Cross of Iron

Cross of Iron
Peckinpah, 1977



Cross of Iron is a little known, little seen Sam Peckinpah World War II film which takes on the perspective of the German side instead of the usual American side. One complaint I have about war movies is that they always portray the Germans as faceless devils that aren’t really even human. Maybe that is why I so much enjoyed the book Forgotten Soldier which is the memoirs of a German infantrymen who served on the Eastern Front. Anyways, this is what initially drew me to the movie, but as it turns out Cross of Iron had so much more in store for me than simple perspective, and it has actually turned out to be what may be one of my favorite war films.

A problem with so many older war films, other than the issue of perspective, is that they are quite ‘raw raw’, overly patriotic, ‘all soldiers are heroes’ type thing. They usually don’t even have convincing war sequences, as so often they look plainly staged and rehearsed. I had always thought that until Saving Private Ryan, most war movies suffered from this. Turns out I was wrong, because this gem – Cross of Iron – does everything just the way it should be done. The characters, the main one being platoon leader ‘Steiner’, are all very real and gritty. In fact, we aren’t always given reason to have sympathy for them as they aren’t particularly ‘good’ men. Other movies will have them look at a picture of their wife or what not to make us feel bad for them, but not here. They are depicted as all being soldiers who have stared into their victims eyes as they drew their last breaths and nothing more. They are not glorified, they are not trumped. In fact, some of them are even damned. But at the same time, they aren’t demonized for being German. They are simply presented as being soldiers, no different from the Americans or the Russians or the Japanese. Men forced into a position in which they must kill or be killed. They don’t do it for their country or any other idealistic reason; there are no false sentiments to be found here.

This is one of the aspects of the film that I loved so much. In certain scenes of the film, we get a close look at the Russian enemy and they don’t look at all different. Aside from different uniforms, both sides are covered in mud and have the same stark expressions on their faces. They are no different from each other, each side is only trying to survive, and the film is very careful to demonstrate this. The characters are all very well written, and they develop nice and slowly. We gradually get to know them, recognize them, eventually enjoy them and by the time the movie is half way through we feel like they are our friends. No cheap tricks are used; in this movie we genuinely become attached to the characters, just as we would if we had to go fight with them on the front and the film works hard to achieve such a goal. James Coburn’s character, Steiner, is the character the film uses most often to communicate its nihilistic, unpatronizing, and damning view of war. His character is very well written in that he is not portrayed to be a heroic figure, even though he won the Iron Cross and is a very good soldier. He is simply a leader of his men. He wants to ensure the safety of his men - and that is it. There are no false semantics here. The guy isn’t fighting for his country, he isn’t fighting for honor. He hates ‘honour’. He hates officers who only want awards; he hates it all. He hates war. Much of his dialogue deals with this sort of attitude towards war, and there is a lot of well hidden philosophy just beneath the surface.

By the time the battles start – they are not immediately introduced as they are not intended for viewer entertainment - we really feel close to the characters, and because of this the battles feel so much more intense and dangerous . I found myself feeling very worried that some of the platoon leaders were going to be killed every time they were fighting because the movie had allowed me to get to know them so well, and because the sequences were so realistically created I could takes them much more seriously. Also, the movie is not afraid to kill off characters, and therefore there is a sense of real danger involved at every step. It should also be noted that the battle scenes are not used as action set pieces for entertainment. They are intense and coarse, violent and cruel. They are set up in a way that they seem very dangerous as they don’t seem staged. The way they are shot and edited makes them feel extremely chaotic. I don’t think I’ve ever seen war sequences like this from a movie of its age. There was something terrifying about them, about the way Peckinpah constructed them. When the Russian tanks roll over the German lines in one scene, I felt terror. Terror and chaos, like few movies have been able to replicate. I really felt like I was there, and the frantic cinematography and brilliant editing only heightened this sense of reality.

The most heart wrenching scene of the film was the end, and if you’ve seen the movie you know what I’m talking about. It’s full of suspense and hope and then dread and sadness. I don’t want to give it away, so all I say is all the emotion the movie was able to build up seemed to be released in that one scene. Everything the movie was about was concluded there in a tragic, poetic slow motion sequence which was beautifully shot but hard to watch at the same time. Everything about the movie can be summarized in that scene - everything about war, injustice, the human condition. It’s an excellent way of bringing the film to an end, and it’s also very tragic. However, it is interesting that in an odd sort of way “justice is served”. While Steiner’s rage is justifiable, I think it was ultimately Steiner’s – and the film’s – way of bringing some sort of meaning to everything that happened in the film and to Steiner himself, or at least it was his way of putting a face to his true enemy, which wasn’t the Russians or the allies, but rather war itself… What came after that I must say was rather bizarre…I really don’t understand what it was trying to say, although that’s not to say I didn’t like it. It gives me even more reason to watch Cross of Iron again to try to figure out what the final scene is trying to say. In any case, the last scene was incredible and depressing.

Overall, Cross of Iron turned out to be one of the best war films I’ve ever seen, rivaling and even toppling modern war spectacles – including Saving Private Ryan. The decision to portray the German’s side of the story, the anti-war sentiments and even the philosophies were amazing put together. The characters were wonderful in that we slowly evolved and we got to grow attached to them, and the battle sequences are incredibly gritty, intense and terrifying. The film is expertly and poetically shot and the editing was fantastic. Cross of Iron was years ahead of its time, and it’s a shame it hasn’t gained a larger crowd of fans because the film has so much to say about war and humanity.