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Stalingrad: A Movie to Rent

Stalingrad: A Movie to Rent
By
Robert E. Reis

John-JacquesAnnaud released his movie Stalingrad in 2001 and created a scandal in France. (It was released in the United States as Enemy at the Gates.)

It is easy to meet Communists, Socialists, Stalinists, Maoists, Castroites,. In Paris. Stalingrad is the name of a large Metro station in the city. The Communist Party headquarters is located at the Place Colonel Fabien – named after the French Communists leader who told his resistance forces that Paris was worth 200,000 dead.

Annaud spent enormous sums recreating a facsimile of Stalingrad. He included a famous fountain surrounded by happy children in gold. He also built monstrous statues of Stalin that poor Saddam Hussein may have used as an inspiration for the famous statue recently pulled down in Baghdad before the eyes of an enthusiastic crowd of six.

He chose an American actor to play the main German character and British actors to play the main Russian characters. Ed Harris plays major Koenig. Jude Law plays the Russian hero, Vasili Zaitzev. Joseph Fiennes plays Danilov, the political commissar. Bob Hoskins plays Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s representative at Stalingrad.  Rachel Weisz plays Tanya, the love interest of Zaitsev and Danilov.

The Germans are the villains throughout the film. That did not cause Communists to riot at some movie theaters in France. What one sees caused the scandal.

The movie opens with black stain spreading over a map of Europe from Germany. A narrator makes the ritual reference to Nazi jackboots.

Zaitsev is in packed freight or cattle car on a train taking Russian draftees to Stalingrad. He sees and stares at Tanya who is in the car with some other civilians reading. Zaitsev, like most of the Russian draftees, is fair-haired and tall. Tanya is dark haired and short.

The train stops. The civilians are ordered off. More draftees are packed into the cars. The doors are then padlocked.

The train stops across the Volga River from Stalingrad. Political commissars with megaphones and pistol firing Soviet political policemen encourage the weaponless soldiers to run to decrepit boats that will take them across the river to burning city.

Crossing the river under German air attack many of the draftees are killed. Soviet political policemen kill more by shooting any draftees who jump into the river.

The Red Army gives rifled to only half of the draftees; the others are only given a single clip of bullets each. They are told that when the soldier with the rifle is killed the soldier with the clip is to pick up his rifle and shoot.

They give Zaitsev bullets. As they march to the front he continually mutters to himself. “I need a rifle.”

Soviet political police officers wait for the draftees at the front. They tell them that cowards and traitors will be shot. Retreat is forbidden. They order the draftees to charge an entrenched German position across an open field with no artillery preparation nor covering fire. An enormous stature of Stalin looms over the battlefield. The attack fails and the Soviet political policemen machinegun the retreating draftees. None make it back alive.

Annaud presents the first German atrocity.

German loudspeakers tell the Russians to surrender and not to die for bloodthirsty Comrade Stalin. None surrender. A German units drives across the battlefield shooting the dead or wounded Russian draftees.

Political commissar Danilov and Zaitsev meet each other by chance while hiding among the corpses in the famous children’s fountain.

Zaitsev’s patriotic ardor has not been diminished by being sent unarmed into a suicidal attack and seeing his friends shot by the Soviet political police officers. He shoots five Germans and becomes bound in friendship with Danilov.

The German atrocity retrospectively becomes simple prudence.

Khrushchev crosses the Volga and enters the city. While Danilov and a group of political commissars wait, he interrogates the Soviet army commander and gives him the choice of suicide or arrest. He then leaves the general alone and waits with the political commissars for the detonation of the general’s pistol.

Khrushchev canvasses the political commissars for suggestions. One suggests that they shoot all the other generals who have retreated. Another suggests that they shoot their chiefs of staff too. A third political commissar suggests that their families be deported as well. Khrushchev mutters, “That’s all been done.”

Danilov suggests the army newspaper be issued again extolling stories of heroism.

He tells Khrushchev that he knows one hero. They decide to use Zaitsev as an example. Newspapers all over the Soviet Union relate the impressive total dead German officers that Zaitsev runs up as a member of the Soviet Army sniper division.

Danilov and Zaitsev meet Tanya, a boy called Sasha and Sasha’s mother.

So far, Annaud has stuck close to the facts. Except for Sasha and his mother, the characters and events ring true.

Major Koenig arrives on a special train from Germany. He has volunteered to remove the Zaitsev problem. He is described as the commander of the German sniper school at Zossen and an aristocrat. Annaud forgets to give him a noble “von”.
The movie becomes a duel between Koenig and Zaitsev.

Ed Harris is impeccable, skillful and professional

Danilov persuades Tanya to use her university training in German as a translator at the Soviet headquarters.

Danilov and Tanya identify themselves as Jews.

