Padenie Berlina

In his famous speech from the Party Congress of 1956 Nikita Khrushchev denounced the 'personality cult' of his former master, in whose crimes he must certainly have shared and referred to 'The Fall of Berlin' as a film in which 'Stalin acts for everyone.'

Designed as a gift to Uncle Joe on his seventieth birthday, this masterful piece of propoganda is essentially fantasy packaged as documentary truth in which he is portrayed by regular Stalin impersonator Mikheil Gelovani as a man of Olympian proportions, wise, benign, and a brilliant military strategist to boot. Supremely ironic therefore that the most interesting character in the piece is Hitler, given a superbly outrageous, pantomime villain performance by Vladimir Savelyev.

Viewed as either historical or hysterical this massive fresco is nevertheless an astounding achievement both technically and logistically by director Mikheil Chiaureli and his team and gloriously filmed in Sovcolor, derived from Agfacolor stock filched by the Red Army from Berlin. The score is by Dmitri Shostakovich who was, at the time, living largely on loans from friends whilst supplementing his income with film work and 'democratic' vocal pieces. His music for this is rather banal but contains a reference to the justly famous ostinato march from his Leningrad Symphony of 1942. Interesting to note that a few months after Stalin's eagerly awaited death in 1953, the composer premiered his Tenth Symphony in which the second movement is a blistering portrait of Stalin whilst the finale exhibits a joy and jubilation that Shostakovich never again allowed himself.

A character in the film proclaims that 'Stalin is always with us' and it beggars belief that flowers are still being laid on this mass murderer's tomb.

This of course is a pro-Stalin Russian film, but it has other values.First of all, for occidental public, and as many other Russian films of the 40's and 50's, it shows us the almost never watched Russian-side of the II World War.For them it was the "Liberation War", where they lost 18 to 21 million people, more than all the other nation's loses.Something we often forget or simply ignore, so this is an opportunity, from a mere historical view, to look at that "ignored" side of the big war. Keeping Stalin speeches, his battle planning and his final and incredible arrival to Berlin apart, the movie shows good epic moments:the final battle for the Reichstag, the surrender of the German troops in the streets of Berlin, the dialog between the "good worker and soldier" Aloisha with a German officer explaining how they will destroy his city and house as they did with their houses and cities, the final celebration before the(real)ruins of the Reichstag...And also the Hitler's scenes, which constitute a kind of "grand guignol", another movie inserted in the epic film.It's also interesting to see the theories (wether they be only partly true)about Nazis relations with English industrial trusts in the middle of the war, or Hitler's hope of an agreement with Anglo-Americans against Russians, anticipating the Cold War.We the Spanish know something about this, as the fascist Franco was kept in power by the allies, taking advantage of this cold war. "Padeniye Berlina", sometimes boring and a bit theatrical, contains these and many other good scenes, an attractive photographic work (with those Agfa color negatives, so different, but not less fascinating, from the accustomed American technicolor of the time), and a good score. And then , the Stalin omnipresence. But, sceptical as I am in relation to all political regimes, I don't think this propaganda film to be so different from other occidental films of the kind (war, patriotic ones). For me, it's good to get now the opportunity to watch many soviet films we couldn't even know of before the "DVD-era" arrived.They show less propaganda than we could expect (not in this film, of course)and let us know of their daily stories, or their war epics and miseries, so similar to the hundred of stories of American cinema with which we grew up.

A Birthday Present that finally answers the age old question of what to get the man who has everything. This film was presented to Stalin on his 70th birthday and is the archtypical Stalin Film. It is intriguing insight into the mindset of the man who ruled and terrorized 1/5 of all humanity and 1//2 of Europe by the film's 1949 release date. The acting, especially the Aliosha and Natasha love plot tied in with Stalin is poorly acted but makes all sense when you look at how Aliosha looks to Stalin for advice, because truth be told this film is a romance for Stalin. The special effects and lighting are excellent for a 1940s film and it is shot in a grand scale that matched the efforts of Kolberg, Gone with the Wind, and the 1926 Ben Hur.

