do you know how much i hate this uniform?

Rating: 10/10 (29 January 2007)

To his commanding officer Colonel Brandt (James Mason), on the collapsing Eastern Front during 'the German retreat', Sgt. Steiner (James Coburn), laconically delivers this wonderful speech; 'What do I have to be grateful for, Captain? Your tolerance? You think that just because you and Colonel Brandt are more enlightened than most officers that I hate you any less. I hate all officers...all the Iron Cross scavengers, the whole German army...' He adds; 'Do you know how much i hate this uniform and every thing it stands for?...god...' Sgt. Steiner, a German soldier, fighting for his life and those of his platoon, is behind enemy lines in Russia, the Taman Peninsula, 1943; betrayed by war, by officers, by Germany, Steiner is caught up in a bloody and vicious struggle with the advancing Red Army, with civilians, with his own people.
The Cross of Iron is that rare film: an unsentimental, unflinching document made in earnest, with great, violent imagery, from a human, German perspective.
With the exception of Belarusian film 'Come and See', it is the greatest anti-war film ever made. It is both beautiful and brutal (like Come and See). And it is a film that is true and crucial today. Soldiers, ordinary men, civilians, 'people' in a word, are the victims of war; yet the politicians and decision-makers, those most culpable, continue to forge their bloody conflicts. World War Two has its roots in Versaille (1918), but it hasn't really ended yet.
The film ends with the quote from Bertolt Brecht; "Do not rejoice in his defeat you men, for though the world stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again."