Annaud inserts an obligatory ritual reference to the Holocaust when Tanya asks Danilov to get her transferred out of headquarters and into the sniper division. She explains that she had decoded a German report describing how a transport of Russian civilians had been sent out of Stalingrad. He mother and father were on the list. The message explained the Germans stopped the train on a bridge over a river, tied the prisoners together two-by-two, and then shot one of each pair so the dead would drag the living into the river. ´They wanted to save bullets,” she says.

Annaud must have remembered that it was not the Germans who were short of bullets.

The duel between Zaitsev and Koenig is dramatic. I will not ruin it for you.

Annaud introduces another Russian sniper named Kulikov whose dialogue could not have pleased the leftists in France. He tells how he had been sent to the German sniper school during the Hitler-Stalin Pact. When the war came he was arrested and tortured by the Soviet political police for having gone to Germany on Comrade Stalin’s orders. He explains that he has “no illusions about the land of Socialism and universal bliss.”

The movie follows it subtle method of presenting “atrocities” by the Germans that are explicable, condonable or justified by the circumstances.

One involves little Sascha.

Throughout this movie Annaud selects many actors who do not look like tall fair-haired blue-eyed Slavs for the roles of political commissars and political police officers. They do not look like close kin to the draftees they send in on massive suicide attacks.

This was noted by some very angry people in France

Posted by Robert Reis on Friday, August 31, 2007 at 09:47 AM in Revisionism
Comments (17) | Tell a friend

Comments:

Posted by Constantin von Hoffmeister on August 31, 2007, 10:07 AM | #

Why is there a metro station named “Stalingrad” in Paris?

Constantin

Posted by Fred Scrooby on August 31, 2007, 12:18 PM | #

“The movie follows it subtle method of presenting ‘atrocities’ by the Germans” (—from the log entry)

The German Army and Waffen-SS committed atrocities but fewer than the Americans, the Russians, or the Japs.  Of the major armies fighting on the ground in Europe they were the most disciplined, best led, and — together with the Brits and Italians, the least atrocity-prone.  (The Brit bombing campaign on the other hand was, to a large extent, a major atrocity; the American as well of course.)

Posted by Fred Scrooby on August 31, 2007, 12:26 PM | #

What is the point of Constantin’s rhetorical question?  As everyone knows, for twenty years after the war ended France was heavily communist, the communists garnering a quarter of the vote in every election.

Posted by Constantin von Hoffmeister on August 31, 2007, 01:15 PM | #

It was not a “rhetorical question.” What is the point of you assuming that it was?

Constantin

Posted by Robert Reis on August 31, 2007, 01:42 PM | #

For the same reason they have a Metro Robespierre and a Metro Danton; Leftist majority in the city.

Cheers,
RER

Posted by Constantin von Hoffmeister on August 31, 2007, 01:51 PM | #

But Robespierre and Danton are part of French history while Stalingrad is clearly not. When was the Stalingrad metro station inaugurated?

Constantin

Posted by Bo Sears on August 31, 2007, 03:38 PM | #

Constantin, in the USA, we have search engines that allow us to plug in topics, and learn about topics. In this case, the Bolshevik-controlled Wikipedia gives up these dates and information about the metro station that fascinates you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stations_of_the_Paris_Métro

By odd coincidence, another station was named for Imperator Roosevelt II, another historically-Bolshevik-controlled politician in the USA in the same year. But don’t believe everything you read on Wikipedia in general, it is a wildly slanted web encyclopedia.

Posted by Bo Sears on August 31, 2007, 03:41 PM | #

That didn’t work out well. Try this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stations_of_the_Paris_Métro

Posted by Bo Sears on August 31, 2007, 03:45 PM | #

Okay, go to http://www.yahoo.com and type in Metro Stations Paris. That should give you the information you seek.

Somehow the web site address on the desired web page is changed when copied and pasted. Oh, well.

Posted by Maguire on August 31, 2007, 04:17 PM | #

To Robert Reis,

From your review it sounds like a worthwhile movie.

What’s being documented and described is one mechanism of genocide the Judeo Communists used to kill off huge numbers of people with blue eyes and fair hair.  These were the ‘punishment battalions’ used to drive troops into battle.  Vladimir Rezun ("Victor Suvorov") described these in his books on the Soviet Army.  Rezun mentioned the Stavka concentrated at least 27 of these meat grinder type of battalions against the German 6th Army at Stalingrad. 

It’s all pure fiction anyway.  None of this ever existed, given CvH’s assurance to us that no such thing as Bolshevik-Communist driven genocide ever occurred.

Maguire

Posted by Matra on August 31, 2007, 04:43 PM | #

When was the Stalingrad metro station inaugurated?

Right after the Second World War. I believe Stalingrad station is located in an area of the city best avoided - the 19th arrondissement - unless you wish to experience the old Red Belt’s vibrant youth of today.

There are also streets named after FDR, JFK, Woodrow Wilson, George Washington and Winston Churchill. It is unlikely there will ever be a Blvd George W Bush.

I’m glad to see another movie review. Didn’t someone once suggest a movie section here at MR?

