Note: Due to updated encryption on Studiocanal’s UHD disc that my current software is unable to read, this review does not currently include any screen grabs. Given my comments below on the transfer and the comparisons to earlier releases, I feel it would be inappropriate to include representative grabs from another source. When my screen grab software is updated, I will aim to add some images from this disc to this review, primarily to illustrate what I have to say about the colour grading.

I, like a good many young male film fans of my generation, was initially drawn to the cinema of Sam Peckinpah by his reputation as a master of slow-motion violence. Of course, getting to see any of the films for which he was famous was a task and a half in pre-home video days, at least in anything close to their intended form. The Wild Bunch occasionally appeared on TV, but always in appallingly bastardised form, the cuts made to the violence and the pan-and-scan picture cropping transforming its showpiece action scenes into a bemusing mess. For years, Straw Dogs was the stuff of excited rumour, while titles like The Killer Elite, The Ballard of Cable Hogue, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia were, for this curious hopeful, confined to the pages film books and magazines.

The first time I saw The Wild Bunch in a cinema, uncut and in all of its widescreen glory, I was stunned. The violence was startling, but what really caught me out was the beauty of the filmmaking – the fluid slow motion, the inspired cross-cutting of action, and the sort of lightning paced editing we had been repeatedly assured was impossible with the scope frame. The performances were superb, the cinematography sublime, and the theme of men displaced by changing times was thoughtfully and movingly explored. And this was no one-off, no sir. Peckinpah was a genuine auteur, one whose distinctive approach to all aspects of his filmmaking remained strikingly consistent throughout the second half of his career, despite the range of writers, cinematographers, editors and performers that he worked with over those years. Many have attempted to walk in his footsteps, but few have come close to matching his artistry and mastery of thematic storytelling – Walter Hill (who wrote the screenplay for Peckinpah's 1972 The Getaway) came achingly close with The Long Riders and Southern Comfort, but the commercial success of 48 Hrs. subsequently took him in a different direction.

In the mid 1970s, by when his notoriously heroic alcohol intake was being supplemented by a similarly colourful consumption of drugs, Peckinpah famously turned down the chance to direct Superman and King Kong to instead helm what for many remains his last great film, although I've yet to see the director's cut of his final feature, the 1983 The Osterman Weekend. Initially adapted by Julius Epstein from The Wiling Flesh, the best selling novel by German author Willi Heinrich, it differed from the standard Hollywood war movie by telling its story from the viewpoint of German rather than Allied soldiers, most of whom were played by German actors relatively unknown outside of their home country.

The men at the story's centre – and like most war movies this is a very male-centric work – are a platoon of battle-hardened infantry soldiers stationed on the rapidly collapsing Russian front who have long ago cast aside any nationalistic ideals and are now fighting purely for their own survival. Commanded by the world-weary Colonel Brandt (James Mason) and his dishevelled and cynical adjutant Captain Kiesel (David Warner), the company's star soldier is Corporal Steiner (James Coburn), whose considerable skills as a field combatant prompt his immediate superiors to quietly tolerate his disregard for rules and open contempt for authority. Into this mix walks Captain Stransky (Maximilian Schell), a Prussian aristocrat who has requested reassignment to this unit with the aim of winning the coveted Iron Cross. Fresh to the battlefield and pumped up on aristocratic notions of honour and duty, he clashes with Steiner from the moment they meet, and soon sees him as a barrier to his shallow military ambitions.

