Coburn's finest hour

IF Cross Of Iron (World, 9.35pm) proves one thing it is that film critics can be as wrong as the rest of us. They universally panned Cross Of Iron when it came out in 1977, but its complex and vivid portrayal of the absurdities of war prompted none other than Orson Welles to write to director Sam Peckinpah and proclaim it the finest war movie - anti-war movie - he had seen.

Perhaps the critics hated it because it is not pretty. Certainly Cross Of Iron is not one of those war movies full of heroic deaths and famous last words. It opens with a brilliant montage of actual World War II footage, intercutting film of Hitler and his armies with shots of Hitler Youth raising a flag on a mountain while a chorus of German children sing.

Based on the novel by German author Willi Heinrich, the film is set at the Russian front circa 1943, as the Germans are retreating before the Soviet army. We follow James Coburn - in what may be his finest performance - a German soldier, but not a Nazi, who 'hates this uniform and everything it stands for'.

Coburn is loyal only to his men, who are fighting for survival. 'They are not fighting for the culture of the West, or for the kind of government they want, or for the stinking Party. They are fighting for their stinking lives. God bless them' He finds his nemesis in Maximillian Schell, an arrogant, narcissistic, Prussian aristocrat who desperately wants to go home with an Iron Cross, Germany's highest honour for bravery, but who is terrified of battle.

Coburn has already won his Iron Cross, so Schell promotes him to sergeant in the hope of winning an ally.

Cross Of Iron was plagued by production problems. The producers ran out of money before filming had finished and the final version was mutilated by the backroom boys in an effort to make it commercially viable. Despite their handiwork, it stands up extremely well. Shot superbly by cinematographer John Coquillon, the film shows war as hideously brutal, inglorious and insane.