REVIEW: Stalingrad 20th Anniversary Blu-Ray

Runtime: 139 Mins
Rated: R/18
What To Expect: Still the best movie about the Battle of Stalingrad

This coming November, the 20th Anniversary of Stalingrad (1993) will be celebrated with a new Blu-Ray release.  Well, that won’t exactly be the anniversary of it, but after some delays I suppose we could call it the 20th anniversary of the VHS release.  This review will head back to the old meat grinder once again.  It was kind of a first, this one.  At least the first big movie in the newly unified Germany to address the Armageddon that took place fifty years earlier.  With a caveat of course, that it would be a movie with no heroes.  Director Joseph Vilsmaier balked at this idea at first, a movie with no defined hero, but a trip to former Stalingrad (Volgograd) itself soon changed his mind.  Something about the city hit him hard, he said.  So he made the movie.  And it was good.

It doesn’t surprise me that being on the ground altered Vilsmaier’s decision to turn down directorial duties.  The Battle of Stalingrad is not like the rest, no matter how gallant other battles are hyped as.  D-Day?  Forget about it, the western Allies suffered 10,000 casualties to successfully invade mainland Europe.  That number was racked up every day at Stalingrad, for five ceaseless months.  Simple maths, two million casualties in what was categorically the bloodiest battle in human history.  Stalingrad, the 1993 movie, covers the German entrance through the eyes of a new Lieutenant Witzland (Thomas Kretschmann – is there any German WW2 movie this man hasn’t been in?!), but more so the disastrous exit and imploding morale from the German side.

Stalingrad is a fine epic, with battle scenes which we today will appreciate as pragmatic and ‘authentic’, hailing from a time when craftsmen and stuntmen still earned their way and the only computer was the calculator laying around to keep an eye on expenditure.  My only gripe, looking at this Blu-Ray version recently, is that the acting is sometimes naive, slightly theatrical, almost like its from the Audie Murphy era. The film is also overly keen to spell out its condemnation of history, which leads to clichés.  Still, it’s still the best movie covering this corner of WW2 history.  Miles, light years even,  ahead of the vomitous Russian movie of the same name, which was released last year.  Oh how we don’t appreciate the oldies (it has been 20 years!).

From memory, this Blu-Ray transfer, offered up by Arrow Films, hasn’t changed since the initial release.  It was fine then, not spectacular, and I’m maintaining the same interpretation of it here.  It’s not the sharpest picture in the world, but it does excel with colours and contrast, which compliments the cinematography.  Showing its age though is the remaining 2.0 audio, but it does its best as  the lossless DTS output does envelope the senses quite effectively.  I must protest however, for a 20th anniversary release, this movie is skeletal in terms of extras.  There’s an old (old) ‘making of documentary’, which is basically Joseph Vilsmaier being prodded with obvious and non-intrusive questions in between takes.  And it only lasts five minutes.

If you haven’t picked up Stalingrad before on Blu-Ray, I’d advise this version.  Even better if you haven’t seen the movie at all.