Talk:Enemy at the Gates

Maybe fluff out the historical inaccuracies section?

The movie is far more inaccurate than this article suggests; spectacles such as Soviet soldiers being handed one rifle between two or being machine gunned down for retreating serve are utterly fictional; the latter treatmentt was reserved for NKVD penal units. Henners91 (talk) 14:45, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

A lot of that stuff has been discussed before (see the archives). We can only cover it in the article if it has been discussed in secondary sources. --IllaZilla (talk) 15:00, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

most other films have this section (Fdsdh1 (talk) 22:28, 12 October 2012 (UTC))

That's nice, but we still can't include it unless it's been covered in reliable secondary sources. See the policies Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research. --IllaZilla (talk) 06:53, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Are you sure that this implies that veterans of the war can't be considered a source? What, someone has to paraphrase it? What about the secretary of the State Duma which writes all of it down? If this is the state of Wikipedia then someone should see to it that it changes. If I am wrong on this assumption I will be willing to find those sources for us all. This movie is really fun but sort of a disgrace and its director a coward for never commenting on it. In fact I believe that Vasily Zaytsev himself has written that he was issued a rifle and grenade when he arrived. Does this not fulfill the criteria for an encyclopedic entry?37.123.149.65 (talk) 01:05, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Curiously, yes. It is the business of primary sources(plural) to write down their recollections, and for reliable secondary sources to sift through the primary sources writings, compare, contrast, co-relate, check, interview where possible, and present a best approximation of the historical truth in a respected news article, journal paper, etc. Better still to have two or more secondary sources.

Otherwise history might consist of, say, any Joe Blow on his death-bed saying, "Yes, it's true, I was on the overpass in Dallas in 1963. I shot JFK with a special-issue silent pneumatic rifle hidden under my coat... Americans deserve to know the truth..." JohndanR (talk) 04:04, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Generalissimo Suvorov (talk) 11:15, 15 January 2016 (UTC)Henk

Why is this even a debate. It has already been proven that the NKVD would systematically shoot down retreating soldiers in both NON-PENAL and penal units. The problem isn't inaccuracy, it's your ideological filter that leaves room for concern. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:58A:8200:7479:C538:42AD:D503:861D (talk) 23:36, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Nothing of the sort you claim "has been proven". Please provide references which aren't movies if you have them. There was no systematic shooting of retreating soldiers, which if you think about it for a bit, it makes no military sense at all The andf (talk) 23:52, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

The much more fundamental problem is this is a work of fiction that happens to be set in a real battle and include a few real people as characters. There are plenty of other "inaccuracies" but what does that even mean in a work of fiction? The filmmaker has no obligation to be accurate nor should we expect it. To the extent it 'feels' accurate when you are watching it, that's nice. But that's all. Twelve O'Clock High, for example, doesn't have a section on inaccuracies, and that is quite a bit closer to reality than this movie. DMorpheus2 (talk) 18:27, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

The unsupported claim that the NKVD would "systematically shoot down retreating soldiers in both NON-PENAL and penal units" clearly indicate that Hollywood's neo-conning filters leave little room for accuracy.79.71.254.90 (talk) 20:44, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

pop culture

worth mentioning that the story of Vasili is played out in the first chapter on the game Call of Duty 2 and is often referred to by players as one of the best stories in the game/franchise. while the claim of best story may be hard to verify if at all it being included in a war game may be worthy of noting considering it plays out nearly exactly to the movie and books about Vasili. 152.91.9.153 (talk) 00:10, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Unverifiable claims may not be included. Unless you can produce a reliable source supporting any of this, it cannot be included. --IllaZilla (talk) 01:27, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Soundtrack

Has anyone else noticed that parts of the soundtrack are almost identical to Mussorgsky's, Khovanschina Act IV, Exile? (Fdsdh1 (talk) 19:30, 6 March 2013 (UTC))

Trivia

"In the film, Jude Law uses a 7.62x54r Mosin Model 1891/30 sniper rifle with a PU 3.5 power sniper scope (i.e. the image is magnified 3 and a half times). Vasily Zaitsev used a Model 1891/30 sniper rifle with an earlier and larger sniper telescope (his rifle is preserved in a museum in Russia). Also, the poster for the film reverses the Mosin 91/30 rifle photograph so that the bolt handle appears on the left side of the rifle, instead of the right side where it should be."

