Great acting

Well, then, I guess you really haven't seen yet in-your-face propaganda movies. I happened to watch Russian tv channels on daytime of 9th of May 2005. Coincidentally, both primary Russian channels, ORT and RTR aired Soviet-made war movies, apparently from very similar time periods and these showed quite a bit of propaganda, the heroism and the like.

This film, what you called "in-your-face propaganda", won a Golden Palm in the Cannes Film Festival, which, for your information, is one of the most presitigous film festivals in the world.

The film in itself had to have propaganda in it, too, as you'd have to consider the time and place it was produced in (finished in 1957). Another point to consider, if you'd take it from a propagandistic slant, is that the common people of the times (in a large city) very likely did act and showcase some propagandistic elements, as Stalin was in power and all manner of soviet and communist propaganda was quite rife.

It should be noted though, that when Stalin was alive (the film was finished four years after his death), every war film had to have very conspicuous references both to Lenin and Stalin and how both of them (or rather the latter) lead the U.S.S.R. to victory. The keyphrase here is cult of personality.

A propagandistic flick would also showcase the heroic and self-sacrificing acts of Soviet soldiers, the army, the navy and the fleet in their best moments. You might get some clue about it all if you take a look at Starship Troopers and its straight-to-video sequel (and the very end of it).

Propaganda flicks would concentrate on the number of losses and the the enormity of destruction and vastness of devastation, so as to conjure up feelings of anger. Dead bodies (likely covered for the sake of posterity) would also be shown. The next stage would be inciting revenge for the purpose of consummating that anger (retribution) and the next stage would be to keep up the ante until victory is achieved (insert dramatic battlefield scenes, how 'our' people win thanks to this-and-this and how the enemy gradually loses). Once victory is achieved, you might expect people welcoming the arriving troops marching and people waving hands and throwing flowers, while the returning troops would wave hands back and everyone would be smiling and greeting. Of course, talking heads and leaders would also be inserted between takes: leaders shown as thinking and planning, then making speeches to the people and then later on, near the end, shown as heroes who lead the country to victory and then leading the country towards great progress and eternal peace under the leadership of the ruling power. You might see some of the more blatant examples of this when you get to watch documentaries about personalities of cult and propaganda affecting moviemaking of the time period.

Since the Cranes deviated so much from pure propaganda and showed the high level of realism and humanity not seen in any of the previous or later Soviet war films, it was banned right away once it was finished. In the Soviet Union, the film was only reintroduced in 1970's.

The film didn't contain references to any personality that was at power. When I think of it -- at a time, when political power of the SU was constantly referred to almost everywhere one went to -- the film referred to political power as something distant, because one didn't see it, but one saw the effects of the higher-ups' decisions. I saw how life regressed and then progressed through the eyes of the common people and the little men. I saw the emotions the people went through, what they felt, how the war and warfare affected them. I don't think any [Soviet] film of the era ever deeply touched on the concept of personal loss (I don't know much about how Western films of the times depicted war, but I'd wager that most of them also contained good amounts of propagandistic value).

This film, though, bears the kind of cinematics you rarely see in war films. You see people living in hopes of once seeing their loved ones again, against the backdrop of loss, feelings of which they are bound to experience time and again. You see the 'own' side at a losing position and the hospitals full of wounded people and life does not go the way most people would like or wish to.

I have also noticed that some of the better (or the best) war movies don't actually show the enemy during live action battle sequences: we only see their bullets, their mortars and their bombs doing their killing job, but we don't see the actual enemy perhaps until the very end (if at all). And if we do, the enemy has quite a human face afterall (References: All Quiet on the Western Front, Full Metal Jacket, Harrison's Flowers, Der Untergang. I haven't seen Das Boot yet, but I guss this one might also qualify.).