The best parts of this film are the impressions of Churchill and Hitler. Minus Churchill speaking Russian, they have his lisp and mannerisms done exceedingly well. Hitler and Goering provide great charictatures and are humorously well done. At best its an intriguing insight into the delusions of madness that Stalin subjected his people to and at worst its a 2 hour festival of unintentional humor. I'd recommend it for any historian.

There are certain subjects that do not lend themselves to mockery. One of those subjects is Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Any movie that tries to treat Hitler and the Nazis as a bunch of buffoons is a movie that is destined to fail dramatically, and thus this movie is a supreme failure. What is ludicrous about this movie is not so much its stilted portrayal of Adolf Hitler but the fact that anyone would even want to go out of their way to try to reduce Adolf Hitler to a caricature and an item for derision. Hitler's career is a matter of historical fact which requires no further literary embellishment. Hitler's policies of deceit, aggression, war and genocide speak for themselves. What more can be said or added about what he said and did or the havoc and suffering he caused?

Treating Adolf Hitler and the Nazis as a joke is historically unsupportable. It would be like mocking a serial killer. Mock all you want, the killer is still a killer. To reduce the personality of Adolf Hitler to the level of audio and visual clichés simply does not convey his cunning, his destructiveness, his demagoguery and depravity. Adolf Hitler was anything but a joke. Any person who could smile and laugh around children, extend the most gracious courtesies to his personal guests, laugh and joke with his closest staff, indeed, even root for his favorite team in the Olympics, while AT THE SAME TIME plotting to start a war and exterminate millions of people is the kind of chilling personality that defies superficial treatment on the screen, or anywhere else for that matter. Hitler ranting and raving? If this was all that Hitler was about, then maybe it would be funny, but Hitler was no mere screaming buffoon and to try to pass him off as being that does not do justice to the millions of victims who succumbed to his policies. A screaming buffoon could have never done what Hitler did. To lead an entire nation to war and to pursue policies that directly affected the course of history required a degree of determination and self-control that this movie fails to attribute to the Fuhrer. By reducing Hitler to a mere caricature of a dictatorship undermines the basic premise of the movie, that the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin was a strong, viable and credible nation, for how strong does a country and the political leadership need to be to defend itself against somebody that according to the movie is nothing more than a pathetic joke?

This has to be one of the worst propaganda movies ever made. Hitler was already dead, World War Two was already history, Nazi Germany had already been defeated and obliterated from the political map, yet the Soviet Union decided to produce what has to be one of the worst movies ever made, which is saying a lot in a era of bad movies stretching back to the dawn of the age of Holloywood. The acting is poor, the story is pure Soviet propaganda bombast, the cinematography is almost laughable. But what is particularly annoying is its portrayal of Adolf Hitler as a caricature. The portrayal of Adolf Hitler is so ridiculously superficial that it reduces Hitler to an item of mockery and derision which is neither necessary or true. There is one thing that can be said about Adolf Hitler: what he did and what he stood for inspires contempt, scorn and outright rejection, but not derision. There is nothing funny about Hitler's decision to go to war and invade the Soviet Union. Nor is the portrayal of Adolf Hitler as some kind of screaming, argumentative hysterical malcontent historically accurate or dramatically strong. Historical evidence seems to suggest that Hitler was no more prone to fits of anger than anyone else and that he followed a plan of action that was well thought out and meticulously implemented with the full support of the entire Nazi Party and an entire nation, including its army, naval and air force, whose resources were mobilized to achieve what Hitler wanted. In Mein Kampf Hitler put the whole world on notice as to what he intended to do if he had the power and that the nobody took him seriously is anything but funny; it is tragic. This movie makes fun of Hitler but what Adolf Hitler did inspires anything but laughter. He wasn't funny when he was alive and to make fun of him after he's dead is more of a reflection of the mentality of whoever made this movie than on the Adolf Hitler himself.

One question this movie raises is why would anyone even want to make such a movie? To mock and deride at Hitler four years after the end of World War Two and Hitler's death seems rather pointless and a mere exercise in displaced rage. By 1949 the career of Adolf Hitler was already well documented and spoke for itself. The whole world knew what he had done and was still in the process of recovering from the consequences of his actions. But for a movie company to actually spend time and money to produce a movie that portrays Adolf Hitler and his Nazi cronies as corrupt, effete, irresponsible sycophants isn't saying anything that was not already public knowledge and merely confirmed the obvious. Now if this movie was intended to be a satirical comedy or a farce, then there might be a valid place for a goofy, campy portrayal of Hitler. However this movie apparently was not a comedy or a satire, which makes the movie completely irrelevant and an exercise in cinematic mediocrity.

