Best Documentary and/or Movie on the Eastern Front?!

Gary Grigsby’s War in the East: The German-Soviet War 1941-1945 is a turn-based World War II strategy game stretching across the entire Eastern Front. Gamers can engage in an epic campaign, including division-sized battles with realistic and historical terrain, weather, orders of battle, logistics and combat results.

The critically and fan-acclaimed Eastern Front mega-game Gary Grigsby’s War in the East just got bigger and better with Gary Grigsby’s War in the East: Don to the Danube! This expansion to the award-winning War in the East comes with a wide array of later war scenarios ranging from short but intense 6 turn bouts like the Battle for Kharkov (1942) to immense 37-turn engagements taking place across multiple nations like Drama on the Danube (Summer 1944 – Spring 1945).

Moderators: Joel Billings, elmo3, Sabre21

Post Reply
rainman2015
Posts: 229
Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2015 1:52 am

Best Documentary and/or Movie on the Eastern Front?!

Post by rainman2015 »

On the same line as my previous post (what are the best books on the Eastern Front that put you right in the thick of the action either with a soldier or with a commander like Manstein), what are the best documentaries and movies yall have found on the Eastern Front that really show what happened and put you right there in the thick of it (with REALISM!)

I found this documentary series (Soviet Storm: WW2 in the East) on youtube that looks great so far...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A6UWkK2U4s

There is 'The Unknown War' narrated by Burt Lancaster on youtube also that looks pretty good.

No 'Saving Private Ryan' movies for the Eastern Front that i know of, unless you consider Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron from 1977, pretty good movie, not great.

Documentaries too! :)

What are yall's favorites?!

Thanks!
Randy
:)
timmyab
Posts: 2046
Joined: Tue Dec 14, 2010 7:48 pm
Location: Bristol, UK

RE: Best Documentary and/or Movie on the Eastern Front?!

Post by timmyab »

The 'Battlefield' documentaries are pretty good. Also I like 'blood upon the snow'.
There's 'Come and see' which is a very powerful film and suitably grim.
sven6345789
Posts: 1068
Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2004 12:45 am
Location: Sandviken, Sweden

RE: Best Documentary and/or Movie on the Eastern Front?!

Post by sven6345789 »

this one might be of interest

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Century

you can find it in here

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-BBC-World-C ... P1MFAT0YZ1

for example
Bougainville, November 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. It rained today.

Letter from a U.S. Marine,November 1943
hgman3
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Jan 07, 2015 9:57 pm

RE: Best Documentary and/or Movie on the Eastern Front?!

Post by hgman3 »

I highly enjoy Soviet Storm, and have watched it through probably 3 or 4 times now. It's been particularly helpful in refreshing my memory of the Cyrillic alphabet, since all of the maps are in Russian. Love the soundtrack, too. Sometime when I'm playing WitE, I'll turn down the game music and plat the Soviet Storm soundtrack on You Tube instead
rainman2015
Posts: 229
Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2015 1:52 am

RE: Best Documentary and/or Movie on the Eastern Front?!

Post by rainman2015 »

Yes, Soviet Storm is by far the best doc on youtube i have found so far. It shows accurate (i believe) computer generated models and accurate enough looking recreations to make it very fascinating.

I have only watched the first couple of them so far though.

Randy
:)
rainman2015
Posts: 229
Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2015 1:52 am

RE: Best Documentary and/or Movie on the Eastern Front?!

Post by rainman2015 »

Come and see

Apparently can watch Come and See for free here...

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvgqu8 ... 1_creation

Yes, looks GRIM, ugh

Randy
:)
rainman2015
Posts: 229
Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2015 1:52 am

RE: Best Documentary and/or Movie on the Eastern Front?!

Post by rainman2015 »

Battlefield

Thanks, queued up Battlefield and Blood on the Snow

Randy
:)
rainman2015
Posts: 229
Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2015 1:52 am

RE: Best Documentary and/or Movie on the Eastern Front?!

Post by rainman2015 »

Of all the docs i have been watching the last few months, this one (Soviet Storm) is by far the best. Really well done docu-drama type documentary. The best by far for people like us that want the details instead of the really big picture stuff. 4 stars! I haven't finished watching all parts of it yet, but all of them have been very good...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A6UWkK2U4s

Randy
:)

philippecarlier
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:25 am
Location: Belgium

RE: Best Documentary and/or Movie on the Eastern Front?!

Post by philippecarlier »

"Osvobozhdenie" (Liberation) is worth watching. A Russian movie focusing on the Battle of Kursk, Bagration and the Battle of Berlin. It's a monster 6-part film, spanning 7,5 (!) hours..
Es gibt keine verzweifelten Lagen, es gibt nur verzweifelte Menschen. (There are no desperate situations, there are only desperate people.) - H. Guderian
User avatar
loki100
Posts: 11699
Joined: Sat Oct 20, 2012 12:38 pm
Location: Utlima Thule

RE: Best Documentary and/or Movie on the Eastern Front?!

