climbingivy Stalin made by Home Box Office and MGM/Warner Brothers pictures studio mega corporation is one of the last movies made by Home Box Office that was fairly good.My main problem with Stalin is that I could not get past Robert Duvall playing Joseph Stalin.Joseph Stalin and Robert Duvall do not look anything alike at all.Why couldn't Warner Brother/Home Box Office go to Russia and search for a Joseph Stalin lookalike?You know that they have the resources to do so.I kept thinking throughout the entire movie that I was watching and listening to Robert Duvall.The settings,cinema photography and the music were gorgeous,rich to be exact, like a beautiful Russian tapestry.The movie tried but could not deliver due to Robert Duvall who was terrific in Tender Mercies.I Have This Movie on DVD.

Tgrain "Stalin" is a sensationalized made for TV drama about the Soviet dictator. Much of the film focuses on Stalin's relationship his first wife, Nadezhda Alleluieva, which tends to dilute the more interesting plot elements. The film also tends to humanize Stalin a bit too much, trying to show his 'tender' side, as well as many of the old Bolsheviks without discussing their own crimes.The filmmakers seem to be quite ignorant of the way many of the main characters looked and acted - strange given the tremendous access to research materials. Robert Duvall's Stalin is highly reminiscent of an Italian gangster. Lenin, played well by Schell, looks like Bozo the Clown. Bukharin is portrayed by a man who looks nothing like him whatsoever, and has more hair than Bukharin ever had. Conversely, Yezhov is depicted as quite balding and wearing a mustache - neither of which is accurate (even though the actor's eyes and height were dead on). Beria and Yagoda, by contrast, are a closer bet to the real thing. Julia Ormond does very well here.There are various minor historical errors here and there, coupled with dramatic liberties, but this - sadly - is usual fare for a TV production.

carsblair I watched Stalin and think that it is a good portrayal of Stalin's life. I would have liked to see more actors such as people playing Hitler instead of showing stock footage. One downfall of the movie was that it skips over Stalin's involvement in WWII and just starts the movie in 1917. I would have liked to see more of Stalin's childhood in the movie and maybe some cold war clips near the end of his life. Overall, I was pleased with the content. Stalin was one of the worst people to ever live, and this movie does well in showing how bad Stalin really was. I also like that the movie is told from the perspective of his daughter, Svetlana. This gives the movie a more personal touch to what his life was really like. The movie also used Robert Conquest as one of the contributors, which is good because he wrote Stalin: Breaker of Nations in 1992, also at the time of this movie.

smedina1950 Robert Duvall is a marvelous actor and he delivers an extraordinary performance as Stalin, one of the most bloody dictators of the 20th century. Stalin killed 50 million of people, twice as Hitler, and it has called my attention the fact that we have many movies depicting the cruelty of the Nazis (which I think is good because the victims deserve that tribute and I identify with their suffering), and just a few films depicting the cruelty of the Communists. After living 35 years in the United States, watching this movie brought back all the sad memories of my childhood and adolescence under the Communist dictatorship of Fidel Castro. This realistic movie really touched my heart. This film is a gem.