You can't hate this movie just because it was made for Soviet intent and purposes. It's a fascinating work of art. While the sotryline is lame and overwritten by the stands of historical figures, it doesn't lose much of its interest. Tchiaoureli, directs one of the very first "kolossal" productions at the time, a 2h45min long picture, depicting the war, the battlefields, the camps, the very last hours of the III Reich and the inevitable triumph of Stalin on the steps of his private jet.The cinematography is quite brilliant, the color very rich and dense, there's a lot of depth, the special effects were kept inside the picture, which gives these spectacular shots of the battlefields. Quite remarkable how Tchiaoureli modeled these decors, sound fx and the burning ruins of Berlin. You have to praise the effort (even though at times the director must've ran out of energy or money for unconvincing fights at the end and real shots of actual footage of Soviet military fanfare ) for trying to reconstitute a catastrophic moment of history into a work of art, tied up in between satire and and spectacle. Hitler's wedding is absolutely hysterical. One of the best scenes of the entire movie. You have to admit, it is hilarious to a degree to see this criminal wedding Frau Eva after being so sure, so sure he would raise Moscow to the ground, and there he is standing 6 meters underground marrying his mistress without much conviction knowing this is the end. A very, very humiliating moment for Hitler, add to that the background orchestra which intentionally makes it even more ridiculous.Many of course tried to disapprove this opposition between the hysterical one-dimensional angrily demoniac Hitler and the poised clever-thinking Stalin, but truth is at these stages of the war, it was pretty much that way. Hitler tried to blow up Germany if it could save his Empire from Soviet conquest. Hell if h ran out of population to enslave and kill, he would've attacked penguins in Antarctica that's how lunatic he was. But be there as it may, the movie is undeniably successful in the mastering of montage, the academic style, a powerful reconstruction of the context, magnificent settings, the scene where Goerring shows his gallery to Krupp quite impressive, the camps at Kalinigrad, the drowning of the German population in the metro under Hitler's orders, how despite all the devastating shooting and bombing the landscape and color are always bright which is interesting, there's an attempt to clearly show "Mother Russia" as never scorned by the War. It's funny the attempt to portray realism and sensationalism. anecdotic behavior and outrageous caricaturing (the scene where Hitler meets Orsenigo and his low humor is met with fake applause and laughs by his advisors). The moments of grave drama are never directed with a tragic tone but the satyrical ones are. It's a very interesting movie that reverses the conventional wisdoms of movie making of the time, with Soviet movie making culture. Not quite Eisenstein or Donskoï we get that, but I would say it's a good compromise between political judgment and artistic research.Also, praise the works of Leonid Kosmatov, Vladimir Kaplounovsky and Shostakovitch's music is excellent, a composer of great talent.

I purchased a DVD of this film in order to see a Soviet-made WW II film made during the peak of the "Stalin cult" and during the early years of the cold war. I wanted to see the impact of Soviet propaganda on WW II films at this time and therefore found it very interesting in that regard, although the film itself is somewhat muddled. It awkwardly weaves a love story between a simple Stakhanovite (a big producer in the steel mills) and a schoolteacher with the ebb and flow of the war with Nazi Germany, and lo and behold they are reunited (she was sent to Germany as a slave laborer) at the bottom of the conquered Reichstag in the heart of Berlin at the end of the war. And Stalin arrives at the end of the battle for Berlin to receive a grateful kiss from the schoolteacher at the Reichstag and receive the adulation of both the Soviet armies and of the captives of all nations liberated by the Red Army in their various languages. In addition, there are the "stock" characters beloved in Soviet demonology: The scheming British capitalist who intends to get strategic metals to the Reich from Sweden, the Vatican emissary to the Reich in full bishop's regalia who praises Hitler, the Nazi officer who feigns surrender only to throw a grenade at his Soviet captors. Churchill at Yalta is portrayed as scheming and untrustworthy; he asks Stalin to toast George VI to which the proletarian Generalissimo refuses. Hitler is portrayed in equal parts buffoonish and crazy, so much so that we wonder, given this portrayal, how he was able to captivate and inspire, at least for much of the war, his generals and party comrades. Stalin, of course, is portrayed as calm and never fearful, and full of wisdom.But it should be noted that much of the military history is accurate. Although the film (obviously) does not cover Stalin's decapitation of the Red Army in the great purge of 1937 and his refusal to listen to Soviet intelligence as well as warnings from Churchill that a Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union was imminent in the spring of 1941, which were both disastrous for the Soviets, it does show his decision to stay in Moscow in the fall of 1941, when the Germans launched their "final offensive" against Moscow and much of his government was panicking. It's fair to say that remaining in Moscow improved the morale of the Red Army fighting only 30-40 km from the Kremlin. To expedite the conquest of Berlin, Stalin sets the demarcation line between Marshall Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front and Marshall Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front right in the center of Berlin to foster a rivalry between the two commanders in capturing Berlin. We hear the denigration of the Reich's resistance against the Anglo-American armies while Nazi Germany fights fanatically against the invading Red Army (This was only true of the last weeks of the war when the Germans were desperate to surrender to the western allies and avoid the feared Russians.) The depiction of the fighting is very good in places, but looks stilted in others. An officer tells his fighting men that wherever we go: "Stalin is with us." The director had access to some five Soviet divisions. The massing of artillery at the April 16th offensive on Berlin (from the Oder River), complete with searchlights, looked impressive. I believe the 1st Belorussian Front had something like an artillery piece every 10 meters for miles! And the final assault on the Reichstag also looked very realistic. Even though the Reichstag hadn't been used since the fire of 1933, the Red Army viewed it as the ultimate symbol of Nazi Germany whose destruction meant the final extinction of the Reich.It should be noted that Marshall Zhukov is not treated well in this film. One scene is titled "Zhukov's Error", and when Stalin makes his fictional visit to Berlin after the Reichstag's been taken, he meets three generals (Konev, Rokossovsky, and Chuikov) but not Marshall Zhukov, his most successful commander. Stalin feared Zhukov's popularity after the war, and he was subsequently demoted to minor postings by the time the film was made in 1949.The film ends with Stalin "dropping out of the clouds" from his magnificent airplane (reminiscent of Hitler in Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will", as many have noted) and spreading his benevolence to the assembled masses in the heart of Berlin. Our "Engineer of Souls" pronounces his wish for "peace and happiness" for all mankind. In actuality, at the time of the events being depicted (1945) he was preparing another repressive crackdown on individual liberties, and at the time the film was made (1949) he was close to giving his approval to Kim II Sung to invade South Korea. Khrushchev always viewed the film's director, Mikheil Chiaureli, as a hack, and the film was withdrawn from circulation during the de-stalinization campaign beginning in 1953. But 38 million Soviet citizens watched it in upon its release in 1950 and it remains an excellent example of Soviet historiography.

