July 11, 2025 • 44 mins
In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss the beautiful Ballad of a Soldier (1959), a Soviet-era WWII film that might just be the gentlest war movie we've ever seen. The film follows a young soldier named Alyosha as he travels across Russia to visit his mother on furlough. Along the way, he meets the love of his life. Not a very outspoken war movie, but a gentle story with sincere performances from main cast and supporting actors.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer. We're your host.
I'm Sam. And I'm.
And we like World War 2 media and we want to talk about it.
Welcome back to Rosita, reviewer.
This week we are talking about the movie Ballad of a Soldier
from 1959. It was directed and written by
(00:25):
Gregory Chukai, also written by Valentin Yasov.
These are Russian names. It's a Russian movie, guys.
I will book for this and I will not apologize.
So the director Guy served in World War Two, first in the
communications battalion and later in the airborne trips.
His next film called The Clear Skies was also a World War 2
(00:48):
movie. The movie Ballad of a Soldier
tells the fictional story of a young Russian soldier whose
journey home from the Eastern Front to visit his mother is
full of set decks in the laves. But he also meets the goal of
his dreams. It received the Lemon Prize in
1961, which is a famous Soviet art prize.
(01:09):
And you can watch this movie on YouTube, which was very
convenient for us. And it has group subtitles.
So what did you think of this movie?
Aw man, I liked it and I watchedit before you and I sent you a
message and I was like, I think you're going to like it too.
There's some artsy components. I think the cinematography is
good. Everyone, of course, the two
(01:31):
main actors are very good looking, but most of these
people are just ordinary lookingpeople with interesting faces,
older people, and the camera work just makes them look really
beautiful in a way. And they have these big bright
eyes. And I found that all of the sort
of little supporting characters felt really fleshed out and real
to me in a way that I really liked.
(01:51):
I haven't seen any Russian movies about World War 2 before,
I believe, so it was really coolto get that perspective.
It was super interesting to watch this movie, especially
given when it came out in 1950 9while the Soviet Union was still
in full swing. So yeah, a good movie, I would
say. What about you?
I. Also, like you predicted, I
really liked it. I almost wouldn't say it's much
(02:13):
of A war movie, and I don't meanthat in a negative way.
You basically follow the soldieron furlough, so you don't see
well. It opens with an interesting
tank chase, but other than that you don't really see any
fighting, so it's mostly about this young boss journey.
Harm. They do something with the
(02:35):
lighting that makes everyone look really pretty.
I think that's mostly it. It's got really good lighting.
It's in black and white. It also makes me wonder if
people just look better in blackand white in general.
As an amateur photographer, I find that if photos look shitty
and you turn them black and white, they look much better.
So maybe. And it's funny, it's very sweet,
(02:58):
it's a little sad, it's got a little bit of everything.
The music is really classic. And obviously it's in Russian,
so I couldn't make any sense of it without subtitles.
But like I said, this one has good subtitles, so it's quite
easy to follow. The dialogue is interesting.
So yeah, I liked it. It's not very long either, It's
(03:20):
90 minutes or something. It's not one of those at all if
you're glued to your screen for three hours.
The subtitles are really good. I find that sometimes when you
get subtitles, you can tell thatthey're just spit out by a
computer. But I felt like these ones, I
mean, I don't speak Russian either, but I felt like they
gave me a sense of more of the tone of what was being said.
(03:42):
I mean, it was very like kind ofcolloquial, and you really got a
sense for who the characters were.
It wasn't just specifically the direct meaning.
You were also getting some of the subtext and stuff too.
Yes. So I would definitely recommend,
we'll do a little rating at the end, but I would recommend you
watch it maybe even before you listen to the rest of the
episode. Well, don't watch it now and
(04:03):
then. Come back to us.
Definitely go watch it now. Right, let's get into the plot.
We open on an idyllic village scene.
There's a woman played by Antonina Maximova, who is
(04:24):
walking alone. We see her walk past her
neighbors, but they don't reallyspeak with her.
And she sort of walks to the edge of the village and she's
looking down this long road. And this shot kind of gets
repeated at the end of the movie, So it's sort of bookended
by this. We learned from a voice over
that her son, Alyosha has died in the war and is buried far
away. And we get told that the movie
(04:45):
will portray a story about her son that not even she knows.
So we know that our main character is deceased before the
story even starts, but somehow this movie manages to imbue him
with life and make his story so interesting and kinetic in a way
where you almost forget that that's the case, and you're
(05:06):
rooting for him to survive and for him to live happily ever
after throughout the movie. Yeah, I almost feel like he
could have survived. Like we don't see him die.
