CROSS OF IRON (1977: Dir. Sam Peckinpah)
In any film when a German soldier is threatened with being ordered to the "Russian Front" a terrified expression always crosses his face. For decades this frigid hell-hole of war was a place that could only be imagined by audiences, until in 1977, when filmmaker Sam Peckinpah brought this dark chapter of Germany's history to the big screen. Funded by a West German soft-porn producer with artistic ambitions, directed by an alcoholic American auteur and filmed on a limited budget in remote Yugoslavia with an international cast and crew, this could have been one of the great follies in the history of War cinema. Instead these seemingly volatile elements combined to produce a flawed masterpiece. Based on the novel by Willi Heinrich, and told from the Nazi point of view, the idea that this gritty story of burnt-out soldiering could be a potential popular entertainment is nearly as suicidaly insane as Hitler's actual invasion. While there is little doubt that the hardships experienced by cast and crew contributed to the desperate atmosphere of the film, it also didn't help that the film featured a typically disillusioned Peckinpah protagonist/avatar played by James Coburn (Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid). The fates however, were pulling for Peckinpah, who, despite continuing health and addiction problems demonstrated that his filmmaker's eye for heart-pounding violence remained undiminished. Perhaps sensing that his career was winding down, Peckinpah made the film a sub rosa valentine to Coburn, who delivers a masterclass in cinematic magnetism as the stalwart Sgt. Steiner, battling his vainglorious commanding officers, while trying to protect his under-equipped platoon from the bone-chillingly merciless Russian landscape. Beset by constant on-set turmoil due to its precarious financing, the production eventually just ran out of money, resulting in the grim spectacle of its valiant director and his actors, improvising the ending as the cameras rolled. Despite such shortcomings, Orson Welles called it the finest anti-war film since All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), a view shared by much of Europe where its surprising success vindicated the bold ambition of all concerned. DVD REGION 1 & 2
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