Soviet Military and Hollywood

[zscout370]

I seriously think the story is true in some areas, but I need to check out the movie again (which I own).

I know there was a reference in the end asking if anyone will received the HSU. I believe the answer was no.

[charlet]

Originally Posted by Esteban_cool

BTW, I recently met a russian boy at Osaka some days ago. He told me that the K-19 story of the movie was false. Is that true or is just the remains of the soviet counter-counter- propaganda what made him say that?
Esteban

the story of K-19 is an adaptation of true facts that happened on july 4th of 1961, names have been changed and some details adapted. The film reflects pretty well what doomed the real K-19 and what caused so many tragedies in the soviet navy, that is the overwelming PCUS bureaucracy, ideology and political pressures of all sorts.
I quote my infos from a known book, a sum of souvenirs by veterans of navy: Lev Giltsov, Leonid Ossipenko and Nikolaï Mormul, "the dramatic epopeia of soviet nuclear submarines"
see also Thomas Nilsen, Igor Kudrik and Alexandr Nikitin, "the soviet north fleet", belona editions.

[Tretov]

To bring up an old interesting thread; I just saw the 1953 movie "Never let me go" featuring Clark Gable... Never Let Me Go (1953)

They have quite good an interesting interpretation of the Soviet M/43 and M/1949 uniforms; but they obviously never visited the baltics for landscape and geographical research they did manage to get some estonian language signs correct! I was not able to make screenshots, but I assume it is easily available.

Very political movie.

[Jeffrey Meffert]

An old thread to be sure.
I recently picked up a couple of tunics worn by Joseph Fiennes (a.k.a. Danilov) in "Enemy at the Gates" just as an interesting complement to my uniform collection. I thought the soviet cloth guys would find the comissar stars especially amusing. Nice work actually on the gold bullion H&S...just a bit off on scale of the star size (shown with tanker comissar sleeve patch). Other kind of bizarre thing is that some of the buttons appear to be cast pot metal. Others are almost OK overstamped brass buttons from London and Paris. The movie was made in 1999. Why they paid someone to more or less hand make soviet uniform buttons when bags of surplus buttons were available for a few bucks is beyond me.

[DougD]

Very cool! Can you post pics of the tunic as it is being used int he film?

[Jeffrey Meffert]

As you wish. I'm tickled...acknowledging the historical inaccuracies of the film, I like it anyways. (especially Bob Hoskins as Kruschev). Have ordered repro collar rank devices to finish it up

[deValcourt]

Uhm, since we got on the subject of Western anti-Soviet propaganda films, does anybody remember Red Dawn? Moreover, did you know a remake is in the works right now (allegedly with much more in the way of a Chinese Army invasion)?

Enemy at the Gates is one of my all-time-favorites as a quality film across all genres. As for the The Hunt for Red October I still hear at least a dozen people say the name of that film every time I wear my Soviet Navy great coat in public (sans shoulder boards). I had actually been avoiding K-19 for no apparently good reason, so I will check it out now after reading the comments throughout this thread. Also, I'll have to finally watch Dr. Zhivago after all these years of boycotting the film in favor of the novel and because it's my mother's favorite movie - and what do moms know about great cinema, right?

All in all, a very interesting read guys. Thanks.

Phillip

Those interested in cinematic historical accuracy might want to check this out: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v20/v20n2p45_Annaud.html (although I think it's a bit slanted and almost angry)

[Kirchgoens]

Go to youtube, and you can find "Red Dawn" in ten-minute increments. It's pretty cheesy now, but as a kid in high school at the time, it was very motivating, the idea of heading to the hills to fight the Red invader. I can't say this movie influenced me heavily, but I was in the Army in Germany with border battle positions around Bad Hersfeld about six years later.

[EricFG]

Thanks for including Rachel W. in the screenshots. God, she's dreamy...

[pastfinder]

I've always enjoyed K-19 and Enemy at the Gates. The latter inspired me to buy a PU sniper a few years back, haha. While the former tanked in the theaters, K-19 is a good film but perhaps too intellectual, compared to The Hunt for Red October, for more American audiences. At least the submarine they filmed on was a real Russian submarine, instead of the pseudo-Typhoon command center, haha.