Ballada O Soldatye

Ballad of a Soldier (USSR)

By VARIETY STAFF

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Mosfilm. Director Grigori Chukhrai; Screenplay Valentin Yezhov, Grigori Chukhrai; Camera Vladimir Nikolaev, Era Savelyeva; Editor M. Timofeyeva; Music Mikhail Ziv; Art Director B. Nemechek
 
Vladimir Ivashov
Zhanna Prokhorenko
Antonina Maksimova
Nikolai Kryuchkov
Yevgeni Urbanski
 

This film is in The Cranes Are Flying vein in that it is a war film done in a poetic style and a purported pacifistic outlook. It emerges a warm, simple film that is tenuous but able to be sentimental without being mawkish.

A 19-year-old Russian soldier, during the last war, is trapped by a couple of tanks which he manages to knock out in spite of his fear. He gets a four-day pass and sets out for his home to see his mother and fix the roof. But he gets into a series of adventures and manages to get home only for a few minutes to talk to his mother.

On this slim thread, the director has woven a series of tender sketches emphasizing the lurking terror, uselessness and hopelessness of war. It also shows that all Russo soldiers were not brave, that there were shirkers and that there were women who cheated on their husbands. But its main treatment is in a lyrical style with excellent camerawork, direct acting and deft character blocking.

(B&W) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1960. Running time: 85 MIN.