User Reviews

If only Soviet prison camps were like this! You'd think that not even German guilt would water-down the depiction of life in Soviet captivity like this. Apparently, the producers thought it plausible that a German prisoner could have an affair with a lovely Russian camp commandantrix.

The movie contains no combat scenes or anything else of interest to war buffs (except some brief stock footage of devastated Stalingrad), just the story of a saintly older German surgeon helping his comrades and captors.

The movie is similar to "Stalag 17" and "King Rat" but much milder. Still, I suppose it does give an idea of life in Soviet captivity for German POWs (many of whom returned in the 1950s, if at all). Sadly, the movie lacks realism, has lots of clichés, and doesn't do this interesting (and largely ignored) subject justice.

But then again, it was made in 1958, and is similar to Hollywood movies of the time. Nice B&W cinematography, too.

"Der Arzt von Stalingrad" or "The Doctor of Stalingrad" is a West German movie from 1958, so this one is already over 60 years old and it is mostly in the German language with some parts in Russian too, fittingly with the film's title. It runs for 105 minutes plus another 5 minutes of closing credits at the end and it is in black-and-white, which was still the rule you could say in the late 1950s. The title already gives away that this is closely connected to the days of World War II that weren't over for so long when this film was made. The director is Géza von Radványi, who was certainly among Germany's most successful filmmakers back in the day and his writer here is Werner P. Zibaso who I am not familiar with and looking at how strongly he was a part of the highly popular sex comedies back then, I am genuinely surprised to see him in charge here of adapting Konsalik's novel. The latter I have not seen by the way, so I will and cannot comment on difference between book and film and what was done better in one medium and worse in the other. As for the cast list: If you are a German film buff you will recognize many names here. I will spare you the exact names as you can check that for yourself on the cast list, but if you want closely enough, you will also find the young Mario Adorf, perhaps the only one still alive in 2019 from the cast and he was in his 20s still when this came out and now he is almost 90 actually making his very last tour these days. But other actors have more screen time like Hasse who plays the title character. But he isactually not the undisputed and only lead actor here as there is a love story going on and you could say that the male part from this one is just as crucial from the story perspective. One of the more entertaining aspects and conflicts I found in here was the fact that Germans were depicted as victims here. They may have fought for the Führer, but all the pain and suffering and injury they had to go through with man paying with their lives is elaborated on here from the perspective of sympathy and the foreign soldiers (Russians) they killed. I liekd that and I can imagine this was a bit of a controversial film after its release. But sadly apart from the performances being solid, this is the only positive thing I can really say here. I think the film was too long for its own good and it lacked good focus and attention to detail almost in its entirety. Like I said, I cannot say if the book is the problem or the adaptation, but my guess is the latter. The result is one of the negative deal breakers for me here, namely that I felt the film really came short in terms of emotion and how the film touches you. I strongly disagree with the other reviewer who said this was the film's biggest strength. There are so so many films about the era depicted in here with new ones about World War II still coming out frequently, especially here in Germany, but with this one you see how early they started to elaborate on this difficult subject. I like it though and it's my favorite and probably most interesting period from history altogether. So I am disappointed how weak this one here felt eventually to me. Nowhere near the best the genre has to offer. Not even near the better. Watch something else instead.