Historical drama. The film, shot "hot on the heels" of one of the largest military operations in the history of mankind, namely the Battle for Berlin in April-May 1945, directed by the renowned Soviet director Mikhail Chiaureli with the participation of famous Soviet artists, composers and talented screenwriters, and the whole team, thanks to which you and I can to see it now, many years after its release. It is even surprising that such a wonderful work passed by the author of this review. But fortunately, this misunderstanding was overcome, and the picture was viewed - and it left good impressions. And here is a brief opinion - The largest historical film of the Stalin era. The picture has both advantages and disadvantages (unfortunately), so you should finish this introduction and proceed to the analysis.

So, the advantages: 1. The script - if we forget about historical mistakes, then the script is good, because it shows the unity of the Soviet government and the people. Comrade Stalin and worker Ivanov, that's how the entire Soviet society stood up as one man to the enemy who invaded our land in 1941. An enemy who came to destroy most of us and enslave the rest, hiding behind the "racial theory", supported by occupied Europe and the ruling circles of England and the United States. This enemy was Fascist Germany under the leadership of Hitler. We will see the pre-war period, the battle for Moscow and Stalingrad, but mostly our attention will be focused on the battle for Berlin. They will show the work of the GKO and Hitler's command with his staff. We will see a wide canvas of the end of the fascist beast and the triumph of the Soviet people, the clash of worldviews, the hopes of both sides and the grandiose triumph of the Red Army and the entire Soviet people, and the wise words of Comrade Stalin (which were not listened to in the West, and after 1953 they were forgotten in our country).

2. Costumes and decorations - the scale of the painting is still amazing. Berlin and the Reichstag look so much like themselves that you can't believe it's a mock-up and not a real one. But this is exactly the case, because it was the layouts of all this that were built for filming. There's no need to talk about uniforms - everything was perfectly well known and the actors just had to play convincingly - and they played great.

3. I. V. Stalin - he is here all over the place - the chairman of the State Defense Committee, the supreme commander-in-chief, who sets common tasks in battles. You won't believe it - this is exactly what Joseph Vissarionovich was doing during the Great Patriotic War, no matter how many bad personalities claimed otherwise. Stalin is pragmatic here, fiercely defends the interests of the Soviet Union, helps our Western allies where possible, and in the end utters important and wise words that should have been listened to. The artist Mikhail Gelovani is great here. Bravo!

4. The battle scenes are great for 1948 and those primitive technologies. After all, the scale of the whole action is felt, and this is the pure truth. Our battles and battles with the fascists are presented abundantly, and they are well interspersed with scenes of the agony of the fascist regime.

So, the disadvantages: 1. Historical mistakes - Hitler began to get hysterical and behave inappropriately only after the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, and in 1941 he was quite a sane leader of Germany, so his tantrums during the Moscow battle look extremely funny, and the generals of his staff behave funny during the Battle for Berlin - they resemble clowns rather, than the military. Although Churchill took his position at the Yalta Conference, he so brazenly did not get into Stalin's proposals, which had already been agreed upon in Tehran. These are the largest of them. In general, there are enough historical errors, and this affects the final assessment.

2. The castrated version - the author of this review came across it, made already in Khrushchev's time, and the mounting glues are visible. The only good thing is that it wasn't possible to completely cut out Comrade Stalin - it's easier to just forget about the painting (and they tried to "forget" about it, it's good that they didn't succeed completely).

Boris Andreev as Alexey Ivanov and Marina Kovaleva as Natasha Rumyantseva are beautiful. They're a great couple who look amazing on screen. Other artists are also no less wonderful. It is clear that they tried their best. After all, do not forget that many of the paintings that were shot later on the same events, images and even entire scenes originate from here - the creators did so well!

Rating 8 out of 10 and recommended for viewing!