Stalingrad (1994)

Excellent but underrated film

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It is film where the greater political propaganda is put aside and humanity, or the destruction thereof, is put on centre stage. It is realist in that there is nothing heroic about any characters, and certainly no intention to impress anyone with action scenes. There is only depiction of the dire daily reality for those on the front line fighting- in between buildings to buildings, underground sewage system, and bunkers, the propagated cause for fatherland is replaced with confusion, disillusion, famine, death, and desperation. Soon it becomes clear that the real enemy is not those who on the other side of the front line, but the few elites that feed on the massive sacrifices of their own people. This message is delivered without making the film a strong political critique. This film provides a perspective from the defeating side, where, for those who were trapped and abandoned thousands kilometers away from home, fate was collectively decided on the day they received order to march to Stalingrad. I recommend it to people who want to have a real taste of war and are open to a different point of view.

You could literally say that it was, well, frozen hell. It is a brilliant depiction of the horrors of a war, the Battle of Stalingrad, and how the reality is far different to the concept of heroism, the glorification of war and all that nonsense. It is a great example of how the army generals, the heads of the state rest in their homes and give directives to do this and that, and see it all is some sort of sacred and holy undertaking, but on the battlefield it is bloody, it is scary and not to be glorified in the first place.The film is a very sad one.... It hits you with reality. It revolves around soldiers who are tired of the nonsense, want to go home, be with their families and are looking for ways and excuses to escape from the horror. Their conscious does not bother them, it does not call them cowards, for above all they are humans first, like us, they do not want to be killed and tortured, they do not want to play with blood all the time. This is the reality, heroes-like soldiers is greatly imaginary. The ending scene where they die in the cold is one of the saddest scenes that I have ever watched. It had such sever after-effects on me that I thought of this all night. A brilliant scene!A great film overall but the blot on it had to be that it took too long to materialise and get to the main point, the point mentioned above. The battle scenes last for too long and that is something that I do not appreciate much.

This is a worthwhile movie and I have it on DVD in original German/Russian with subtitles. That certainly creates a certain atmosphere. I have also got Anthony Beaver's excellent historical book on the Battle Of Stalingrad. I understand what the Director was trying to do with the movie; the whole men are just men, the inhumanity of man, there are no winners in war etc. but to me the film didn't seem to quite know whether it wanted to be a depiction of the battle or an anti-war morality tale. It's called "Stalingrad" but Stalingrad is really just a stage set where the "Band of Brothers" theme can be played out. Some have said Enemy at the Gates is a better movie; I would say it is a complementary movie and between both movies we get a strong feel for what it must have been like to have been there and died. On a more general level I have the view that Cross of Iron is the best movie I have seen on the war on the Eastern Front while Downfall remains for me the best war movie of all. But put those 4 together and you have IMHO an comprehensive package regarding Hitler's folly in Russia.

I have wanted to watch this film for many years but only got around to it last week. Many reviewers have highlighted the fact that this is not a Hollywood treatment, which can be a positive. But for anyone who has been exposed to the realism of Saving Private Ryan and similar movies, the absence of Hollywood production values and standards of acting and realism make Stalingrad hard to take seriously. It is highly theatrical, in the sense that the acting is over the top and the motivations and actions of most of the characters do not line up with anything that I'd call realistic, in terms of what I have read about the battle itself or based on what one would consider believable human behavior. Very simplistic in all respects. Probably would have been quite OK in 1993, when it was released, but by today's standards, not something I would recommend.