watching it again,still not very good

Of course ENEMY AT THE GATES is not a realistic film,but it is a better film,as a film than STALINGRAD which for a film about one of the worst battles in history has too few battle scenes,and the battle scenes it has don't impress me.

If STALINGRAD is meant to be a serious film it should explain better how the mighty German war machine started to lose the war in that battle.

The film looks wrong,the scenes in Italy are like a holiday commercial and the scenes in Russia don't capture the scale or horror of the eastern front.
Have you seen the Russian film COME AND SEE? that is what I call a war film


I think STALINGRAD is badly made and the angle is too sympathetic to the German soldiers.
I know they were not all nazis (I did study history and have read many books on World War 11,from all sides.)
They were not all nazis but they were all brought up under the nazi state and I don't believe that they were all so lacking in belief in what they were doing during the war,especially when the war was going well for Germany.

You might know that modern studies of nazi Germany show that the nazi police state was not so big as we might think because public support for the war meant that people were keen to report disloyal fellow Germans.

The whole "GERMAN SOLDIERS WERE VICTIMS AS WELL"line is part of the the German history debate which also covers how awful Dresden was and how badly the German prisoners of war were treated.
Some people want to promote the idea that the German army,unlike the SS,was only doing its duty and was not much involved in war crimes but on the eastern front they were nearly as bad as the SS.

This film and DAS BOOT is part of the same process.

I know that soldiers often used the enemies weapons,I also know that they are told not to do so in case they are shot by accident because of the sound(a big danger in urban and jungle fighting),there is also the issue of suitable ammunition but perhaps the Germans used so many foreign weapons because they had captured the guns and ammunition and were not getting enough supplies from their own sources.
You mention reading the memories of those that were there,well yes but you must know that all everybody has a viewpoint to promote and people from nazi Germany and Soviet Russia often want to rewrite history.


Of course you are entitled to your opinion but I don't rate this film as a good film and I don't buy the message it is selling.

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Just saw your reply,I studied history at the University Of Wales and got a BA degree.
I read a lot and often visit military museums.
I would not use wikipedia as a source.

DOWNFALL is obviously a much better film than the other 2 you mention,a better film and better history (not always the same thing!).

But DOWNFALL,being in German and having a lot of talking heads and assuming as it does some prior knowledge of the history is not going to appeal to everyone.

Enemy at the Gates has a bad reputation but I enjoy it while knowing it is not realistic.

I like SAVING PRIVATE RYAN but I would tell a friend to watch THE LONGEST DAY first.

I am not a professional historian or film critic and I don't pretend to be.

Historians are not film critics and film directors are not historians.

You are a German and you rate this film,big surprise there.

The Soviets did awful things while invading Germany but what about the actions of German forces in Eastern europe and the USSR?

GENERATION WAR and other books and films make the point that Germans who had served on the Eastern Front knew what their nation had done there and they knew what the Russians would do to them when they arrived in Germany.

You can make a film sympathetic to the experience of ordinary Germans without being soft on the crimes of the German state.

Your country since the 1950s has been based on the rejection of the nazi past and this has been the correct policy,books and films which play up German suffering without putting events in context distort the history.

As a film I don't think this was a great film,leaving aside my doubts about the message.