Given the subject matter and the director's previous track record, it's no surprise that the violence in Cross of Iron is intense and sometimes bloody, but it's also a crucial component of the film's thrust and tone, and vividly captures the destructive mayhem of frenetic battle. Here, combat is shown to be a confusion of bullets, explosions, and desperate hand-to-hand fighting, enhanced by Peckinpah's signature cross-cutting and footage that alternates between hand-held reportage and pristine fixed-camera slow-motion, the energy and panic of the former dovetailing sublimely with the latter's ability to emphasise the impact of bullets and shells and the destructive finality of death. The technique reaches a creative peak when Steiner attempts to rescue a fallen comrade and is brought down by an explosion – as he falls to the ground, the film's viewpoint switches from observational to a subjective, blink-of-the-eye cross-cut between Steiner's recent memories (one of which has tellingly altered), the explosion that brings him down, the hospital in which he wakes, and hallucinations involving individuals from both locations. Even the opening titles are a small storytelling marvel, a beautifully edited montage of German wartime archive material cut to a blend of the children's folk song Hänschen klein and Ernest Gold's ominous and militarist main theme. Far from being a mere decorative roll call of names, this sequence economically recounts the rise of the Nazi war machine, its defeat on the Russian front, and the increasing gulf between the war-weary ground troops and their glorious leader, and in a manner so deft it could almost be described as sleight of hand.

This is the front line experience from a staunchly proletarian viewpoint, with Stransky a symbol of a corrupt and cowardly ruling class that is directly opposed by the revolutionary Steiner, a conflict in which even well-intentioned officers like Brandt and Kiesel find themselves on the wrong side of the class war fence. They discover this for themselves when Steiner throws the opportunity to put an end to Stransky's false claims of bravery back in their face, responding to Kiesel's questioning of his gratitude with the contemptuous retort, "Do you think that just because you and Colonel Brandt are more enlightened than most officers that I hate you any less?" Steiner's disdain springs not from political ideology but bitter experience and a genuine devotion to his immediate comrades, whose wellbeing and survival he places above all other concerns, including his own safety. They have become his family and the trenches his home, and it's to them he chooses to return even when offered a chance to walk away from the war with hospital nurse Eva (Senta Berger), with whom he briefly becomes romantically involved when recovering from injury. Steiner is drawn back like an institutionalised prisoner, and only in the company of his immediate comrades – with whom he drinks, swaps stories and philosophises about the war – is he ever really content.

It's in having his characters contemplate their situation, little of which is in Julius Epstein's original script, that Peckinpah takes some of his biggest risks, but by allowing and even requesting contributions from the actors he also facilitates some memorable conversational payoffs. Steiner and Schnurrbart may quote Carl von Clauswitz – "War is a continuation of state policy by other means"* – with exaggerated theatricality, but the exchange leads to a moment of sobering contemplation that allows the film's understated questioning of the politics and consequences of war to register without being hammered home. It's an approach beautifully illustrated by the well-fed officer who tours a hospital for injured combatants, where he attempts to shake hands with a soldier who has lost both arms in battle and is contemptuously offered a foot instead. Most memorable of all is the parting conversation between Brandt and Kiesel, which was devised on Peckinpah's request by James Mason and David Warner. "What will we do when we lose the war?" Brandt ponders to his adjutant, who tellingly replies, "Prepare for the next one."

In the disproportionate critical focus on his use violence, Peckinpah's considerable skill with actors is too often overlooked, and Cross of Iron is unquestionably one of the most impressively cast and performed. The epitome of the English gentleman he may have been, but James Mason makes for a most convincingly battle-weary Colonel Brandt, an authoritative yet approachable company commander whose dismay at the situation he and his men have found themselves in prompts a variety of emotional responses, from his quietly heartfelt farewell speech to Kiesel to his angry frustration at Stransky's naïve talk of ideals of the German soldier. In a moment that perfectly captures Brandt’s disdain for Stranksy’s new-to-the-front enthusiasm for the so-called glories of war, he responds to his eager revelation that he wants to get the Iron Cross by reaching into his pocket and suggesting casually, “We can give you one of mine.” Equally impressive is Maximilian Schell as the contemptible Stransky, a devious manipulator who secures the absolute loyalty of his adjutant Lieutenant Triebig (Roger Fritz) by threatening to expose his homosexuality, but who clearly lacks the metal to cope with the desperation of the Russian front, scuttling under a table during a mortar attack and loudly proclaiming his intention to continue fighting while wounded after receiving no more than a small cut to the face. His first meeting with Brandt and Kiesel is particular treat, with his self-satisfied confidence intermittently rattled by the explosions that rock the bunker, prompting physical jumps and accusatory upward glares, while his battle-hardened comrades barely raise an eyebrow.

