Hacker Cinema
Stalingrad
Сталинград
2013 · Film · 131 min
Directed by Fyodor Bondarchuk
A band of determined Russian soldiers fight to hold a strategic building in their devastated city against a ruthless German army, and in the process become deeply connected to a Russian woman who has been living there.
1 positivefrom 1 commenter
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
1 comment on Hacker News
You don't need to convince me Overlord was very impressive, because I fully agree.
It seems we possibly agree Bagration was more impactful, but our disagreement is whether it was as impressive. I'll argue that it was: the scale was humongous, and in war, this means more chance of fuckups or logistical nightmares. Scale in troops & territory is a huge source of trouble (just ask Hitler...). Military deception was practiced by all sides, but the Soviets took maskirovka to an art form. Not only were there feinted strategic offensives (with the potential to become real as plan B), but huge troop formations moved one way during daytime and retraced their steps during the night. Radio discipline exercised atypically for the Red Army. The Germans later claimed not to be fully taken in, but really... that's what they would claim. Reality shows otherwise and their army was shattered.
As for whether it's as iconic... well, "iconic" is an ill-defined term anyway. "Most iconic" in the Western world is just because, like I argued, the Eastern Front is way less known and depicted in movies. It's almost the definition of "lesser known", of which there are many reasons (Cold War thinking being a big reason initially). Overlord is more iconic in the West because it has been brought to the forefront in multiple accounts, movies and games.
Imagine if there were American movies about Bagration like there are for Normandy, "Saving Conscript Petrov". There are a million interesting and amazing stories you could tell set during this massive operation, just like Private Ryan or Band of Brothers.
Stalingrad in contrast is indeed iconic -- possibly as iconic as Overlord, because everyone knows about Stalingrad too -- but regrettably not too many good movies have been made about it. I've mentioned "Enemy at the Gates" (sigh!) but there's also that terrible Russian movie called... "Stalingrad"? Yuck. About the only one that's decent is ironically the German "Stalingrad" movie, but that one mostly shows the German perspective.