The 1949 Soviet film(s)
Battle of Stalingrad is also an interesting thing to see. It's not quite propaganda, not quite drama, not quite documentary. It combines stock footage with dramatic recreations, and tries to cover the whole battle chronologically by showing snapshots of different people and places; giant arrows flying across maps, generals arguing in bunkers, sweeping long-takes of tanks plowing through rubble... the whole gambit. It's got some great cinematography and tons of real surplus and trophy tanks, planes etc. as props and scene-dressing. Even Roosevelt makes an unnecessary cameo. If you ignore the Stalin-worship and the fact that Zhukov is literally flushed down the memory hole and never appears in the film (which is a big ****ing thing to ignore) then it's a great, weird film-history-document-...thing. It is actually educational, but watch it with narrowed eyes. Aram Khachaturyan wrote the score.
Of course, if you're watching it for the cinematography, Youtube won't suffice, but the whole two films can be found there with English subtitles:
Another Soviet drama related to Stalingrad is
They Fought for the Country, 1975. Based on a novel, the film is kind of like a Soviet spin of James Jones'
The Thin Red Line, covering the exploits of a rifle company and the personalities within as they deal with the heat and exhaustion of a summer drought on the steppe, the shame of retreat and leaving civilians behind to the mercy of the enemy, and the uncertainty of their nation as they head toward the Volga and possibly beyond. There's a great scene where a soldier is foraging and comes to a farm house to beg for food, essentially, and the old woman of the house, having lost a son in '41 and missing her husband, berates him for his constant retreating and now trying to eat her out of house and home. "You run away and who will fight for me? I'm left here. Who will fight for
you if you keep running?"
Battles are sporadic, chaotic, confusing and seemingly fruitless. It's very modern in a sense, the way the camera focuses on the minute and personal and denies the audience comprehension when thematically appropriate and surreal camera work to show concussion and psychological trauma, but it never entertains the idea that the war against Germany is "pointless" in order to further a broader message; battles may seem pointless, individual deaths and the destruction of the landscape may seem pointless, but the war -
that war - demanded battles, deaths and heartache for the sake of preserving a people and a way of life, and that the men we see sweating and cursing and worrying over their fate, vulnerable and fallible men, are the ones that fought and resisted against unthinkable odds for their families, their homes, their country. During the film they're constantly lugging their unit's banner all wrapped up on its pole and concealed by a dust-cover, and it seems to be a useless burden, but at the end, the men assemble and unfurl the banner and its pure scarlet against the endless dust and khaki seems to be completely revitalizing and magnetic. You might roll your eyes when the music swells and their commander tears up in his one good eye and kisses the banner, but the emotions in the pageantry are real and his gratitude to his men could not be expressed with mere words. On Remembrance/Veterans'/Victory Day during the moment of silence, rather than just keeping quiet to be polite and daydreaming, think about that officer crying before his men, and turning to the preserved banner as the embodiment of perseverance. Imagine being responsible for the sacrifices of other men's minds and bodies. How heavy they must weight every day.
I could've swore Mosfilm had subtitles up before, but now they don't.