Stalin
Tags: suspenseful, intrigue, cruelty, murder, sadist

Plot synopsis:
Siberia, 1917. Russia is mired in the third bloody year of the First World War, fighting against Germany. The brutal war and the Tsar's inept, autocratic rule have created an atmosphere ripe for revolution. Josef Dzhugashvili (Robert Duvall), a 38-year-old Georgian using the revolutionary nickname of "Koba," has been exiled to Siberia yet again for his violent activities including bank robberies, kidnappings, and killings. In his writings, he has begun using the name Stalin- Man of Steel. Stalin is drafted into the Tsarist army but fails his physical due to a damaged left arm and a deformed foot. A devoted follower of Vladimir Lenin (Maximilian Schell), Stalin is present when the exiled Bolshevik secretly returns to Russia. Stalin meets his future wife, Nadya (Julia Ormond), while in Siberian exile. She is only seventeen and the daughter of a revolutionary friend. Stalin employs her as a personal secretary but soon takes her as a mistress.After the Tsar is toppled and murdered, Stalin's ruthlessness is fully unleashed in the service of Vladimir Lenin. He confines two dozen "unreliable" former Tsarist army officers on a prison barge and orders it sunk, enraging his chief rival for Lenin's favor- revolutionary Leon Trotsky (Daniel Massey).Stalin and young Nadya are married in 1919. Nadya serves as Lenin's personal secretary while Stalin agrees to serve as Party General Secretary. His fellow Politburo members look down on him as an uneducated, unsophisticated thug, but it is a fatal mistake. Stalin's sheer ambition and ruthlessness make him a supremely dangerous adversary. Shortly after the birth of Stalin and Nadya's first child in 1921, Lenin suffers a debilitating stroke. Lenin's worried followers cannot help but notice the look of steely resolve on Stalin's face. Stalin stays close to Lenin as he recuperates, but they quarrel over Stalin's ruthless tactics and ambition. Stalin is also hated by Lenin's wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya (Miriam Margolyes). In Lenin's prolonged absence, an anti-Trotsky power troika of Stalin, Zinoviev (Andras Balint), and Kamenev (Emil Wolk) is formed. When Lenin dies in 1924, Stalin plays the loyalist, directing that his body be embalmed and permanently displayed in Red Square. Stalin seeks to inherit Lenin's mantle, but It turns out that before his death Lenin had dictated a letter to the Central Committee condemning Stalin for his cruelty and encouraging his removal as General Secretary. Lenin's damning political testament is later suppressed at Stalin's orders.Fearing a conspiracy between Trotsky and the other Central Committee members, Stalin decides to strike first. He has Trotsky purged from the party and eventually exiled. Stalin's extreme paranoia leads him to systematically purge his ranks of other old comrades who might be potential competitors, first replacing Zinoviev. The unscrupulous and sexually perverted Georgian, Lavrentiy Beria (Roshan Seth), becomes Stalin's right hand man. Nadya begins to recoil at her husband's increasingly vindictive and sadistic personality.Stalin cements his iron grip on even the most remote parts of the Soviet Union, jailing or killing all who oppose him. Stalin's monstrous nature is increasingly revealed through his relationship with his son from a previous marriage, Yakov. Stalin's first wife had died from typhus at a young age, and Stalin had subsequently abandoned the young boy. When Yakov arrives in Moscow seeking a relationship with his estranged father, Stalin is cruelly contemptuous of him. Later, when Yakov asks permission to marry a Jewish girl, the harshly anti-Semitic Stalin refuses. His distraught son flees to another room and shoots himself. Stalin, seeing that the boy has only succeeded in wounding himself, sneers, "Idiot! He can't even shoot straight." It is the last straw for Nadya, who leaves Stalin and flees to her parents' home in Leningrad. Receiving little moral support from them, Nadya returns to Moscow, witnessing mass deportations and evidence of widespread starvation along the way. She publicly confronts and shames her husband at a banquet celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Stalin responds by burning her with a cigarette. In the morning, Stalin is awakened after a night with his mistress to discover that Nadya is dead- ostensibly from appendicitis, perhaps a suicide, but most probably murdered on Stalin's orders. Now the sole parent of two small children aged eleven and six, Stalin once again declines to be a father.A new rivalry draws the attention of Stalin in late 1934. Sergei Kirov, a loyal Stalinist and head of the Communist Party in Leningrad, has become increasingly popular, to Stalin's dismay. Under suspicious circumstances, Kirov is killed by a lone assassin in Leningrad. Though Stalin's involvement is widely suspected, no direct evidence emerges