Cross of Iron (1977)

Very well executed

Purely Joyful Movie!

One of my all time favorites.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Cross Of Iron is a very good and different WW2 film that is very original and well done. This movie was'nt a big budget production by any means, but Sam Peckinpah got a lot of bang for his buck in his last great film. The film is gritty, bleak and depressing and is taken from the German soldier's point of view in the final days of battle on the Russian front. This film is mostly devoid of dogma or politics of the war, but very accurately conveys the horrors of war. James Coburn gives one of his finest performances as skilled German soldier Sgt. Steiner who is a killing machine, but hates the war and his superiors.(which mirrors Sam 's views on authority, especially producers, of which his battles are legendary) The film has excellent performers for sure with Maximillian Schell, James Mason and David Warner. The battle scenes are great and showcases a lot of Sam's signature slow motion shootouts. This is Sam Peckinpah's only war film and it is very unique and quite excellent that he comments on violence and ultra authoritarian governments. He does not beat the viewer over the head with this subtext, but the anti war message is there. Even with Peckinpah's alcohol and drug problems, he still is on the top of his game in this production and made a very memorable and effective anti war film.

Version I saw: UK bluray releaseActors: 6/10Plot/script: 6/10Photography/visual style: 6/10Music/score: 7/10Overall: 6/10Sam Peckinpah was one of the most respected directors was one of the most respected American directors of his generation. He specialized in westerns such as The Wild Bunch (especially), and more generally went for adventure stories with a shade more subtlety than straight-up boys'-own swashbucklers.Late on in his career, he took on an interesting task in Cross of Iron: a Second World War film told from the perspective of the German soldiers. In any such film, there are a couple of elephants in the room: Nazism and defeat. While Nazism can be covered, and indeed has been covered in the past, from other perspectives such as the Allied soldiers, or German civilians, this point of view has the unique colouring that we know they are destined to lose. If any happy ending is to happen for the main characters (and it may well not), it will be contrasted with the fate of their fellow soldiers.In Cross of Iron, this is partly dealt with by isolating Sgt Steiner (James Coburn) and his squad behind enemy lines, and forcing them to make a daring trek through enemy territory. This cuts them off from the main pressures of the background, and allows the writers to bring them in on a controlled basis.The main conflict, apart from against the Soviet army, is between Steiner and Capt. Stransky (Maximilian Schell), a political commissar of sorts who, while he claims not to be a Nazi party member, enforces their ideology over Steiner's seemingly more noble, practical approach. The main underlying thrust of the film is an anti-war message, that those at the top do not understand the brutality of the front line, and so resort to armed conflict entirely too frivolously.When it comes down to it, though, the film is mainly a straight adventure, with very limited subtlety. The 'subtext' is even transformed into a supertext when it is spoken directly by Steiner: "I hate officers." It seems that, by his third-to-last film, Peckinpah had perfected his formula, enabling him to produce a strong, exciting adventure film with a bit of depth, without straying far from his comfort zone. However, he had also become somewhat set in his ways. There is a great deal of narrative and thematic potential in the central idea, I think, but Peckinpah had lost some of the flexibility to explore it.

Sam Pekinpaugh has given us a big war-time movie situated on the Russian front, starring James Coburn as the savvy and taciturn Sgt. Steiner and Maximilian Schell as the newly arrived, dapper, Junker aristo, eager for the Iron Cross, the decoration given only for heroism in battle. It has Pekinpaugh's signature on it -- an abundance of painful deaths, more explosions than have ever before been committed to celluloid, and all in slow motion. The story is such that, if it weren't for some cogent lines, it could have been directed by Sam Fuller.I'll give one example of what I thought was a good line. At the end, both Coburn and Schell stand face to face, armed, and about to be overwhelmed and killed by the onrushing Russians. It's only a brief pause, but Schell admits his status still requires the winning of the Iron Cross. "You come with me," says Coburn, "and I'll show you where the crosses of iron are." It's neat because by a simple transposition of words within the phrase, Coburn has turned a medal (the Iron Cross) into a grave marker (crosses of iron). It has its weaknesses. It's really too long and too loose-limbed for what it has to say. As Steiner, Coburn is a monument to military perfection, while Schell is a stereotypical cowardly and spiteful traitor. Coburn does well enough by the role of the humanitarian but dedicated sergeant. Schell is a marvelous actor but he has only one scene in which he's able to put his chops on display -- when he tricks a subordinate into admitting that he prefers the company of men to women. "He said YES! He said YES!" Schell is in a transport of delight at having finagled his subordinate into a possible admission of homosexuality which, as far as we can tell, isn't true. The effect, though, is to make the subordinate a compliant slave.It's not a bad film in any way but it lacks poetry of any kind. Pekinpah by this time in his career was describing himself as "a functioning alcoholic." He's lucky he got it out at all.

I had been aware of this film but it wasn't until recently I purchased it on DVD. Others have noted its similarities in some respects to Stalingrad, but I feel CoI is a superior film. The acting is sharper and we are presented with a range of characters all with different views and attitudes to why they are on the Eastern front, and what they hope to achieve be it glory, sanity or to just survive and get the hell out of there. All of the lead and support actors are very good in their roles, and it is possible this is Coburns best. The villain of the piece here of course is the vain glorious Prussian aristocrat who seeks the Iron Cross for purely personal yet family reasons. He needs to return home as the hero and patriarch and is quite happy to betray the ordinary soldier to obtain his lofty aims. Yet he hates the Nazi's and the 'little corporal and failed painter'. He clearly sees that regardless of how the war ends it will be his class that will eventually rule Germany. The Iron Cross will just be a trophy of his superiority. A good bookend to Stalingrad but IMHO a somewhat more satisfying film.