The German actors that make up Steiner's platoon are uniformly excellent, and include the good natured and respected Lieutenant Meyer (Igor Galo), the wide-eyed and almost angelic-looking Anselm (Dieter Schidor), the Germanic faced Maag (Burkhard Driest) and the stressed out and flatulent Kern (Vadim Glowna). The film flirts with stereotype with the introduction of nervous young newcomer Dietz (Michael Nowka) and shark-faced party man Zoll (Arthur Brauss), but the former arrives too late to function as the standard audience identification figure, and Zoll is put quickly in his place by Steiner, and meets a genuinely horrible end at the hands of Russian women's unit that the platoon encounters when on reconnaissance. My personal favourite has always been Krüger, deliciously played by Klaus Löwitsch – a scarred, lice-ridden and hardened survivor who wears an upside-down communist star on his hat, refuses to wash ("natural body oils, combined with dirt," he assures Steiner, "can keep you waterproof"), and silences Kern's hysteria not with the traditional slap but by kissing him firmly on the mouth. It's only after a fierce bombardment of which he is the sole survivor that his fragile humanity is powerfully exposed, as he sits and shakes and stutters movingly to Steiner, "I don't ever want to be alone again."

And then there's the splendid James Coburn, whose distinctive voice, granite chiselled features and rebellious gait make him disarmingly easy to warm to, no easy task when his first on on-screen act is to lead an attack on a Russian military post and describe the resulting deaths as a "good kill." Steiner's disrespect for authority is visible in every encounter with his military superiors, in every line he delivers and every look that he throws. Coburn is a master of suppressed emotion here, keeping his character's hatred in check but bubbling visibly beneath the surface in a manner you almost fear to see unleashed. As Kiesel tells Stransky at their initial meeting: "Steiner is a myth. But men like him are our last hope. And in that sense he is truly a very dangerous man." His relationship with a young Russian boy that his platoon takes prisoner and keeps hidden from Stransky is also delicately handled, sidestepping the obvious father-son overtones to focus instead on how war robs the young of their innocence and their future.

But of all the great performances here, it's David Warner, in his few scenes as Captain Kiesel, who always beguiled me the most. Scruffy, cynical, and perpetually unwell (Warner, apparently, went straight to the location from hospital), his worn-out weariness is clearly visible in every glance, every spoken word, and every quiet moment of thought – even when seated and seemingly immobile, Warner communicates so much through his look and posture. His introduction to Stransky is priceless – "Hello Captain, how are you?" Stransky asks him politely, to which Kiesel replies, "Thank you for asking, Captain. I feel terrible. I have diarrhoea. How are you?" – and the emotional kick of his and Brandt's parting stems in no small part from his desperate unwillingness to leave and his heart-breaking expression when he waves his driver to transport him away. I get a lump in my throat just thinking about it.

It's true that the film never really tries to resolve the contradiction of delivering an anti-war message between scenes of combat that are genuinely thrilling to watch, but this also neatly reflects the dichotomy of a central character who is defined by a war but who holds its aims and its commanders in the lowest contempt. It's one of many fascinating elements of a film that is chock full of them, a brilliantly shot (by John Coquillon) and edited (Michael Ellis and Tony Lawson) work whose thematic complexity, rich character detail, superb performances, unexpected humanity, and structural boldness (how many other war films would put the main story on hold to follow its lead character to hospital and explore the hallucinatory effects of his head injury?) are every bit as rewarding as the dazzlingly executed battle scenes. It's perhaps no surprise that Stransky proves to be every bit as cowardly and dishonourable as we initially suspect, and there's an inevitability to his climactic confrontation with a vengeful Steiner, but even here Peckinpah refuses to play to expectations or convention, developing the encounter into a semi-comical and surreal finale, and an end credits sequence that recalls Georg Hegel's famous proclamation that the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. Others will disagree, and they're free to do so, but for this humble viewer Cross of Iron stands as one of Peckinpah's most divinely realised works, and one of the most dramatically satisfying and cinematically adventurous war movies ever made. It’s also a film that Orson Welles cabled Peckinpah to praise as the best war film he had seen about the ordinary enlisted man since All Quiet on the Western Front. How’s that for an accolade?

