The Alive and the Dead

Watch The Alive and the Dead (1964) online on iFILM — a Soviet war drama directed by Alexander Stolper, based on Konstantin Simonov's novel of the same name. Three hours of black-and-white footage, and an account of the first summer of the war that refuses to look away.

Journalist Ivan Sintsov is on a southern holiday when Germany invades. He heads for the front as a war correspondent and lands in the wreckage of the 1941 retreats — encirclements, chaos, collapse. When he loses his party card, the army stops seeing him as press and starts treating him as a potential deserter. The cast includes Kirill Lavrov, Anatoly Papanov, Oleg Yefremov, Boris Chirkov, and a young Oleg Tabakov.

Stolper refuses the victory-lap register. His commanders are confused, his soldiers frightened, and nobody is certain what is happening or how to stop it. The film came out in 1964 and remains one of the most clear-eyed accounts of what the opening months of World War II looked like for the men on the ground. Stream The Alive and the Dead in good quality on iFILM.