Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		3.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

Stalingrad Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov November 21, 2014

Joseph Vilsmaier's "Stalingrad" (1993) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of British distributors Arrow Films. The only supplemental feature on the disc is a short archival featurette. In German, with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Region-B/C "locked".

Retreating

The film opens up in Italy, where hundreds of German soldiers are seen enjoying the wonderful weather. Some have even fallen in love with beautiful local girls. Eventually, they are loaded on a train and sent to Stalingrad. It is the summer of 1942.

The ensuing events are seen primarily through the eyes of a small group of soldiers led by the idealistic Lieutenant Reiser (Dominique Horwitz). Almost immediately after they enter a large camp not too far away from the city the men witness the brutal killing of a Russian captive, which forces Reiser to question the morality of his superiors. Then the battle of Stalingrad begins.

Amidst the ruins Russians and Germans constantly attack each other, only occasionally taking a break to retrieve the wounded and clear some of the dead. Because the Russians know the city well, it seems like they are always a few steps ahead of the Germans. But the Germans slowly manage to take over a number of strategic buildings.

Then it gets cold -- very, very cold.

When they are not fighting Reiser and his men talk about the wives and loved ones they have left back home. And the more they talk, the more they begin to question the goals of their superiors. Those who have fallen sick even openly state that they no longer care about winning.

Then it gets even colder.

After a series of strategic mistakes, the Germans begin to lose control of the city, and then the war. In the ensuing chaos, the battles seem pointless -- the real enemy becomes the brutal Russian winter, which claims the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides.

A few of Reiser’s men attempt to desert, but they miss the last plane that can take them back home. Then they begin wandering in and around the frozen city until they become so exhausted and so sick that they can no longer move. Meanwhile, the temperatures continue to fall.

Joseph Vilsmaier’s film does not aim to accurately recreate the crucial events leading to the collapse of the 6th Army and the dramatic impact the battle of Stalingrad had on WW2. Indeed, the specific strategies that changed the course of the war are barely even mentioned. What the film offers is a glimpse at the horror on the ground, where soldiers from both sides were at one point essentially abandoned by their leaders.

Because there are no heroes in the film -- the camera does not pick favorite characters and instead absorbs as much of the chaos as possible -- the melodrama is basically kept at bay. There are plenty of raw emotions and pain on display, but the enormity of the horror does not allow them to stick out.

The battle scenes are shot in a similar fashion -- they are very realistic but there is no logical progression in them. They almost always begin abruptly and then end in a similar fashion. The idea of course is to highlight the fact that during the battle of Stalingrad conventional war planning was essentially worthless.

During the battle of Stalingrad more than one million people lost their lives. From the 260,000 men from General Friedrich Paulus’ 6th Army that were locked in combat with the Russians, 91,000 were marched into captivity. A decade later, only 6,000 made it back to Germany.

Stalingrad Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Joseph Vilsmaier's Stalingrad arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of British distributors Arrow Films.

The high-definition transfer has been struck from the same master Hen's Tooth Video's accessed when they prepared their release of Stalingrad for the U.S. market. Unsurprisingly, the technical presentation is quite inconsistent.

There are traces of light denoising and sharpening corrections throughout the entire film. Especially during close-ups the effects of these adjustments are very easy to see (see screencapture #12). Grain is not resolved well because it is frequently overwhelmed by the electronic sharpening (see screencapture #18). On a mid-size screen (50'-55') the effect is not overly distracting, but the larger your screen is, the easier it will be for you to see it. Because of these adjustments image depth also suffers (see how flat the close-ups are in screencaptures #5 and 12). This being said, contrast levels remain stable. Generally speaking, colors also remain relatively stable. Overall image stability is good. Finally, there are no serious encoding anomalies to report in this review. All in all, the Blu-ray release offers some obvious improvements when one compares it with the old DVD release, but the film can look better in high-definition. However, given the fact that it has already been released in the two largest English-friendly markets, it is probably fair to say that for now this will be the best Stalingrad would look on Blu-ray. (Note: This is a Region-B/C "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-B/C or Region-Free PS3 or SA in order to access its content).

Stalingrad Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: German LPCM 2.0 (with small portions of Russian). For the record, Arrow Video have provided optional English subtitles for the main feature.

The lossless track is very good. During the battle scenes depth and clarity are excellent, while Enjott Schneider's score easily breathes in all the right places (see the footage from Italy early into the film). The dialog is crisp, stable, and easy to follow. Also, there is no distracting background hiss, pops, cracks, audio dropouts, or digital distortions to report in this review. The English translation is very good.

Stalingrad Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Making of Stalingrad with Joseph Vilsmaier - this short featurette has appeared on previous DVD releases of Stalingrad. In it director Joseph Vilsmaier and cast members discuss the shooting of the film and some of the technical challenges they had to overcome. In German, with optional English subtitles. (6 min).

Stalingrad Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It is great to finally have this classic war film on Blu-ray. I have to say, however, that it can and it should look a lot better in high-definition. I am going to recommend this release because it offers some very obvious improvements over older DVD releases of the film, but I hope that at some point in the future we would see a better technical presentation. RECOMMENDED.