If I was delivering this as a YouTube video review, here comes the moment when I’d look directly into the camera for about 10 seconds without changing my expression, then let out a small sigh. Now before I get into why, I should say that many will have no complaints whatsoever with the restoration and transfer on this UHD, and if that includes you then I suspect that you’re quite a bit younger than me and never saw the film on the big screen on its release or in the years that immediately followed. Maybe you’re even completely new to the film, in which case you should be fine. But me? Ah, that’s a different story.

First, the good news, and there’s plenty of it. The film has been restored in 4K from the original negative and is presented here in 2160p with Dolby Vision UHD, and on the best material, the sharpness and level of detail is just fabulous. I say the best material, because one unfortunate side-effect of a transfer this crisp is it does tend to show up the occasional shots where the camera focus was just a tad off, usually on images with a narrow depth of field that is not quite locked onto an actor’s face, though there are also a couple of wider shots where the focus is visibly soft. There is some variance in the contrast, but this is often due to the conditions of shooting – a mid-shot of Steiner in the opening scene is boldly defined, for instance, but feels a tad more washed out when it cuts to a wide, but that’s because the post-gunfire smoke that is hanging in the air is now sitting between the lens and subject and diffusing the image. Elsewhere there are shifts in the strength of contrast within the same scene that have no environmental explanation but were likely down to the conditions of the shoot and the use of multiple camera setups. Dust, along with any former wear and damage, has been meticulously removed. For the most part it looks great. Except…

When asked by Studiocanal if I wanted to review this disc, my enthusiasm for a 4K restoration of one of my favourite films was tempered by my memories of the previous Studiocanal Blu-ray release from 2011. Don’t get me wrong, this was a fine edition with a decent restoration and some excellent special features, all of which have, I think (more on that below), been included here too. What blighted it for me was the colour grading. The naturalistic colour of the version I saw in the cinema and that had adorned the previous video and DVD releases had been seriously drained and the picture given a strong green/brown wash in what felt to me like an attempt to give it the look of old sepia-tinted photos. As I said at the time, maybe someone involved with the restoration had evidence that this was how Peckinpah wanted it to look, but it’s evidence I’ve yet to see and be convinced by, and I’m sorry, but unless such a change is approved by the director himself – which it unfortunately can't be – that does not sit remotely comfortably with me.

Given that this UHD is also being released by Studiocanal, my fear from the moment it was first announced was that the disc was going to feature the same colour grading as the distributor’s previous Blu-ray. Then again, maybe not. The 2011 DVD was also a Studiocanal release, and while the colour was occasionally a tad oversaturated, for the most part it was fine, with the grey uniforms of the German officers rendered as grey, not earthy brown. Maybe, just maybe, someone had stepped in and insisted that the original colour grading be applied. Less than a minute after the superb title sequence had concluded, I realised that this was not going to be the case. The green/brown wash over the image remains, but it has been tweaked a little and is not consistently applied. There are plenty of shots that are as sepia-drenched as the previous Blu-ray, but as many others where the effect has been applied with a little more fineness, a process aided by a judicious use of Dolby Vision HDR. The hospital sequence, for example, still has a distinct green hue, but it’s nowhere near as aggressively applied as on the earlier Blu-ray transfer. Hopefully I’ll be able to update this review in the future with comparative screen shots to illustrate this. What jars a little more is that this colouration is sometimes not consistent from shot to shot – when Stranksy first arrives in the bunker, for example, the effect is reduced on most solo shots of him to the level where you can see that his uniform is actually grey, but the reverse shots of Brandt of Keisel have a more distinct green hue. In a later scene with Stransky in his bunker you can see the same effect differential, with the grey of Stranksky’s uniform visible on solo shot of him but having an earthier tint when he’s sharing the frame with others. The effect is subtle, but when you’re looking for it you can’t help seeing it every time. Like I said, if this new UHD or Blu-ray release is your first exposure to the film, there’s a good chance you’ll love everything about it, and on that score I envy you. The grading is certainly an improvement on that blanket wash that for me blighted the previous Blu-ray release, but I’m still left aching for the movie I first saw and fell in love with back in 1977.

