I'm going to review to very different WWII films, both foreign.
KATYN (2007)
Katyn is a 2007 Polish film by the world famous Polish director, Andrzej Wajda (winner of the lifetime achievement award Oscar in 2000). Wajda's father was also a Polish officer who was executed and buried in a mass grave by the Russians in the Katyn Forest.
Seeing this film had some special meaning for me being a 3rd generation Polish American (my grandparents came from Krakow, where part of the film takes place, and Warsaw) Catholic. Poland is a very Catholic country (as is Chicago where I grew up; having the largest Polish population in the world outside of Poland) and even though many films have dealt with the Holocaust (and the mass extermination of Jews), part of which have taken place in the Warsaw Ghetto, I am not aware of any films which have dealt with the mass extermination of Poland's largely Catholic intelligentsia in WWII.
The film opens showing an East/West bridge with civilians running from the advancing Germans in the West. Then the camera slowly pans to the right and we see civilians running from the East, escaping the advancing Soviet army. Thus begins the partition of Poland in 1939. The Polish army sadly laid down their arms before the advancing Soviet army thinking that they were going to be rescued from the German army. Sadly, the Poles were not aware of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed between the Germans and the Russians on August 24, 1939. The film shows that it was not only the Russians and their NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) who played a part in the mass extermination of Poland's finest minds but that the Germans participated too
[Show spoiler](their is one scene where Polish professors at one University are all shipped to a concentration camp in Germany). The ashes of one of these professors is returned to the wife and mother-in-law of the woman whose husband is an officer arrested by the NKVD and is being held in a Soviet camp.
The film contains 2 pieces of actual film footage of the mass graves found in the Katyn Forest, one released by the Germans blaming the Russians for the massacre and footage from the Russians blaming the Germans later on. The film ends showing a portrayal of Polish officers being executed by the NKVD and then being buried in a mass grave.
Still, this film is not just about the Katyn Massacre because Wajda has, throughout his film career, been a Polish nationalist. First, even though the 22,000 massacred might seem like a very small number in comparison to the 6,000,000 Jews who died in the Holocaust, Poland is still very much haunted by this event. Poland has also been torn apart by both Socialist and Communist ideologies since the beginning of WWII and Wajda is trying to warn the Polish people, those he intended this film to reach, of the lies which can be promulgated by any one political train of thought. The film is also about dashed hopes; the film covers the period 1939-45, including Poland being freed from German Occupation by the Soviet Army. When the war ended, the Polish people had hoped their government in exile would return and that Poland would be a nation again. That didn't happen because Poland would be dominated by the Soviet Union for many decades to follow. This is depicted in two scenes, one where a young Polish patriot and future college student dies (with so much of his future before him) and where a young lady has her hair cut off in a kind of Antigone.
STORY: 5/5 PQ: 4.5/5 AQ: 4/5 REGION FREE FOR FILM AND SUPPLEMENTS ARE PAL (I Need to get a region free player soon)
THE DOWNFALL OF BERLIN ANONYMA (Anonyma - Eine Frau in Berlin 2008)
THE COVER OF THE BD AND THE OPENING SCREEN ARE MISLEADING, SUGGESTING THERE IS BOTH GROUND AND AERIAL COMBAT, ETC. IN THE FILM. THERE ISN'T ANY; IN FACT, THERE IS VERY LITTLE COMBAT IN THIS FILM.
This film, directed by Max Farberbock, covers the period from April 20 to June 22, 1945 in a part of Berlin occupied by the Red Army. It is an account of the experiences of Marta Hillers, a minor propagandist who had worked on brochures for the education of German youth for the Third Reich. It is based on a book entitled A Woman in Berlin (Eine Frau in Berlin) which was initially published in the U.S. in 1954 by Kurt Marek but has more recently been a bestseller in Germany. During the period when the Red Army captured Berlin, one of the largest incidents of mass rape took place. Soviet troops reportedly raped German women and girls as young as 8 years old. Estimates of the total number of victims range from tens of thousands to two million. So this is at least the historical and factual context in which the movie is set.
This film is basically about women and what they had to do to survive when the war was lost. It does, on the otherhand, show how these same women acted while Germany was victorious, which might cause one to not have much sympathy for them!
This was a disturbing film for me to watch, just like
KATYN was, but for a different reason. I'm bothered when women are treated brutally and especially raped, even in film. However, the rapes aren't overly graphic but you should be aware there is some nudity in the film. Nina Hoss is simply fantastic playing Anonyma (Marta Hillers) and Yevgeni Sidikhin is likewise as good playing Major Andreij Rybkin, the Russian officer Hillers eventually develops a close relationship in order to survive. The movie starts off with rapes being the dominant theme but eventually, Hillers grows fond, even falls in love with the Russian officer.
Story: 4/5 PQ: 4.5/5 AQ: 4/5 REGION FREE FOR FILM; SUPPLEMENTS ARE PAL (Using my Panasonic DMP-BD30, I had to step forward twice to get to the opening screen because previous items are PAL). I didn't have to select anything for ENGLISH subtitles.
STILL TO WATCH: FLAME AND CITRON (Flammen & Citronen - 2008), a Danish film set in WWII.
All countries
Argentina
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Chile
China
Colombia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Estonia
Denmark
Finland
Greece
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
India
Latvia
Lithuania
Malaysia
New Zealand
Norway
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Singapore
South Africa
South Korea
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
Two foreign films set during WWII
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