The only reason we know he's dead is because it opens that
way. So in my head he's still alive.
He just made it. I don't care.
He lives alone. Well, between 9:00 and 11:00,
(05:26):
million Russian soldiers died inWorld War 2.
And if that sounds like a fuck off, huge number it is.
More than 80% of all combat in World War Two took place on the
Eastern Front. It was definitely a gap in my
knowledge, I would say. And I think that perhaps in the
West we're a little less knowledgeable about that side of
things. So that was one of the reasons
why I was super excited to watchthis movie and get the chance to
(05:48):
look into it a little bit more. I also did.
Now that 75% of the German army fought on the Eastern Front,
that's a lot. It makes you think, like, if
there hadn't been to France, howwould the war have turned out?
We're not going to answer that in this podcast, but so many
people were fighting on the Eastern Front and I had no idea
(06:09):
of the sheer numbers of that. Well, it's even crazy when you
think of the geography, like theborder of France and Germany is
like 300 miles. The border that the Germans and
the Russians were fighting on was like 1800 miles.
I don't know what that is in kilometers.
It's really fucking far. It's like 2500 kilometers.
It's wild to think that so many of these people were on foot
(06:32):
too. They were just marching for
hundreds and hundreds of kilometers.
It's crazy. Well, and there were still big
chunks of both armies that were on horseback and they had their
big artillery guns that were being pulled by horses.
I mean, we think of this being avery technological advanced war
compared to everything else thathad happened in history, but the
(06:55):
Germans were literally using hundreds of thousands of horses.
My old I didn't know anything about business from front.
I'm a bit embarrassed to admit, but I guess that's because the
Netherlands is so involved in the other part of the world that
that's what you learn about in school.
Again, this movie is a very goodreason for you to go and check
out some more resources. Even though the movie itself is
(07:18):
fictional and there's some vaguereferences to stuff that
actually happened, but you couldinterpret it in in different
ways so you will have to do yourown research.
The movie is not going to point you in any sort of direction.
The one thing that I did like was as Aliosha was traveling
through Russia to go home from the front to visit his mother,
(07:40):
you do see in the background theimpacts of the war.
He's passing through these places that are bombed out.
People are sifting through rubble.
They're eating these tins of beef.
They don't have enough food. They're having a hard time
accessing supplies and this kindof stuff.
So you are kind of getting a sense of how everyone's been
impacted in the background. All of it's artsy, like even the
(08:01):
backgrounds are artsy and to me at the beginning it kind of
feels like you're and maybe the landscape was like that, like
you're just looking at a bunch of fields with people in them.
It feels very kind of desolate and it probably would have been
because it's such a long ass strip of land that they've got
to cover, so a lot of it would have been Farland.
(08:22):
Even that looks pretty, even though Ropal and the destruction
looks kind of pretty. So they did a great job of
making it look cinematic. Yeah, for sure.
So after our flash forward, where we see Alyosha's mother,
we go back to the Eastern Front on July 1942.
We need young signalman Private Alyosha skirts off, played by
(08:45):
Vladimir Ivashov, and he's trying to warn a superior about
uncommon tanks before beating a history treat.
We see him run away, and the tanks kind of pursue him.
Some of it's upside down for some reason and arrival it's fun
and as he's escaping he destroys2 tanks that are pursuing him
(09:06):
which is like pretty heroic and amazing thing for him to do.
Yeah, and it's interesting because his superiors obviously
view it as heroic as well. But I think you can tell from
his body language and the look on his face that for him it was
a matter of survival. Like he did it because he had
to, and he was panicked and scared the whole time, which I
(09:27):
enjoyed. That sort of little sense that
you got from it. Yeah, At the same time, it felt
almost a little bit slapstick tome because he was being chased
by this huge tank and there was no one else around, just him on
this tank. Like going across the field and
then upside down and then, oh, look, there's a bazooka.
I don't know, I don't think it'sa bazooka, but it looks like a
(09:48):
bazooka to me. But at least empty tank weapons
and he takes them and he just destroys them.
I find the destroying itself to be quiet on the roaming, but it
doesn't have to be big and flashy, it works.