The English mono soundtrack is presented here in Linear PCM 2.0 mono and is in fine shape. It may lack the thumping bass that came with later Dolby tracks, but the chaotic nature of the battle scenes is still vividly communicated here, and the dialogue is always clearly reproduced. The track is also clean of any former wear or damage. As tends to be standard with Studiocanal discs, German and French dubs have also been included, and apparently many of the German actors in the film dubbed their own voices on the German track.

Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired, plus regular French and German subtitles, have all been included.

This is where it gets a little tricky. I was sent the UHD review disc for this release, whose special features consist solely of a commentary and five rolling image galleries. The press release, however, claims that all of the special features from the previous Studiocanal Blu-ray are also included. As they are not on the UHD disc, I am assuming that this release includes a second UHD or Blu-ray disc on which these features are located, but I’ve yet to confirm this. I’ve thus reviewed the new special features included on the UHD, and have copied over my coverage of the legacy ones over from my review of the previous Blu-ray on the assumption that they will be on board as promised. For the record, the above review has also been adapted from my coverage of the 2011 Blu-ray.

UPDATE: Studiocanal has confirmed the special features with me and which are included with each edition. All of the below detailed extras are included in both the UHD Steelbook and the Blu-ray editions, while only the coimmentary track is included with the DVD.

Audio Commentary by Filmmaker and Film Historian Mike Seigel
German filmmaker and film historian Mike Seigel has devoted a considerable amount of his adult life to the cinema of Sam Peckinpah, and we are definitely the beneficiaries here. His work includes overseeing restorations and special edition Blu-rays of Peckinpah's work, seeking out and collecting memorabilia, curating and contributing to Peckinpah-related events and screenings, and interviewing actors and filmmakers for documentaries on the director, one of which is (hopefully) included in this set. Here he provides a welcome and enormously informative commentary that largely avoids analysing the film to concentrate instead on the background to its making and the technical and artistic elements that distinguish it. His experience tracking down the film’s actors to interview for his Peckinpah documentary, Passion & Poetry – The Ballad of Sam Peckinpah, gives rise to several interesting anecdotal tales – at least one of which is related at some length – and for newcomers to the director’s work, he outlines Peckinpah’s career, and how it ultimately led to him directing Cross of Iron. There’s so much more covered here, including the film’s release, and the late production producer decision to cease production that resulted in the extraordinary final sequence being improvised in a single day. An excellent inclusion.

There are five rolling slideshows of imagery related to the film, all assembled by Mike Seigel and drawn from his own extensive collection of memorabilia. Promoting Steiner (10:22) is a collection of posters, lobby cards, video, DVD and soundtrack album covers, press books and more, which are chaptered by their country of origin. It really is interesting to see how the original poster artwork of a dead German infantryman lying face-down in the snow reaching out for an iron cross has been built on or enhanced in different territories. Steiner on Set (9:42) consists of 100 black-and-white, behind-the-scenes photos of generally excellent quality, all of which have been given the Ken Burns slow zoom/pan/tilt treatment. Filming Steiner (9:17) and Filming Steiner Pt 2 (9:07) are effectively 200 more monochrome behind-the-scenes stills, but these have been scanned from contact sheets of negatives that I presume have been since lost and were never printed. Obviously, these are not as sharp as the photos in the first set, but given that they were scanned from such small and unoptimized images, they still look pretty darned good. Finally, we have Steiner in Colour (9:07), which consists of 100 colour promotional and behind-the-scenes photographs.

