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Cross Of Iron is one war film that will take repeat viewings to truly absorb all the material. With that said, I won’t elaborate on the film’s strong points since they’ve already been mentioned by many before. And this DVD release from Hen’s Tooth is not the one to view this film from. It is a shortened edited version and the transfer is Full-Frame, it doesn’t even appear to be Pan & Scan…simply a dead shot down the middle of the film. The quality of this Hen’s Tooth release is absolutely atrocious for the DVD format. It appears as though it’s almost a VHS transfer, or a heavily worn film transfer at best. There are numerous scratches and dust artifacts, and the color saturation is very faded in many scenes. The sound on the DVD is equally terrible during the entire movie, it’s very hard to understand much of the dialogue at times.
I’ve purchased bargain DVD’s for $3 before that are 100% better in quality than this! Just by the sheer fact that the film is edited would have Peckinpah rolling in his grave. Hen’s Tooth knows and have admitted that the transfer is horrible, yet they still charge $30 retail nearly 4 years after their DVD release?!?? There is no way that this disc is worth that much money. I would gladly pay the price if it was a Criterion edition, but not this poor edition.
If you have the technical capability I recommend ordering either the UK DVD or Japanese DVD of Cross Of Iron. It won’t cost you much more (perhaps less) than this unworthy Region 1 DVD release. The imports both present the film in it’s original anamorphic widescreen format, with vastly superior picture and sound. If you don’t have the technical capability, then buy a VHS edition of Cross Of Iron.
5 stars for the film itself, 0 stars for the Hen’s Tooth DVD…hence my 4 star rating.
Cross Of Iron is a masterpiece, one of the greatest anti-war, anti-authoritarian movies. It is one of director Sam Peckinpah’s two finest works — the other being The Wild Bunch. It deserves to be ranked in the same great war movie company as Apocalypse Now, Das Boot, Full Metal Jacket, Paths Of Glory, Saving Private Ryan, Seven Samurai, and Zulu. Its setting on the World War Two Eastern Front, its gruesomeness, and its risk-taking viewpoint on ugly combat from the German side, have tended to count against fair assessment of its considerable artistic achievements. Viewers wary of the morality of its German viewpoint and its explicitness might find that it is fundamentally about humanity in general as a victim of war. The film reflects on the humanity which may be found on all sides of conflict–including Russian humanity portrayed variously as relentless, innocent, brave, and feminine.
Cross Of Iron opens with an intense, chilling montage of nursery rhyme, propaganda, combat newsreel and atrocity. By the end of the main title the montage subtly introduces the central characters, a German reconnaissance unit patrolling on the 1943 Russian front.
This 1977 film set rarely matched standards of cinematic mayhem. Cross Of Iron explosions don’t look merely like pretty fireballs — they blast fragments, rocks and debris, leaving no doubt as to why blood gouts from stumps of limbs and shrapnel-shredded entrails… Amid the screams of wounded and dying, as dust subsides from a mortar barrage, an artillery piece shorn of its crew by a near hit swings across a pocked battlefield, its traversing wheel spinning under its own momentum. The carnage occurs in the choreographed slow motion which Peckinpah made his signature.
James Coburn turns in one of his finest roles as Rolf Steiner, a highly decorated NCO who leads a German reconnaissance squad. Steiner fights less for his country than for his comrades. He has low opinions of class and rank distinctions. He is contemptuous both of Nazism and the aristocratic Prussian arrogance of his new superior officer, Captain Stransky, played with great style by Maximilian Schell. But there are hints of a dark side. Although Steiner is articulate and philosophical he has no answer when his love interest during an enforced break from battle, nurse Eva (Senta Berger), bitterly accuses him of being afraid of what he would be without the war.
Among the many fine supporting performances, James Mason plays the war-weary Colonel Brandt. He sees the immorality and futility of German war aims, but his sense of honour and duty about the prevailing struggle makes ceasing to fight unthinkable. David Warner plays Brandt’s out-of-place and out-of-time adjutant, Captain Kiesel, who represents to his colonel the hope that a more enlightened postwar Germany might arise from the ashes of inevitable defeat.
War movie buffs irritated by the technical inaccuracies common in many examples of the genre will find some satisfaction in attention to authenticity of weaponry. A range of genuine WWII German and Russian small arms appears. The T 34/85 tanks are real, although the very picky might argue that this is at least six months premature, and that for the summer of ‘43 they should be T 34/76. Tactics at times deviate from the textbooks, but this is a drama, not a combat manual.
Cross Of Iron is a five-star movie. The Hen’s Tooth Video release is a two-star DVD, with sub-standard picture and sound. But it is worth owning while this great film of a great American director lacks the high quality collectors’ edition Zone 1 DVD release it deserves.