The Role Of Women In Stalingrad

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Directed by Fedor Bondarchuk, Stalingrad (2013) is a Russian war film that depicts a group of Russian soldiers taking refuge in an old apartment building during the early stages of the deadly battle in Stalingrad. The building is located in a German occupied town and is housed by a young 19 year old girl named Katya. Amidst the fighting, the Russian men are strengthened by this girl’s stubbornness, beauty, mysteriousness, and innocence. This is concerning to Captain Gromov, the leader of the small Russian group, because the men are beginning to fight for her rather than the motherland and she can easily be killed as opposed to the idea of a nation, but he too falls in love with her and fights for her nonetheless. On the German side they are …show more content…

Katya, the young and seemingly innocent girl whom the group of Russian men fall in love with and Masha, the poor towns girl who is raped and forced to show some sort of reciprocation of love by the German Captain that falls head over heels for her. The fact that Katya had the ability to transform the Russian men into publicly demonstrating their compassion and their love for her is a testament to females, more specifically women from Russia. Masha drives an extremely prestigious and disciplined German Captain madly in love with her beauty up to the point that he states that she and the Russians had mad an animal out of him and causes him to be distracted and jeopardize his missions to recapture the home that the Russian soldiers occupy. This not only reinforces the opinion and stereotype that Russian women are attractive, but it also takes a jab at the Germans by implying that they are mentally weak. Women in Russia are allowed to join the army if they eighteen as well. This can be seen when Katya tells the Russian Captain that she would like to join them in battle and he said yes even he loved her and wanted to protect her. In fact, women in the actual Battle at Stalingrad are documented to have considerable impact in the

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