The Fall of Berlin (1945)

William S. Gailmor

This Russian WW2 documentary was held back from release by Artkino until the studio's similarly-themed The True Glory was distributed in the US. As a result, many of the newsreel clips included herein... read more  had already been seen by American audiences. This doesn't dampen their effectiveness, however; the fall of Berlin is depicted in vivid and sometimes harrowing detail, the city's smoldering ruins a mute but eloquent testimony to the utter collapse of the Third Reich. Told from a Soviet point of view, the film glosses over some of the crueler (albeit often justified) excesses of the Russian army, proving anew that history has always been written by the victors. American prints of Fall of Berlin included an English-language narration by William S. Gailmor. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi