It's an old tape worth revisiting. A good example of propaganda: simple, clear, intelligible, down to small details: a bust of Napoleon in Sir Winston Churchill’s office, a sample of Stalinist humor – an enema that an American senator throws out of a suitcase, etc. There are some problems with history, but in people who have a habit of checking dates, propaganda and do not aim. At the box office, the film, most likely, did not last long - it was released in August 1950, and two and a half years later the invisible hero of the picture - Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin - left for the other world. Less than a year later, a four-party conference at the level of foreign ministers was held in Berlin in January-February 1954. It was necessary to establish interaction and mutual understanding with the West and it was hardly worthwhile to turn the tape further, in which Western leaders are depicted as bloody clowns and where it is almost directly stated that Josip Broz Tito is an American agent.
The film would have lasted longer - it has all the necessary elements, including the pursuit of burning and dilapidated Berlin, but in the end Mikhail Romm slightly overstepped the stick - in the final scene - the people's jubilation on Red Square - people are screaming at the throat ' Long live comrade Stalin!' - for the 50th year, given the name and origin of Romm - a thing normal and understandable (the campaign against the rootless cosmopolitans and all that), but a year after the death of the world genius, there was already a counter-balance needed: #39 . . '
And the last touching detail: there is an episode in the film showing the German Communists writing a leaflet to be pasted in Berlin and this is late January 1945! And their safe house is right under the residence of a Berlin resident of Soviet intelligence. . .