Perhaps not the most sophisticated film ever made about World War II, but this 1949 Soviet film is a rousing, solid, popular piece of filmmaking. Reportedly made as a present for Stalin's 70th birthday, who took great interest in its production, it was made with considerable production values (for that time) and in great Agfacolor film, taken as war reparation from the Germans. It's a propaganda film alright, but is very well made. As far as I know this was also the first fiction film dealing with the fall of Berlin (though the film, despite its title, deals with all the war in the eastern front, starting from the German invasion of Russia and not just its ending). I'm sure its intended audience – the Soviet masses who just have been through WW2, appreciated the movie. Hitler and his minions (who all speak in Russian in the film) are portrayed as grotesque, pathetic buffoons – but this is not necessarily a bad thing since they are the comic relief of the movie. Also fun is the portrayal of Roosevelt and Churchill at the Yalta conference, the American president is shown as naive and slightly befuddled, the British premier a mean, conniving old man. Stalin, meanwhile, is portrayed through the film as a wise, gentle, all knowing commander leading his country into victory (never mind his well recorded nervous breakdown at the start of Operation Barbarossa). Summing up, despite some historical inaccuracies, this is a very good film, especially for those interested in World War II (note: in this review, I deal with both part I and part II, since the division of the movie in two halves is artificial).

I had the privilege of seeing the unreleased (as of this writing) DVD containing a restoration of the film utilizing the original negative. While the restoration isn't pristine (some scratches still appear), it manages to restore and maintain the coloration of the German Agfacolor stock that was used. Check out the comparison between the original and the restoration in the special features. The total film is 151 minutes long, split into two parts but I really didn't feel it bogged down too much. It is in Russian but has English subtitles. There is some good outdoor cinematography especially in the scene that represents Germany's invasion of Russia, though most of the interior work is rather stilted with a few shots that show brilliance for its time period.The score is brilliantly done by Dimitri Shostakovich befitting the epic scope that is presented.As revisionist propaganda, this film was created as a valentine to Stalin for his 70th birthday presenting the Russian side of World War II and Stalin's steadfastness.For the most part though, the propaganda in the film is rather subtle in its views of the Allies, but blistering in its portrayals of Hitler, Gehring and Goebbels. Hilter is presented from the very beginning as a man who has already gone off the deep end (which I'm not sure is inaccurate). Though I must admit that it appears that the filmmaker was attempting to show that the British and the Americans did not care enough about the Russian front which was Stalin's view of their behavior in the war.There is a framing device that drives the "story" along in a romance between a Russian steelworker and a Russian teacher. When the Nazi's invade, she is captured and taken to a camp and he joins the fight so that he can find her. We follow him through the major battles though the time line skips the negative parts of the war for the Russians and presents primarily their victories. He manages to be at every one including the Fall of Berlin which ends the film. Of course there is a happy ending as if there is any doubt about it. It appears that Russians of that time period used cliché story lines as much as Hollywood.Most of the actors look creepily like the historical figures they are except the actor playing FDR. He was shown looking fairly frail which is not the image that we have of him in the US. The actor playing Stalin in the film had portrayed him in Russian films since 1939 and would continue to play Stalin in all but one of his films after this one. He is a dead ringer with Stalin's mannerisms down pat.I have to admit that there were times that I laughed, especially at the portrayal of Hitler. The performance was so over the top at times that I half expected him to pull out some mustard to go with his scenery chewing.Of course, being a propaganda film, the facts are skewed to favor Stalin and the Russians and even twisted to some degree. The Yalta meeting is a good example of that. There is also dramatized scene of Stalin arriving in Berlin to great acclaim that did not actually happen.Overall it is a rarity that is interesting to film and WWII buffs who would like to see what the Russians thought of the US and the rest of world. I've watched many propaganda films through the years (both American and Eastern Bloc) but this one is truly epic in scope. When this is released, I would recommend if you are interested in the subject to pick it up.