Harrowing And Graphic.

Rating: 8/10 (24 April 2008)

I saw this movie upon its British release on a big cinema screen as its creators surely intended. It came with English subtitles and - although usually a hindrance - within 5 minutes I had forgotten. The dialogue was simple and terse. It was easy to keep reading apace with scene changes. That is something the French invariably forget.
It opens in Italy in the peaceful, barmy sunshine and the drunkenness of soldiers on extended leave. They are bawdy and crude like the crew of 'Das Boot', and I sometimes get the impression from both that vulgarity is used as a cheap substitute for more intelligent script.
The colours are beautiful. The clear blue sky finds even deeper shades of reflection in the sea. Italy is still untrammelled by allied assault and the towns are mellow and picturesque. But the movie is called 'Stalingrad', and you know this is the calm before the storm.
Their leave ended, the troops are shoe-horned into cattle trucks and head east. Through the soldiers eyes, the camera shows the unfolding landscape of conquered territories - the new lebensraum. They sneer at local peasants and sit in awe of endless flat vistas of the steppes. It's their land now; or so they think.
But the conquest has come to a grinding halt at the city of Stalingrad. And it's a battle that neither side can afford to lose.
The movie changes here. The sun is gone. The sky turns permanently leaden. Life assumes the military colours of rancid filth. The scenes of combat are hideously graphic. In one exchange a soldier is blown in half by a tank shell. His torso pleads briefly for help. The situation deteriorates and winter finally crushes what little life and hope is left. The disintegrating order is extremely harrowing. The makers have recreated its chaos and despair with astonishing conviction.
It is easy to moralise. The Germans got what they deserved. Or they were young men just obeying orders. And so on.
The suffering was indescribable, but Stalingrad was a necessary evil. It was here, if anywhere, that the third Reich broke its heart. If there had been a German victory, the Russians would have been expunged en masse. Heaven knows, as things were, Nazi murder squads slaughtered more than could be counted. And sooner or later, Hitler would have returned to the matter of that inconvenient little island just north of France. By then he might have had the atom bomb.
There has been a quiet attempt amongst some intelligentsia to rehabilitate the German people of this time. As if their suffering justified recognition, and from recognition - sympathy. We see a similar presentation in 'Das Boot', where submariners are ultimately depicted as victims - victims who sent thousands of ships and merchant sailors to the bottom of the sea, cheering as they did so and boasting about the 'happy times' before Britain developed effective counter-measures and paid them off in the same coin.
However tragic the war for the German people and their armed forces in defeat, any prospect of their victory would have been a calamity too great to contemplate.
Those who watch Stalingrad and feel an up-welling of compassion for its idealistic and doomed young Germans, should watch 'The Holocaust' afterwards. That wicked people feel pain doesn't make them any less wicked.