Post by loki100 »

There are a lot of Soviet era films on the Great Patriotic War. Of variable quality as you'd expect but the fundamental problem is that in the Cold War era no Western company would accept them for distribution, never mind translate them.

One of the best is They fought for their country, the Russian version is on You Tube. Its about a small unit of the Red Army falling back to Stalingrad. It has all the standard set pieces of Soviet cinema (the coward who repents and saves his comrades, the commisar who fails in the moment of stress as he's lost faith in the party and so on), but it works as a great film. Its like Grossman's novel Life and Fate, sometimes the conventions of Soviet realism actually allowed a stunning work of literature to be produced.

Another of the better ones is the The Cranes are flying, in effect a dramatisation of the popular Soviet folk song, Katyusha. The Ascent is good, concentrates on the utter brutality and horror of the partisan war.

Problem with all these is not just that there is no translated version but I don't think they even have subtitled releases.

swkuh
Posts: 1034
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2009 9:10 pm

RE: Best Documentary and/or Movie on the Eastern Front?!

Post by swkuh »

@loki100: appreciate your post, but must ask

...no Western company would accept them for distribution... OR... they were never seriously offered... So, how do you know which is best interpretation of history?

I ask because believe I've seen Soviet era movies, albeit in limited setting of academic documentary films.
User avatar
loki100
Posts: 11699
Joined: Sat Oct 20, 2012 12:38 pm
Location: Utlima Thule

RE: Best Documentary and/or Movie on the Eastern Front?!

Post by loki100 »

ORIGINAL: rrbill

@loki100: appreciate your post, but must ask

...no Western company would accept them for distribution... OR... they were never seriously offered... So, how do you know which is best interpretation of history?

I ask because believe I've seen Soviet era movies, albeit in limited setting of academic documentary films.

good question and really not sure. The mindset of the cold war and the extent that culture and art were contested (by both sides) means there may well have been reluctance by the Soviets to release a film and by major Western companies to not just buy it but also subtitle etc.

I think it went in phases, the classics of early Soviet film were widely released, but were also often either silent films or with very limited dialogue. A few Soviet bloc films on the civil war were released (either dubbed or subtitled), the Hungarian 'Red and White' and the Soviet 'The Commissar' are two that I have seen at the sort of cinemas that often feature non-English films (usually as part of a short season etc). Tarkovsky's wierd and wonderful Solaris is another that got a decent release when first made.

But I can't think of any of the classic Soviet films of the Great Patriotic War that have been released in any form. I suspect this is related to the wider blindness in the West (reflecting the Cold War) to the Soviet's own narrative of their experiences. Some of this was state mandated by the West (esp UK/USA) in that art was a tool of propaganda for both sides.

A good eg of this is Skvorecky's Tank Corps set in the Czech Republic in the late 1960s. Its in the tradition of Hasek, about a group of conscripts doing their military service and no-one reading it will come away in fear of the military commitment of the Soviet's Warsaw Pact allies. Skvorecky himself was anti-regime and fled to Canada after the Soviet invasion in 1968. The book wasn't widely released in English till the 1990s (my version is called the 'Republic of Whores'), long after a number of his novels had been translated and made widely available. There is always a danger of over-interpretation but he thought this one was supressed in the West precisely as it did not fit the required narrative of an immediate and very real Soviet threat.

But of the ones above, both They fought for their Country and the Cranes are basically well made, relatively stylised war films. But its not just films about the Great Patriotic War that are missing. None of the multitude of 'Easterns' that the Soviets made have ever had an audience. Think of the plot of the classic 'Western' but set in Central Asia with the Red Army as the Americans and Muslim 'basmachi' as the Indians. They even imported some American film stars to act in them. Dean Read was famous in the USSR for his regular role as the foreigner fighting alongside a cut off detachment of the Red Army.

Sorry long answer ..., but then I really like films and the cinema [:)]
rainman2015
Posts: 229
Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2015 1:52 am

RE: Best Documentary and/or Movie on the Eastern Front?!

Post by rainman2015 »

Thanks Loki and Phillippe, will check those out...been wanting to watch a lot of this stuff lately as i get back into the Eastern Front again after a decade+ away...

Randy
:)
rainman2015
Posts: 229
Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2015 1:52 am

RE: Best Documentary and/or Movie on the Eastern Front?!

Post by rainman2015 »

ORIGINAL: philippecarlier

"Osvobozhdenie" (Liberation) is worth watching. A Russian movie focusing on the Battle of Kursk, Bagration and the Battle of Berlin. It's a monster 6-part film, spanning 7,5 (!) hours..
"Osvobozhdenie" (Liberation)

Is there a way to get this with english subtitles?

Randy
:)
Post Reply

Return to “Gary Grigsby's War in the East Series”