Yeah. I mean, this is probably the
highest budget part of the movie, so it's not specified
(10:11):
necessarily when exactly we are.You kind of get hints because
throughout the movie, every now and again, you'll get fragments
of radio broadcast talking aboutthe movement of Russian troops
and that sort of thing. So there are hints that this
falls during the Battle of the Caucasus, which was a series of
German operations to gain control over the Caucasus area
(10:33):
and its oil fields beginning in July of 1942.
And the Caucasus is an area thatstraddles Eastern Europe and
Western Asia between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.
And the way this fits into the whole battle on the Eastern
front is that despite the earlier non aggression pact, the
Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941 in Operation
(10:54):
Barbarossa. The German forces were super
successful at first, but they ended up being unable to take
Moscow for a whole bunch of different reasons, so they
changed focus to the Caucasus inthe summer of 1942.
Stalingrad was a large industrial center and an access
point to the the oil fields thatthey wanted to get to, so this
became a focal point for a mighty clash between the two
(11:15):
armies. The Battle of Stalingrad from
July of 1942 to February of 1943was the bloodiest battle of
World War 2 and it was also considered a turning point in
the war. The German surrender on February
2nd, 1943 was the first surrender by one of Hitler's
field armies, and so right at the beginning of this part of
the war is where we are. And the Germans were ultimately
(11:37):
repulsed from the whole of the Caucasus area and fighting ended
in that area in September of 1943.
It amazes me how long some of these battles were to on the
Eastern Front. You talk about some of them
being a couple weeks or a coupledays or, but some of these were,
I don't remember which city was preceded by the Germans, but it
was preceded for like 980 days or something.
(12:01):
It's Leningrad, yeah. And it was just under three
years or something. I think that's.
A hell of a lot time also upon doing research about why Hitler
wanted to invade the Soviets in the 1st place.
Other than Hitler being a land girly bastard, Germany didn't
have very many resources and it had obviously no connection to
(12:24):
many of the Pixies so there was no way of getting any of the
resources. So they weren't looking for it
in different countries and that's probably why they
targeted the oil fields to supply their own war.
So Hitler needed those to even continue the war, which is also
ultimately part of why he failedis not being able to get
(12:47):
resources. Well, I mean, we touched on this
in a previous episode, but rightat the end of the war, the
Germans trucks were being pulledby horses like they were
completely depleted of oil. They had to eventually invent A
synthetic oil in order to be able to continue flying planes
and that kind of thing. Yeah, that was in our ex company
episodes. Yeah.
(13:07):
Go listen to those too. Yeah.
And the other thing that we've discussed on podcasts before,
too, is this idea of Liebenstraum, where the Germans
wanted more quote, UN, quote, living space.
And they figured that if they advanced into Russia, they could
get that. And they also had this sense
that Slavic people were subhuman.
And the German propaganda mill was quite good at putting out
(13:29):
this message. And so the Germans were just
convinced that they could take over this land and it wasn't
really going to hurt anybody. So wild to me how that happens,
but then it shouldn't be that wild because it's still
happening today to other people's, but it just never
changes and just makes me sad. Anyway, I'll go back to the
movie now. Alyosha, after having escaped
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his pursuers, reports to the general, played by Nikolai
Krajewskov, who applauds him forhis bravery.
At first you think he's going tokind of reprimand him for
retreating, but then he's like, oh, you're actually kind of
brave. So he says that he's going to
give Alyosha a suggestion, but instead Alyosha asks for
(14:13):
permission to go home and visit him his mother because he wants
to see her and also he wants to fix her roof.
So he gets six days leave 2 for truffle 2 his mother, 2 to fix
the roof and two to come back tothe front.
Yeah, there's a super cute little moment in this where
Alyosha bonks his head on the door when he's going out.
(14:34):
This movie is full of little moments like that, and I just.
I really liked it. It was so charming.
I bet it's just an accident and I just cut it in there.
It looked super real to me. Can we also briefly just mention
how young this guy looks? I feel like this was an actual
young guy. He was 19.
Yeah, right. And he's adorable.
(14:55):
He's so pretty. All of them are so pretty.
But this guy's got cheekbones for this.
Yeah, him and the female lead who will meet in a bit were both
virtual unknowns when they were cast.
And that was a conscious choice.They wanted people who were
inexperienced in the industry that people hadn't really seen
before, some kind of fresh faces.
And they were both really young.I think maybe they were both 19.
(15:18):
And they both went on to have long careers in Soviet cinema, I
gather. It feels very natural.