to implicate him. Stalin's wholesale purges are just beginning. Despite Stalin's assurances to the contrary, Zinoviev and Kamenev are soon liquidated in Lubyanka Prison by Beria and the NKVD. Upon reporting the executions to Stalin during a dinner gathering, Beria amuses the bloodthirsy attendees with a ghoulish imitation of the condemned men's last moments. Another of Stalin's old comrades, Bukharin (Jeroen Krabbe) soon fears that his turn has come when the NKVD comes for him at his home. Stalin "just happens" to place a phone call to Bukharin as he is being arrested and feigns surprise at the police intrusion. Stalin calls off the secret police, but a terrified Bukharin gets the message. Stalin soon attempts to coerce another old ally, a man named Sergo, into betraying Bukharin. When Sergo refuses and makes the mistake of threatening Stalin, Stalin makes it clear that suicide is his only option. He will be given a hero's burial within the Kremlin walls. Sergo complies. Bukharin is soon framed and put on trial in one of the infamous "show trials" of 1938. The verdict is a foregone conclusion. Like the others, Bukharin is taken to a dark prison cell and shot by Beria. Stalin also orders the murder of exiled Leon Trotsky, who is now living in Mexico City.After Stalin cynically concludes a 1939 non-aggression pact with Hitler, the massive German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 comes as a nasty surprise. Stalin is panicked and angry, accusing his generals of gross incompetence. General Voroshilov (John Bowe) reacts angrily, accurately charging that Stalin's purges of the Russian military leadership during the 1930s were responsible for the failure of the Russian defenses. Stalin seemingly has a nervous breakdown, disappearing from view for ten days. When he finally recovers his wits, he takes complete charge and predicts in a radio address, "Hitler will go the way of Napoleon...to defeat, to despair, and to his death." Stalin's son, Yakov, is soon taken prisoner by the Germans. When informed of his capture, Stalin callously replies, "I have no son Yakov." Yakov is later killed trying to escape from a German prison camp. Stalin ruthlessly leads the Soviet Union to victory over the next four brutal years. Twenty million Russians die during the conflict. Fearing infection from Western political ideas, Stalin sends hundreds of thousands of returning Russian POWs to Siberian prison camps after the war.Stalin's sadistic sense of humor continues until the very end. A 1953 dinner gathering includes Beria, Molotov, Kruschev, Voroshilov, and Stalin's grown daughter Svetlana. Stalin, increasingly frail and suspicious (even of his doctor), notices that Beria refuses his soup. He insists that Beria taste the soup first, apparently suspecting it is poisoned. Beria tries to beg off, but Stalin forces the issue. After his guests have eaten their soup, Stalin poses a question: who will follow him as Russia's leader? In response to the stunned silence, Stalin suggests that since none of them are worthy of succeeding him, he wishes to be rid of them all. He points out that he didn't eat his own soup, since he had the soup poisoned. His horrified guests giggle nervously and uncertainly while Beria rushes from the room to throw up. After Beria leaves, Stalin chuckles, dips his spoon into his soup, and begins eating. The relieved diners laugh heartily, but none of them doubt that it could have been true. Dinner ends abruptly when Stalin grabs at his temple, having suffered the first of many strokes.Soon after, Stalin is on his deathbed, surrounded by Beria, Molotov, Kruschev, Voroshilov, and his doctor. He is suffering from congestive heart failure after years of smoking and stress. At one point, the doctor tearfully points out that he is struggling to breathe. Beria replies, "Let him suffer- the murdering bastard!" To Beria's horror, Stalin opens his eyes and stares at him. Beria drops to his knees, kisses Stalin's hand, and begs his forgiveness. When Stalin fades out again, Beria spits scornfully on the floor. Svetlana arrives just in time to bid him goodbye, then faints. In another room, Kruschev and Molotov quietly discuss Stalin's legacy. Kruschev bitterly condemns Stalin's atrocities and their effect on Russia, but Molotov rebukes him. He points out Russia's modernization and industrialization under Stalin, and argues that Stalin allowed Russia to take its place as a great nation. "Our history required Stalin."

Review: To appreciate this film you might read any one of the best accounts of Stalin's dictatorship by Roy Medvedev, Dmitri Volkogonov, Edvard Radzinsky, Simon Sebag Montefiore, or Donald Rayfield.
Other reviewers on this site have noted how well Robert Duvall captures Stalin's surly, crude, cunning, sadistic, paranoid personality.
One reviewer has questioned whether Voroshilov would have dared to shout at Stalin, as he does in this film, at the start of the war.