This seems like unnecessary trivia. Does a casual moviegoer really care that the model of rifle that Law used is different from an actual World War II sniper rifle (from 60 years earlier)? Isn't that to be expected?

Also, the note on the reversed photo for the movie poster is silly. For ads and promotional material, photos are reversed all of the time...they are also enlarged, cropped, resized, color-enhanced, all to get the image that the creative art director wants. This is not newsworthy. 69.125.134.86 (talk) 20:16, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Just read the Talk Page Archive Page. Wow! The ferocity of discussion there makes my criticism seem minor. I just saw this movie and approached as a movie with a love subplot, not as a depiction of World War II history. Most of these characters didn't exist; the main character was a real person (as was Nikita Khrushchev) but everything else is just story-telling, set during war time.

I understand that people find historical inaccuracies appalling but this isn't Steven Spielberg or James Cameron here, doing years of research to get all of the details right. It's just a Hollywood movie and about as realistic as any Hollywood war movie ever was. Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List are the exception, not the rule. Is there anyone who'd try to argue that the film Tora! Tora! Tora!, A Bridge on the River Kwai, Pearl Harbor or Inglorious Basterds was historically accurate? I think not. Just my 2 cents. 69.125.134.86 (talk) 20:48, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Battlefield.ru Links

I changed the battlefield.ru link in the external links section because it was a dead link. The article has been moved to this new link is http://english.battlefield.ru/enemy-at-the-gates.html . However, I am unable to change the link in the references list because I just get reflist 2 or something like that when I click on modify. Someone has an idea how to change it?

Kovlovsky (talk) 23:22, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

External links modified

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Life and Fate

I have removed this from the article:

Craig's own source was Zaitsev's 1959 biography Life and Fate (1959). In it, the Russian (who is the only source of the story) described duelling with an unnamed German sniper during the battle. The book was written by Vasily Grossman who conducted a series of interviews with Zaitsev about his wartime experiences.

Grossman's Life and Fate was novel, not a biography. Its article does not mention Zaitsev or snipers. It was not published until 1980, so it couldn't have been a source for Craig's 1973 book. Strangely, the citation for this cites Grossman's book. However, it is possible that this is referring to For a Just Cause (1952), which was a novel of Stalingrad, and has been described as Part One of Life and Fate, but still this doesn't make sense. It seems that the "Historical accuracy" section is itself inaccurate.--Jack Upland (talk) 03:27, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

References

spelling

The russian guy zaytsev etc.'s name is spelled many different ways 112.120.95.97 (talk) 06:06, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Probably all are correct, but of course they should all be the same. In the film the name is "Vassili Zaitsev". I've changed all "Zaytsev" to "Zaitsev", but left "Vasily" as in Vasily Zaitsev (sniper). Errantius (talk) 13:13, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Irish

How is this an Irish film? Jack Upland (talk) 02:04, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Plot: Where'd Khrushchev come from?

Maybe we should add a little to the first sentence of the second paragraph, to explain how Khrushchev is connected to the plot. A simple appositive inserted after his name, like, "who is a political commissar with a Red Army unit", or something similar, would do.TheBaron0530 (talk) 20:46, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree that it is rather bald at the moment. The article on Khruschev says 'Stalin appointed him a political commissar, and Khrushchev served on a number of fronts as an intermediary between the local military commanders and the political rulers in Moscow.'

So there could be a sentence reading something like 'Nikita Khruschev, the political commissar who is the government's representative during the battle for the city, demands.....' Ponsonby100 (talk) 08:57, 17 November 2023 (UTC)