Posted by jonathan on August 31, 2007, 04:51 PM | #

Bo, you may know that in Orange County (south L.A.) there seems to be lots of street names of Germanic reference. Perhaps I was seeing more into it than actually what it was, but there were a few others besides the one I remember, “Heil Ave.”

Coupled with my reading of Phillip K. Dick’s “Radio free Albumeth” http://www.philipkdick.com/works_novels_radiofree.html
at the time of my California visit, I wonder if you have any thoughts regarding the two given your situation on the left coast. No intentions to be smart-aleky, I enjoy your comments greatly, and as I noted before, Resisting Defamation is a wonderful resource.

Posted by Fr John on September 01, 2007, 11:55 AM | #

“Perhaps I was seeing more into it than actually what it was, but there were a few others besides the one I remember, “Heil Ave.”

Jonathan: I once was visiting a friend in San Diego, and saw a street sign that said
‘Havateur Way.’ Until I pronounced it with sloppy American diction, I did not realize that it was a variation on the slogan Burger King made famous.

Story is, the contractor of the subdivision kept running into problems with the developer, and had to compromise over and over, until finally he just adopted the slogan, “Have it your way.”

Needless to say, when his house was built on one of the last streets, he was asked to name the street, and he did.. to the memory of conflicts in business and real estate, to this day.
Enjoy!

Posted by JB on September 01, 2007, 02:25 PM | #

Robert you should watch Saints and Soldiers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us-0akvhbFE

You can probably rent it at your local video store

Posted by Bill on September 02, 2007, 04:47 PM | #

Talking about films – not so far off topic I hope

Film – A scene from - ‘In Which We Serve’ - Noel Coward - David Lean.  1942

Location - A port somewhere in the south of England - June 1940

Wartime destroyer HMS Torrin is docked alongside.  In complete silence, an exhausted contingent of the BEF, (British Expeditionary Force - who have just been snatched from the beaches of Dunkirk) is disembarking down the gangplank.  These demoralised men, (some injured) shuffle past immaculate uniformed nurses who dispense tender care. The troops shuffle into ranks of three on the dockside, they are a beaten and demoralised, they are stunned. 

From up above, leaning on the rails of the upper deck, tired seaman Shorty Blake (John Mills) and his seaman mate are enjoying a long overdue smoke whilst silently observing the scene below.

In the distant dockland scene, (out of the silence) can be heard the faint strains of stirring British military marching music, accompanying this sound is another sound and sight of crisp metallic ringing on the cobble-stoned quayside, as an approaching (indistinct) soldier, marches along the quayside, toward the ship and assembled survivors.

The smartly approaching soldier is a senior NCO, (Guardsman perhaps) as he approaches, he surveys the wreckage of these once proud men, he stiffens his demeanour and in doing so transforms the whole scene. (pure Lean genius), his appearance is the epitome of British military bearing, severe peaked cap, chest out chin in, flat stomached and creases in the trousers you can cut your fingers on, all topped off by a dazzling pair of shining ‘bulled up’ boots.

This suddenly transformation gives the scene a whole new meaning, the arrival of a new spirit in the form of the immaculate Sergeant Major infuses within the men, a fresh sense of purpose and hope for the future.

Throughout this unfolding scene, the British marching tune (wish I knew what it is) is gaining (ever so slightly) in volume, the Sergeant Major stiffens and smartly addresses the ranks with a simple, quietly uttered “Turn to the left, quick march” at which point, the incongruous cavalcade, trundle exhaustively along the quayside, exiting the scene all the time accompanied by the now full volume of their regimental march. (most stirring stuff) - bit like Colonal Bogey - Bridge Over the River Quai.

The camera pans to the upper deck rail where Shorty Blake and his mate are still watching, breaking the almost complete silence of the whole scene, Shorty Blake turns to his mate and utters “If I weren’t so bleedin’ tired I’d give’em a cheer, and that’s no error”

The almost total absence of dialogue throughout this scene is stunning Lean brilliance, they just don’t make’m like that anymore.

------------------------------------------------------------

To me, (and presumably the then wartime audience) the unsaid wartime propaganda message was amply evident, the dramatic arrival of the Sergeant Major was obviously the arrival of a new era, he was the future that represented the means of transforming this ragged bunch fit to invade the Beaches of Normandy.  Where is our Sergeant Major to come from today?

IMHO, This film is a David Lean masterpiece, anyone wishing to fleetingly capture the pure essence of yester-year Britain, then I can thoroughly recommend it.  I warn you, it has been said that by doing so, grown men have been reduced to tears.

Footnote.  It has been a long time since I saw this film – please forgive any glaring errors.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on September 02, 2007, 07:24 PM | #

Good post by Bill.

Posted by Rusty Mason on September 04, 2007, 05:07 PM | #

“I’m glad to see another movie review. Didn’t someone once suggest a movie section here at MR?”

I did.  I thought a section in the BB might be dedicated to it, if some software modifications were made.

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