However, Donald Rayfield cites an example of the normally slavish Voroshilov doing something very like what is portrayed in the film, shouting at Stalin as war with the Nazis was looming for murdering most of the Red Army high command and so crippling the defences of the USSR.
He was one of the few men to do anything of the kind and survive StalinThe film is shot at the scenes of the crimes - the Kremlin at Stalin's Kuntsevo dacha - and is sumptuous watching as a result.
For example, Stalin's second wife Nadya was not quite the principled heroine seen here who apparently took her own life because she saw no other escape from the evil that her husband was bringing to the country.
But Stalin, like Hitler and any other dictator, was only possible because those around him saw advantage for themselves in supporting him.
But the only innocents were the people of the former Soviet Union, those far from power whose lives were destroyed according to the requirements of a command economy - so many deaths and so many slaves were required from every walk of life, like so many tons of iron, to meet quotas.
This is perhaps something to bear in mind in watching a generally excellent and historically accurate film.
I could watch this film over and over again - why It was a TV Movie rather than a box-office smash I will never know.
Robert Duvall Is absolutely flawless In his portrayal of Stalin - we're talking Oscar-deserving acting here!
Roshan Seth as the creepy,selfish, arrogant Laventy Beria Is superb;Colin Jeavons as Yagoda;Jim Carter as Sergo;the great Maximilian Schell as Lenin (what fantastic make-up;I thought Lenin had been reincarnated)!The list goes on,a marvellous mix of International actors who blend beautifully to recreate the lives,times and crimes of Stalin,his entourage and his enemies,both real and Imagined.
I've studied Stalin a lot over the years and this film Is about as historically accurate as one could get.
I re-watched this film in order to put faces to the names, as I was studying for a Soviet History midterm.
However, the tendency of the film to separate the good guys (e.g., Bucharin) from the bad (es.g., Stalin, Beria, Ezhov) is not great historiography, but makes the film easier to digest.It is hard to know what effect the death of Stalin's wife had on him.
Duvall's performance is masterful, I think, because he manages to capture the LACK of essence of Stalin.
This movie details the life of Joseph Stalin, the notorious Communist leader, brought to life by a stunning Robert Duvall who brings out his greatest performance ever.Narrated by Stalin's daughter Svetlana, this begins with Stalin joining Lenin and the Bolsheviks in their fight against the government, eventually setting up their own government themselves.
Most of his biography is well known to us, however this movie brings out the character of Stalin as a psycho villain who did not trust a single person, not even his associates and took extreme measures to exterminate them all.
But in the end, he does not change and this leads to his downfall and death.Although the film does suffer in pacing, it is the performance of Robert Duvall that makes it worth watching.
His performances are real and endearing as he simply becomes Stalin by portraying the ruthlessness and paranoia of the mad Communist dictator; a man who could not be solved by his friends or family, and who could not be controlled by anyone even himself.
The supporting cast headed by Julia Ormond as Stalin's wife, Maximillian Schell as Lenin and Roshan Seth as Berin do well, but it is Duvall's show all the way.
History buffs will enjoy watching this, trying to put the pieces together about the madman known as Joseph Stalin.8 out of 10..
Over three hours long, the movie covers the dictator's life from his exile in Siberia when he took the name Stalin up to his death in 1953.
And the filmmakers remain more-or-less true to the facts, giving neither imaginative shock moments nor just plain history.Robert DuVall looks nice as Stalin,and his performance is also satisfactory.
Duval performance is really extraordinary and unforgettable as Stalin, and Julia Ormond (Nadya), M.
I'm not a great fan of biography films, but Stalin is an exception.
This film basically showcases the important aspects of the life the Russian leader Joseph Stalin.
Stalin features a powerful and riveting performance by Robert Duvall, as well as similarly great performances from the supporting actors including Maximillian Schell and Julia Ormond.
Overall, Stalin is must-watch film for those interested in biographies, historical figures and well, good movies..
First of all, this was the first movie I ever saw Robert Duvall in, and he does an exceptional job as he has done in every role he has ever had.
Also, it gave me a decent historical picture of Stalin which led to years of fascination with the man.
If you like Robert Duvall and great dialogue, I highly recommend it..
Robert Duvall manages to do a credible job in portraying the title character - Stalin.
The movie also shows what was Stalin's fundamental character flaw - his inability to trust, the cause of which remains unknown.
The movie shows that one had to be careful as to how they acted and what they said around Stalin, because Stalin was looking for any excuse to prove you an enemy of the revolution, which in turn meant being his enemy.
If one is interested in learning something about Joseph Stalin the person, then watch this movie..
