Film needs to be remastered and released on DVD.
I managed to track down a decent enough copy of this but it`s a shame that it`s really quite difficult to obtain.
Yes all the Russians are glorious heroes ,the Germans vile animals, and the poor old Italians,by and large,stuck in the middle,but the film still has enough merit to be seen by a new audience.Some of the sequences,such as the Italian and Russian chasing the rabbit in no man`s land, just stay with you forever.The gorgeous Zhanna Prokherenko(Ballad Of a Soldier)is so strikingly beautiful and the action sequences are often epic with hundreds of extras.A shame that the version I saw was cropped and it`s mouthwatering to think what the film would look like in it`s original aspect ratio.
Trawling through Ebay, I came across the original Italian soundtrack L.P. which has a glorius colour picture of the soldier wandering through the sunflower field.Probably controversial but this memorable scene would have been truly breathtaking if the film had perhaps been shot in colour.
Unfortunately the version I saw was dubbed and it really needs to be seen with the actors speaking their own language-little touches and reflections can be lost and hopefully a restored version will rectify this.
Despite one or two flaws I found it particularly interesting as there really aren`t many productions which show the Italian army fighting on the Eastern front.Try a recent Italian tv production called ""Don Gnocchi L`angelo Dei Bimbi"(2004)if you can find it.