THE FALL OF BERLIN: The Movie
As you may have recalled, I did an entry about a long forgotten war movie made by the Soviet Union in 1968. The Movie was titled The Great Battle and was internationally released by Columbia Pictures in 1971 and dubbed in English. What is possibly the most shameful is that the English version of this movie may actually be languishing deep inside the bowels of the studio’s archive vault to this very day. This is a model example of Hollywood on dumb mode. There is a lot more to be said about this movie. First, I want to talk about another war movie that was long forgotten and overlooked by military history/movie buffs everywhere. It has a rather interesting history all its own. The movie was simply titled The Fall of Berlin.
The Fall of Berlin is a war movie made by the Soviet Union and released in movie theaters throughout the U.S.S.R in 1949 (about four years after the end of World war two). This was in celebration of Joseph Stalin’s 70th birthday. This was a war that begins with the German invasion of Russia and ends with the fall of Berlin.
There were three elements put into this movie:
(1) The romance between a steel worker and a school teacher with the war as a backdrop. Both were separated from the German invasion. The school teacher was captured from the Germans and sent to a slave labor camp. The steel worker joined the Red Army to take on the Germans from Stalingrad to Berlin. Amazingly enough, the school teacher survived her ordeal in captivity (and not much for wear I might add) and is reunited with her steel worker boyfriend after the fall of Berlin.
(2) The depiction of key historical figures (Stalin, Hitler, Roosevelt, Churchill, etc.) of the war. Perhaps the oddest part is that the Germans, Americans, and British are all speaking Russian! That would not be unusual, given that in American and British war movies that the Germans and Japanese speak in English instead of their respected language. Hitler was portrayed as more of a comic book villain
(3) The massive (literally!) battle scenes between the Germans and Russians. Amazingly enough the Russians had vast quantities of captured German hardware that was still intact. The Soviets still had a surplus of hardware, especially T-34/85 tanks, in good working order. They were all put to good use in the movie. That very same hardware would later be used in a more massive Soviet 1969 mini-series epic Osvobozhdenie.
Probably the obvious goofs are that the movie was too pro-Soviet and that Stalin was portrayed as being god-like. An interesting inaccuracy was that immediately after the battle for Berlin; Stalin arrives by plane and is surrounded by the cheering Red Army and recently released prisoners from concentration camps. In reality, Stalin never set foot on Berlin -ever.
Despite being over-jingoistic, the movie still deserves mention nonetheless. If you should ever get a rare opportunity to see this movie, as I did, just ignore the over dramatics and watch the battle scenes. Such an undertaking has become a lost art in filmmaking. I challenge any film maker to try to recreate such battle scenes without the aid of CGI.
Original 1949 movie:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5AF343607E125216&search_query=the+fall+of+berlin+1949