I won't even go on about why Molotov's portrayal is an historic injustice (a scrawny nothing referred to in the film not as "Iron Arse" but rather "Iron Pants") or how Voroshilov's public denouncing of Stalin's actions to his face is absolutely ludicrous- the man widely-acclaimed as stupidest man in the whole Soviet Republic who facilitated the purge of the Red Army, accommodation with Hitler et cet.
I teach Soviet history in Communist China and ironically I have to use a proxy just to offer my thoughts as the ruling fascists have seen fit to block IMDb because it refers to a single film no-one has heard of.
Considering that he speaks and acts as if he is in one of his Godfather movies, the overall effect is extremely weird and rather one-dimensional.Perhaps Stalin was indeed simply a very nasty paranoid despot who murdered everyone in sight, but if so this film is much too long, since we get the message very early on.It might have helped if we could have had more of the history involved - for example how exactly Stalin managed to take power after Lenin's death and his tactics in playing off the right against the left (and vice versa).
The show trials could also have been exploited more, as could the wide extent of the purges - and also the minor matter of the Second World War, which is largely glossed over.As it is, just seeing Stalin liquidate the rest of the film's cast one by one is horrifying but rather monotonous..
After viewing this film it should be difficult not to place Duvall amongst the present day acting legends (DeNiro, Nicholson, Pacino, Hopkins, etc).
My whole point in this being, "Stalin" IS Duvall's picture.
If you enjoy well made, historically accurate films and Robert Duvall both you're in for a treat.
Robert Duvall gives his best performance ever, which is amazing, considering the stellar acting by the international cast.
People like him, like Hitler, like so many other embodiments of evil are exceedingly easy to dehumanize, to make them a devil and not a man.Stalin does a pretty decent job of showing the blindingly evil side of the man and still giving him a human feel.
It is cut short and anyone with even a simple enough grasp of Stalin to vaguely know who he is gets the feeling that they are missing out.They made Che, years later, into two epic films.
A life as important--and evil--of Stalin deserved more than a made-for-TV movie despite the quality..
Hollywood with the help of Czechoslovakian immigrate Ivan Passer and famous movie stars offers quite a simplified vision of a terrible man Stalin and his crimes.
I watched Stalin and think that it is a good portrayal of Stalin's life.
I would have liked to see more actors such as people playing Hitler instead of showing stock footage.
I would have liked to see more of Stalin's childhood in the movie and maybe some cold war clips near the end of his life.
This gives the movie a more personal touch to what his life was really like.
The movie also used Robert Conquest as one of the contributors, which is good because he wrote Stalin: Breaker of Nations in 1992, also at the time of this movie..
Much of the film focuses on Stalin's relationship his first wife, Nadezhda Alleluieva, which tends to dilute the more interesting plot elements.
The film also tends to humanize Stalin a bit too much, trying to show his 'tender' side, as well as many of the old Bolsheviks without discussing their own crimes.The filmmakers seem to be quite ignorant of the way many of the main characters looked and acted - strange given the tremendous access to research materials.
Robert Duvall's Stalin is highly reminiscent of an Italian gangster.
This is one of my favorite movies and Robert Duvall does an excellent job in his portrayal of Stalin, the most cruel dictator of the 20th century.
Personally, I did not think it was possible to make a rather objective film about Stalin.
Anyone with knowledge of Stalin and his cohorts will appreciate how well all the main characters are portrayed by the mainly British cast but with American Duvall at his very best.
I always appreciate historical accuracy and while some major events are missed and (perhaps through poor editing) not every situation and relationship between characters Is properly explained, this Is nevertheless a marvelous historical film almost on the scale of epic - It deserved general release and an extra half-hour would have gone a long way In tidying up the gaps In the story.
Duvall does a great Job as Stalin - the mannerisms, his icy coldness behind the smile - okay so his Russian accent Is a bit "off" In places but to criticize his performance Just for that would be grossly unfair.
TV movies are by nature generally "mild", being as they are aimed generally for family viewing, but a lack of bad language and sex scenes, and Indeed only a little blood (and no gore) Is a breath of fresh air - besides, none of that stuff Is needed here; we don't have to see the terror, we can feel It, we see It In the faces, hear It In the voices and Insinuations - It grows and pervades the whole film.
This Is the best TV Movie I have ever seen and Is definitely In my top 100 films..
and that is the motif for know few basic things about Stalin before see the film.
because Robert Duvall does a great job.
When it comes to mass murderers, they don't get much bigger or worse than the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
One of the few films from the west about him is the HBO produced docudrama "Stalin".
Made not long after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1992, it pretty accurately chronicles Stalin, from his rise in the Bolshevik party to the height of his monolithic power at the end of World War II.
