generic movie. It missed a very good chance of presenting this battle as the real cataclysm it really was. I wish this story was presented with the scope for example the Market Garden Operation was presented in the film A Bridge to Far. The Stalingrad Battle deserves a better treatment. Even the film Enemy at the Gates misses the mark even though it portrays some very interesting aspects such as the crossing of the Volga by the Russian reinforcements, but it also lacks scope. Overall I think Eemy at the Gates is the better of the two movies, at least on the entertainment side.
Summary of Stalingrad
Pulling no punches in revealing the gritty reality of combat stalingrad also conveys the hopes dreams and stories of a platoon of young soldiers caught in the bloodiest battle in history. Studio: Genius Products Inc Release Date: 06/19/2007 Starring: Dominique Horwitz Run time: 150 minutes Rating: NrIt's tempting to call this harrowing picture a World War II version of All Quiet on the Western Front: both films take the perspective of ordinary German soldiers at ground level. Stalingrad surveys the misery of the battle of Stalingrad, the winter siege that cost the lives of almost one and a half million people, Russian defenders and German invaders alike. Not unlike Spielberg's approach to Saving Private Ryan, German director Joseph Vilsmaier rarely steps outside the action to comment on the higher purpose of the war, assuming the audience is aware of the evil of the Nazi regime. Instead, we simply follow a group of soldiers as they endure a series of gut-wrenching episodes, events which have the tang of authenticity and horror. Vilsmaier has a taste for symbolism and surreal touches, which only add to the unsettling sense of insanity this movie conjures up so well. --Robert Horton
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