Goryachiy sneg

Hi !

This film title means "Burning snow" and this is a story of Soviet artillery soldiers who broke German tank divisions' rescue operation for besieged German army in Stalingrad, on account of their own lives.

This is a rare purely combat-focused Soviet film where Stalin and top red army generals are never appeared. Even the commanding red army general on the spot is not named.

In such a sense, this film is a bit closer to American war film which always focused on ordinary individual soldiers. Also camera work on this film is excellent and piling up the scenes to the climax of battle.

Also actor Boris Tokarev showed his excellent play on his roll of Lieutenant Kuznezov and he symbolized feeling of sadness of war without such words from his mouth.

I believe that Boris Tokarev was one of the most favourite soviet actor specially by young females during 1970s.

In November, 1942, near the Volga, Stanlingrad is under siege of Commander Friederich Paulus and his 330,000 men. The Russian high command unleashes an operation to protect the Mishkova River to avoid that about four hundred tanks join Paulus' army. The Soviet artillery soldiers protect their position with their lives in a bloodshed with few survivors.

"Goryachiy Sneg" a.k.a. "Burning Snow" is a is a Soviet war movie based on one of the bloodiest battles ever. The screenplay is irregular with good battle scenes but a little confused regarding the motivations of the characters specially the leaders of the operation. The romance between Lt. Nikolai Kuznetsov and Nurse Tanya is kind of silly and only a diversion in the lead story. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Neve Ardente" ("Ardent Snow")

A good epic film about young artillerymen, who got into the heat of battle.

Searchanddestroy-1 and Aylmer and Theo Robertson and OzMovieWatcher, you are completely wrong because you don't know anything at all, firstly, the detachments in the film is good for its time and despite problems with sound during gun recoil and plywood of some tanks, the film is very the battle scenes are well staged, the sound, editing and decoration, the fact that the film shows heroically detachments, there is nothing wrong with that, they often participated in battles and showed themselves worthy there, although the film embellishes them from a pro-Soviet position, but evenly also, some enemy at the gate, on the contrary, falsely demonizes them, presenting an anti-Soviet position, and although the film really has little dramaturgy compared to other Soviet films, it is still present, although the film itself probably was not intended so, it is also incorrect to compare it with the film Stalingrad, it came out in 93 after the collapse of the USSR, and even after that you can remember some kind of enemy at the gates of 2002 and how Soviet soldiers are falsely shown there, and Frank Wisbar's HUNDE, WOLT IHR EWIG LEBEN, of course, is not so anti-Soviet like a doctor from Stalingrad in 1958, but in general, in terms of showing the enemy, he is no different from a Goryachiy sneg and finally, empathy is possible and necessary, since they did not have any superiority, both qualitative and quantitative, and there was no actual small saturn operation at the beginning of the German counteroffensive , the action of which takes place in the film, initially at the beginning of 1943 a large-scale operation Saturn was planned, but due to the start of the German counteroffensive it had to be canceled and then it was redone into Operation Small Saturn and was started after the events of the film and in general the story should not be based on films study.

To all those folks who know about battle of Stalingrad from the Beevor's books and movie "Enemy at the Gates" this movie is must. The person who wrote the screenplay himself was artillery officer and participated in the same exact battle this movie depicts. Therefore it very likely that despite of the several shortcomings (like participation of Tiger tanks in the battle) and a little bit of propaganda (like appearance of the political commissar who, unlike stern and often unfair general, always acts humanly) the movie shows the battle the way he saw it himself. As a side note: some primitive people don't understand what the word "propaganda" means and how it works and therefore claim that every Soviet movie is a lie. I am sorry for you.