Incannerax What a waste of my time!!!

Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

Winifred The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

chaworth-1 Kolberg's legendary status owes not a little to its unobtainability and complete absence from television. I have the distinct impression that the best of Veit Harlan's direction ended up on the cutting room floor as a panicking Dr Goebbels insisted on drastic revision before this thundering epic could be shown -should I say, inflicted on- the German public in the last days of WWII. There are some magnificent scenes of battles and the episode in the Kolberg town council chamber is brilliantly scripted and acted, but the something is very wrong about the way the final print was put together. Lead character Maria is a virtual stranger; the details of her trials and tribulations along with her affair with Schill have to be guessed at, as does much else. The sets throughout are splendid - but it's all a stage with nothing happening. Continuity is appalling. I understand that we are watching 1hr 45mins out of over 90 hours of footage taken and that all the negatives are lost. We will never know what we are missing.

Mart Sander There are some mistakes in the other reviews, which I would like to correct. "Kolberg" is by no means the last film of the Third Reich. The film production kept on going until April 23 in Berlin-Babelsberg, and as long as the early days of May in Prag, the last major colour film shot being "Shiva und die Galgenblume". Until that time there were about 90 films being either completed or shot in the Prag studios. If you want to find out the really "last" film, perhaps you should check out Käutner's absolutely beautiful "Under the Bridges", which didn't pass censorship in March 1945. But I'm not sure even that was the last completed film. Amazon.de sells about 6 different films on DVD which are marked as completed in 1945 (Frech und Verliebt, Monte Miracolo, Peter Voss - Millionendieb, Fledermaus etc.) Plus there are several, which were completed in 1945, but released only after the war.Then, Kolberg hadn't fallen when this film premiered in Berlin and La Rochelle (which, perhaps inspired by the film, capitulated only two days after Germany had fallen). Kolberg was finally abandoned on March, 18.There is a beautiful restored print sold by the International Historic Films. It has beautiful colours and a good soundtrack, plus some extras. This film can be watched - and indeed enjoyed - as a work of art, unless you absolutely want to read propaganda into it. Sure, it was made as an ultimate propaganda vehicle, but as a viewer I am permitted to distance myself from the politics and see this film as a cinematic near masterpiece. We know, that it was radically edited in January 1945, since Dr Goebbels found it to be too bloody, "nearly pacifistic". Every trace of human suffering (aside from the lame love intrigue) was removed, and that's probably what makes this film uneven and jumpy at times. What the director's cut could have looked like, we can only guess. Politics and propaganda are as important today as they were back then. It's important to remember the atrocities of war and the crimes of Nazist regime. But a film starts living its own life since the moment it's completed, and we are stupid if we fail to recognize its merits merely because we know, that we are supposed to be blind to them.

jurched Kolberg is one of those more timeless tales, of a small town besieged by a vast, greedy enemy. It is a story of the small people holding to their honour and duty, and ultimately triumphing over the mighty. The movie is set in the Napoleonic Wars, but the message is for the people of Germany just as they are being invaded by the Red Army and the American and British armies.Goebbels film studios managed to film and distribute this movie just as the final battles of World War II were being fought. Its message of defiant defense in the face of hopeless odds was meant to rally the severely demoralised Germans as their homes were being threatened by the enemy. The songs and vivid colours were meant to entertain and raise morale as life became darker and darker. Technically, its a masterpiece, and makes use of all kinds of modern shots, angles, and special effects. Its colours were terrible, though, but I trust it was the copy I saw. Of course, it might have been a result of the war constraints.Seen in this context, this film is even more interesting than the entertaining story it presents.Jurched

Glenn Andreiev KOLBERG was an attempt by the Nazi Party to make a GONE WITH THE WIND sized epic to boost morale. There were some small problems. First, many soldier, supplies, etc that were to be used in the real war were diverted to the shooting location of this big period piece and used there. The film was finished circa April 1945, when the Nazi party was reduced to a few frightened fanatics huddled in bunkers, awaiting surrender or certain death. Third, except for a few well staged moments, this is a boring, overly sentimental epic. As on criitc put it, "It's music score is so sweet, it makes THE SOUND OF MUSIC sound like punk rock." A film worth having in your video collection.