CLASSIC FILM OF THE WEEK

Cross of Iron (1977) review — Peckinpah does bullet-ridden mayhem

This war film that inspired Tarantino to make Inglourious Basterds posed the question of whether it is possible to be moral in an amoral world
Kevin Maher
The Times
Cross of Iron: there is brutal and beguiling power here
Cross of Iron: there is brutal and beguiling power here
ALAMY
Kevin Maher
The Times

★★★★☆
The squeaky kindergarten rendition of the folk song Hänschen Klein over newsreel footage of Hitler in the opening titles of this Sam Peckinpah war movie tells you that something is deeply wrong here. And, sure enough, what unfolds is two hours of bleak, bullet-ridden mayhem as Wehrmacht corporal Rolf Steiner (James Coburn) repeatedly clashes with his posh commander, Captain Stransky (Maximilian Schell) over their ill-fated actions on the eastern front in 1943 — based, very loosely, on real events.

The men’s clash too is metaphorical (this is Peckinpah, after all), and the film is ultimately about the possibility, or not, of being moral in an amoral world. Tarantino loves it, and used it as the inspiration for Inglourious Basterds, and Orson Welles was also