Passion & Poetry: Sam Peckinpah's War (46:07)
This documentary by Mike Siegel mixes archive material from a variety of sources with newly filmed interviews to tell the story of the sometimes bumpy production of Cross of Iron. There are plenty of interesting stories here – a favourite has Peckinpah, unhappy with the Yugoslav food, buying a cow and cooking up steaks for everyone (photos of this are included in the behind-the-scenes galleries above) – and considerable praise for the director from the actors. Peckinpah speaks with some awe at having the chance to work with "Mr. James Mason," and takes understandable pleasure from the letter he received from Orson Welles telling him that Cross of Iron was one of the greatest war movies he'd ever seen. Inevitably, there's some coverage of Peckinpah's drug taking and drinking, with James Coburn (a terrific interviewee) explaining how he helped him to kick the habit, and Senta Berger recalling an unusual final encounter with him shortly before he died.

On Location is a collection of five on-set audio interviews conducted with Sam Peckinpah (5:15), James Coburn (5:39), James Mason (6:14), Maximilian Schell (4:44) and David Warner (3:24), substantial extracts from which appear in the above-detailed documentary.

Krüger Kisses Kern(8:37)
Actor Vadim Glowna, in what plays like a cut scene from the above documentary, engagingly recalls his explosive first meeting with Peckinpah, and how his rewrite of the birthday party scene ended up being filmed without most of his fellow actors being aware of how it was going to play out.

Vadim & Sam: Father & Son (5:58)
Here, Vadim Glowna recalls visiting Peckinpah during editing and expressing his admiration for a sequence he was shown, only to have the director scream at how bad it was and call him an arsehole, a falling-out that was later firmly patched up.

Cutting Room Floor (4:23)
A lightweight featurette in which actors Roger Fritz, David Warner and Senta Berger talk briefly about scenes that were cut from the film. What we really want, of course, is to see the footage in question, but I have to presume this has since been lost.

Steiner in Japan (2:02)
Some Japanese poster artwork and press material, plus two cheesy commercials for Rockingham fashion starring Coburn that, we are led to believe, were directed by Peckinpah. Not work that should feature on the CVs of either men.

Mike's Home Movies: Steiner & Kiesel Meet Again (7:26)
A screening of Cross of Iron at a Peckinpah retrospective in Padua in September 2000 is introduced by James Coburn and David Warner, who share some fond memories of the shoot, particularly Peckinpah's method of creating smoke, and the way James Mason would create the impression of doing very little in front of the camera and then blow them away when they saw the rushes.

Rounding things off are a rather clunky German Trailer (3:21), where you can at least see how the colours used to look before the tinting, an American TV Spot (0:39), and the USA/UK Trailer (3:52), which gives a little too much away to be watched just before the film.

In many ways, a terrific release that for this long-standing fan of the film is marred by grading that strips the film of much of the colour it once had in favour of what feels like a ‘period feel’ green/brown hue, one that varies in intensity and subtlety depending on the scene, and occasionally the shot. In other respects this is a belter of a restoration, and the range and quality of the special features are top-notch, at least if the advertised ones are included on a second disc that was not sent for review. If you’ve never seen the film or have not seen it with the original colour grading, this is an excellent release that I have no problem recommending. I, however, will continue to dream of the transfer that might have been and that I may one day still see.

* The actual quote is "War is not merely a political act, but also a political instrument, a continuation of political relations, a carrying out of the same by other means."