Playing Stalin is Robert Duvall.
However, believe me when I tell you that not only does Duvall look and sound like Stalin through the use of good makeup and an accent, he BECOMES Stalin.
In fact, the more the movie went on, the less and less I saw him as Duvall and the more and more I saw him as the real Stalin.
It's a real testament to Duvall's ability as an actor, especially considering that Duvall is about as far away from an ethnic Georgian as you can get (Stalin was from the former Soviet Georgia).
I would even go as far to say that Duvall's portrayal of Stalin is perhaps the closest we have as to who the real Stalin was, a paranoid mass murderer who was just as much at ease condemning his former close comrades to death as he was starving the Russian peasants in order to pay for the industrialization of the Soviet Union.
Of course, Duvall's performance is the not the only good one here; the epic drama boasts an amazing supporting cast in the form of the late, great Maximilian Schell as Lenin, Julia Ormond as Stalin's suffering wife Nadya, Joan Plowright as Nadya's mother Olga, Roshan Seth as the treacherous Beria, and many more that I don't have the space for.
The film crew was granted unprecedented freedom to the Kremlin buildings after the fall of Soviet Union, as well as the dacha just outside Moscow that Stalin stayed at the most.
Some people have expressed disappointment that the film did not pay as much attention to Stalin's atrocities as maybe it could have and it is indeed true that we barely get a brief look at World War II from Stalin's viewpoint, the war that propelled him to his greatest heights of power.
Furthermore, I would argue that we do get a look at Stalin's crimes, albeit a subtle one, be it the scene where Nadya witnesses people being herded into cattle cars while passing through a train station or the general talk of people disappearing left and right throughout the film.
In short, "Stalin" is a film that one should watch, not only because of the importance of history but as a warning to future generations of what can happen when people collectively give up freedoms, checks and balances, their faith in God and what's right, and instead put all their hope in one man with absolute power over life and death.
I was worried that this film would have portrayed Glorious Comrade Stalin in a bad way, but, instead, it shows him in his true glorious light: he loved his kids and he knew how to deal with counter-revolutionary traitors.Unfortunately, the movie didn't explain well enough why it was necessary to have enemies of the people like Kirov, Bukharin, Yagoda, Zinoviev and Kamenev executed.While they mentioned that Svetlana was living in England, they should have mentioned that she defected to the west like the traitor to the Motherland she was..
Technically the film is a documentary; there is narration by the supposed daughter of Stalin, and there are a few minutes of real-life footage from the USSR However, it stands out more as a bio-drama.Stalin appeals as a protagonist in the first years of his Soviet leadership.
Robert Duvall is a stinky actor with a smelly accent..
A movie about Stalin should be a lot more interesting but Duval just has no clue how to portray such a complex character as Stalen.
They should have better explained at the beginning of the film how Stalin goes from being rejected by the army to being his hero Lenin's right hand man.
Robert Duvall is a marvelous actor and he delivers an extraordinary performance as Stalin, one of the most bloody dictators of the 20th century.
Stalin killed 50 million of people, twice as Hitler, and it has called my attention the fact that we have many movies depicting the cruelty of the Nazis (which I think is good because the victims deserve that tribute and I identify with their suffering), and just a few films depicting the cruelty of the Communists.
"Josef Stalin's crimes caused the deaths of tens of millions of Soviet Citizens," the epilogue tells us, but you might not know it from watching this film.
But Robert Duvall slogs through the role of Stalin as he would a puddle of mud.
Duval absolutely nails Stalin.
One big one that comes to mind right off the top of my head is the time when Voroshilov screams at Stalin for killing off all good generals and now losing to Hitler because of that.
I think it's worth a 7/10 but given the focus on Stalin's way of thinking, I give it a 8/10.Some actors play well, others more like on a theater stage.
With Stalin HBO outdoes itself and it can be attributed entirely to Robert Duvall -which is not to say that the rest of the cast is not top notch, it is.
Robert Duvall captures this and make the character likable while he goes on his merry murdering way.
Austrian beers?" "Yes, but I like Triple X." Kristl had said."No, he wasn't even though the movie is more focused on his private life than I would have expected.
" "Yeah." "The pity with this movie is that you somehow does not get to grips with the person of Stalin..
Even though Stalin is the subject of the movie, it feels like you are watching him from the outside, but never get in his inside.Never find his motivation or his side of the story.
It looks like Duvalls is wearing a mask.
His facial expression is almost non-existent." "I like Robert Duvall, he is a good actor, but they hamstrung him with that mask and thus the movie suffers.
Robert Duvall Does Not Look in any way remotely like Joseph Stalin.