7.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
German officers and soldiers retreating from the disastrous Russian front engage in both camaraderie and bitter rivalries.
Starring: James Coburn, Maximilian Schell, James Mason (I), David Warner, Klaus LöwitschDrama | 100% |
War | 80% |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.84:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 5.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Director Sam Peckinpah will forever be known as the choreographer of bloody ballets of
mayhem in The Wild Bunch
(1969), which
permanently transformed how violence was depicted
on the screen. Though director Arthur Penn had arguably beaten him to the punch with Bonnie
and Clyde (1967), there was a unique poetry to Peckinpah's style that proved irresistible to
cinematic successors like John Woo and Quentin Tarantino. Maybe it was a sense of the director's own spirit filtering through
the
screen. Peckinpah was a skilled and demanding craftsman, but he was also an outsized
personality with a volcanic temper that he indulged freely with his casts and crews and even
more so with producers and studio executives. His excesses grew with his indulgence in alcohol
and cocaine. Working with him was, for many, an endurance contest. (And yet some, like James
Coburn and David Warner, continued to sign on.)
But despite Peckinpah's inextricable association with violence on film, his attitudes toward the
subject in reality were complex. More often than not, his violent heroes were figures of a romanticized past,
men (always men) on the edge of a civilization long gone by, for whom violence was necessary
for survival: Pike Bishop and his
gang of cast-off ex-soldiers; Cable Hogue in his isolated
outpost; the ambivalent adversaries of Pat
Garrett and Billy the
Kid; the melancholy ex-marshal
and equivocal partner in Ride the High
Country. Even Dustin Hoffman's modern-day
marshmallow-turned-vigilante in Straw
Dogs was
not a man who lived for violence—indeed, the
opposite. For Peckinpah's heroes, violence was typically forced upon them. Those who enjoyed
it for its own sake always came to bad ends, like the members of Deke Thornton's raggedy posse
in The Wild Bunch.
So when Peckinpah set out to make a war film—the only one of his career—he didn't choose a
typical story. There are plenty of films by American directors about the heroic Allied efforts in
World War II, and more will no doubt be made, as the so-called "Greatest Generation" recedes
further into an idealized past. But Peckinpah chose to set his war epic among German soliders,
not Nazis but regular infantry men: ordinary Joes (or, I suppose, Fritzes) who were simply
struggling to survive far from home in impossible circumstances. The film's source was a Fifties
German novel, The Willing Flesh, by author Willi Heinrich, who drew from his own experiences
in the disastrous German invasion of Russia, where casualties were astronomical and Heinrich
himself was wounded multiple times.
Casting the film with mixed nationalities, Peckinpah boldly offered it as an argument that, in the
modern era, nations no longer matter. War has become a mechanized and barely organized
slaughter of soldiers and civilians, all of whom are caught in the machinations of distant
decision-makers enacting "policy". (Peckinpah was no doubt influenced by the recently
concluded Vietnam War, which the director joined millions of Americans in loudly opposing.)
Cross of Iron did poorly in the U.S., where audiences were not yet ready to sympathize with
German military men, but it fared much better in Europe, where it was hailed by many (including
Orson Welles) as one of cinema's great anti-war statements. The film has gradually been
rediscovered by American fans, including Tarantino, who has cited it as an influence on
Inglourious Basterds.
On Blu-ray, a Region B-locked edition of
Cross of
Iron was previously issued in the U.K. by
Optimum Home Entertainment. Specialty publisher Hen's Tooth is now releasing a new Blu-ray
in Region A with the same rich assortment of extras provided by Optimum, plus an invaluable
commentary that Hen's Tooth recorded for its 2006 DVD.
Don't rejoice in his defeat, you men.
For though the world stood up and stopped the bastard,
The bitch that bore him is in heat again.
Cross of Iron was shot by Peckinpah's Straw
Dogs cinematographer, John Coquillon, who also
photographed Pat Garrett and Billy the
Kid. Shooting
under challenging conditions in
Yugoslavia, with limited resources and the film's producer routinely on the verge of bankruptcy,
Coquillon and the rest of the creative team created a nearly monochromatic image from the dark
earth tones of the battlefields, the dusty soldiers' uniforms and the faces routinely covered in
mud. When bright hues sometimes intrude—usually red from blood or the incongruous Nazi
flag at the hospital where Steiner recovers or the blanket stretched across his hospital bed—they
seem almost out of place.
Hen's Tooth has confirmed that the transfer used for their 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is the
same one created by Studiocanal and used by Optimum for the 2011 Region B-locked disc
previously reviewed by Blu-ray.com.
The image on the
new Blu-ray reflects the same virtues
described on the earlier disc: a film-like appearance with a natural and well-resolved grain
structure and no indication of DNR or filtering; consistent contrast levels and densities; and only
an occasional, barely noticeable hint of sharpening in some of the darker scenes. Studiocanal did
a nice job removing dirt, scratches and other age-related damage, and Hen's Tooth Blu-ray reaps
the advantages of their efforts. The only issue that distinguishes the new Blu-ray from its Region
B predecessor is more aggressive compression, with Hen's Tooth's bitrate averaging 18.00
Mbps, compared to Optimum's 31.99. The compressionist appears to have done a capable job,
but there is no obvious reason to strive for such tight constraints when there's a vast expanse of
unused space (over 10 GB) on the BD-50.
Cross of Iron's mono soundtrack has been encoded as lossless PCM 2.0, using, I suspect, the same digital files previously utilized by Optimum. It's a strong mono track, especially given the film's limited budget, and while the sound mix may not shake the room, it amply conveys the layers of sonic chaos during scenes of battle. The dialogue is clearly rendered and correctly prioritized (no small achievement when it has to contend with weapons fire, multiple explosions and collapsing fortifications), and the track is free of any clicks, pops, dropouts or extraneous noise.
The extras largely match those included with the 2011 Region
B Blu-ray. The most significant
addition is the informative commentary, which has been ported over from Hen's Tooth's 2006
DVD.
Peckinpah made only two more feature films after Cross of Iron before his death from heart failure in
1984 (at the age of 59). Neither of them,
Convoy and The Osterman Weekend, ranks among the
director's best work. His formidable gifts as a filmmaker were gradually eclipsed by alcohol and
drug abuse. Cross of Iron would become the last of the director's works to capture the fatalistic poetry of which he
was uniquely capable.
Hen's Tooth has finally made it available on Blu-ray in Region A in a creditable presentation loaded with extras, and their disc is
highly recommended.
1962
1967
1927
1993
1998
2011
1977
1969
Collector's Edition
1986
9 rota
2005
Fragile Fox
1956
마이웨이 / Mai Wei
2011
1957
2017
Ultimate Edition
2002
1962
Limited Edition to 3000 - SOLD OUT
1958
1968
1970
The Director's Cut | Single-Disc Edition
1981