STALIN (1992)

This HBO movie features Robert Duvall in the title role. He puts in another great performance, but is so heavily made up to look like Stalin that it masks most of his facial expressions. This enormous (172 minutes), sprawling epic zeroes in on Stalin's personal relations with family and associates--in all of his paranoia, cruelty and sadism. The narration alludes to the brutality he inflicted on the Soviet Union, but wisely doesn't try to depict it. Duvall is supported by an excellent international cast, including Maximilian Schell, Jeroan Krabbe, Joan Plowright and Jim Carter, to name just a few. Stalin as portrayed here loved his wife Nadia (Julia Ormond in a fine performance) and his daughter Svetlana, but no one else. We also get good portrayals of all the Bolsheviks around him: Beria, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Kaganovitch, Khrushchev, Ordzokinidze, Kirov, Bukharin--but most of them killed by their boss. The filming, in Hungary and Russia, is splendid.