STALIN (1992)
Unfortunately only in Hungarian language.
VHS-recording -> VHS-Quality

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http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0105462/

Ivan Passer made a very good job directing this "Docudrama", and everybody actress and actors give us a masterpiece. Those that do not agree shall remember that each one choose the role they want to play... They have the freedom to reject it also, so I must say "Thank you" to all the crew, you were really great. Great casting indeed. There is only one thing that is regrettable, I would like this "mini" much longer, I shall say 9 or 12 hours, maybe more. That will give much more precision in all sense in many many details in the story. And making a review of the sound, light, locations, make up, wardrobe etc. They were very good. I had a very good time seeing this movie. Duval performance is really extraordinary and unforgettable as Stalin, and Julia Ormond (Nadya), M. Schell(Lenin),J. Carter(Sergo), M.Ewan(Khrushchev),C. Jeavons (Yagoda) were most excellent.10/10 

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http://port.hu/pls/fi/films.film_page?i_where=2&i_film_id=9587&i_city_id=3372&i_county_id=-1



Director: Ivan Passer
Writer (WGA): Paul Monash (written by)
Release Date: 21 November 1992 (USA) more
Genre: Biography | Drama more
Plot: The life and career of the brutal Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin.

	Robert Duvall	... 	Josef Stalin
	Julia Ormond	... 	Nadya Alliluyeva
	Maximilian Schell... 	Vladimir Lenin
	Jeroen Krabbé	... 	Bukharin
	Joan Plowright	... 	Olga
	Frank Finlay	... 	Sergei Alliluyev
	Roshan Seth	... 	Beria
	Daniel Massey	... 	Trotsky
	András Bálint	... 	Zinoviev
	John Bowe	... 	Voroshilov
	Jim Carter	... 	Sergo
	Murray Ewan	... 	Khrushchev
	Stella Gonet	... 	Zina
	Colin Jeavons	... 	Yagoda
	Miriam Margolyes... 	Krupskaya

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To appreciate this film you might read any one of the best accounts of Stalin's dictatorship by Roy Medvedev, Dmitri Volkogonov, Edvard Radzinsky, Simon Sebag Montefiore, or Donald Rayfield. If you know these books you'll find little reason to argue with how this film portrays 'The Boss'. Other reviewers on this site have noted how well Robert Duvall captures Stalin's surly, crude, cunning, sadistic, paranoid personality. They're right. He's marvellous in the role. One reviewer has questioned whether Voroshilov would have dared to shout at Stalin, as he does in this film, at the start of the war. This is a fair point as Stalin picked his men carefully for their inability to stand up to him or take initiative. However, Donald Rayfield cites an example of the normally slavish Voroshilov doing something very like what is portrayed in the film, shouting at Stalin as war with the Nazis was looming for murdering most of the Red Army high command and so crippling the defences of the USSR. He was one of the few men to do anything of the kind and survive Stalin

The film is shot at the scenes of the crimes - the Kremlin at Stalin's Kuntsevo dacha - and is sumptuous watching as a result. Watch out for Satlin's huge, waddling shadow on the ceiling as he climbs a great staircase, an incubus about to settle on the Soviet People. It might be a standard trick but it doesn't look contrived.

Rather less convincing are the portrayals of Stalin's wife and some of his associates. This is the fault of the script or the direction or both, not the actors. For example, Stalin's second wife Nadya was not quite the principled heroine seen here who apparently took her own life because she saw no other escape from the evil that her husband was bringing to the country. The real Nadya brought some of her own problems to her marriage and these contributed to her death. Bukharin, wretched in his final weeks, may have been the best of them but that was saying little. He was not quite the noble, tragic 'swan' portrayed. He was prone to hysterics - about his own problems primarily - the suffering millions could suffer as long as he was approved of. During his final imprisonment, Bukharin wrote to Stalin offering to do anything, put his name to anything, if only Stalin would be his 'friend' again. Stalin takes all the heat and deserves plenty but many of the rest seem like innocents, fooled by him, finding out too late that they were caught up in his evil and corrupted or destroyed by it. But Stalin, like Hitler and any other dictator, was only possible because those around him saw advantage for themselves in supporting him. If there's a problem with this film it's that it lets some of Stalin's minions off the hook. It settles for extremes - Stalin and his chiefs of secret police on the one hand, and the good or loyal but naive on the other. But the only innocents were the people of the former Soviet Union, those far from power whose lives were destroyed according to the requirements of a command economy - so many deaths and so many slaves were required from every walk of life, like so many tons of iron, to meet quotas. (They are acknowledged in the film's dedication). Those around Stalin, however, were all up to their elbows in blood just as he was, obsessed with their own positions, Bukharin, Zinoviev, and Kamanev included. This is perhaps something to bear in mind in watching a generally excellent and historically accurate film. If you're interested in the psychology of Stalin and his henchmen try Jack Gold's 'Red Monarch' (1983) with Colin Blakely as Stalin. The history comes second to the general impression in that film but it's worth the sacrifice. Duvall as Stalin is marvellous in a deadly serious way, but Blakely is bloody marvellous in a deadly funny way. Red Monarch also spares the audience English peppered with 'Da' to remind you that these people are really speaking Russian, and faked Eastern-European accents.