It's tricky for me a little bit to judge whether the acting is
good, because it's in a languageI don't understand and it always
this makes it harder to touch, but it doesn't feel first or
anything. Yeah, Private Suryoshi Pavlov,
played by Jenna D Yuktin, asked Alyosha to take word and some
(15:43):
soap because soap's a big ticketitem.
They don't have much of it, and so this will be a real treat.
So he asked Alyosha to take somesoap home to his wife, whose
town he'll be passing through onhis way home.
And they're trying to bully thisSergeant into giving over these
big hunks of soap that Alyosha can take.
It's really cute. They're bullying him into giving
up first one chunk of soap and then the second chunk of soap.
(16:05):
And that's all the stuff they have, too.
It's so funny. It's like, I only have two.
They're like, well, you can justgive him the second one, too.
Then it doesn't really matter. There's not enough anyway.
Yeah. So you'll see throughout this
movie that Alyosha kind of bumpsinto all these different really
colorful characters on their way.
And one of them is someone he meets next.
(16:26):
At the train station, he helps awounded soldier called Russia by
the Afghani Urbanski, and Fasciais is working on what are they
called in English crunches. And Fascia is worried about
going home to his wife. He's married, but he isn't the
same man as when he left becausenow he's wounded and he's
(16:47):
disabled and he's like, I can't go home.
And then he goes in to write a telegram home and then doesn't
help for the trains or Yoshi goes over to him and finds him
soaking and a woman at the station tells him to stop being
a dumbass and he's like okay I'll stop being a dumbass now.
And this man is very good looking.
(17:08):
I have some feelings about this man.
He's good looking, but I don't think he's good looking in a way
that would turn your head if yousaw him on the street.
Like, he's got sort of an interesting face for sure, and
it's like very expressive, but Iwouldn't say he's a classical
handsome dude. No, he's got very outspoken
features and stuff, but I feel like it's also a little bit just
(17:30):
this movie that makes him interesting looking.
Yeah, I actually looked him up because I was curious to see
sometimes, as we've seen in these movies before, I think it
was the best Years of Our Lives where they had cast an actual,
like, war veteran who's disabled.
So I was just curious to see if they had done the same here.
And instead I found out that he actually died performing a stunt
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in a later film, aged just 33. No, that's so sad.
Why? I mean, I can't speak for the
Soviet film industry, but I do wonder if maybe there wasn't a
lot of health and safety precautions.
I also wonder if it's a respected job to be an actor in
Russia. I don't know.
(18:13):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know, but yeah, RIP this guy.
So Alyosha's on the train, and he's with a bunch of soldiers,
and they're talking and joking and having a good time.
They're initially skeptical of Alyosha's accomplishments.
He tells them that he took out acouple of tanks, and they're
like, oh, sure, you took out some tanks, did you?
What did you take them out with?You know, they're kind of
(18:35):
razzing them. And when Alyos so should change
his trains, he sees Vasya meet his wife, played by Elsa Leshte,
and she's a factory worker and she welcomes him home with open
arms. And it's actually a really sweet
reunion scene. I really thought it was cute.
I also. Thought it was cute and also I
expected some face sucking like old Hollywood style but they'll
(18:58):
do something different in Russia.
Apparently they're just smush faces but it was very sweet.
Yeah, Sometimes in movies, you can see, like, actors kissing or
embracing, like, they know the camera is on them and it's meant
to look good. And this was just two people who
had been apart for a long time and were just, like, very
(19:19):
emotionally greeting each other.She's, like, kissing his face.
It's like it's not meant to lookpretty because, right?
Displays of human emotion don't have to.
No, I did kind of love it. And they walk off together and
you see, and I've seen it before, but you, I think you
only noticed at this specific scene that Russia only has one
(19:42):
leg. I.
Don't know if it's that, I didn't notice, but I think that
that's the moment where it really hits home how wounded he
is. It does because he's wearing a
trench coat. You see him sometimes full body,
but most of it's just his face in the store.
So and then he walks away with her and it's like this really
outspoken silhouette of him and his trance coat and this one leg
(20:04):
and his scratches. I did notice, I don't know if
you saw it, but she tries to kind of hold on to him, to be
affectionate with him, but he done pushes her away.
So there is that little bit of distance as they walk away.
And I thought that was really telling.
I also thought it was interesting how they went out of
their way to mention that she was a factory worker.
(20:25):
In some of the reviews I saw from this movie, they were like,
oh, there's no Soviet propaganda.
And I'm like, well, I don't knowthat I would say there's no
Soviet propaganda. They really go out of their way
to be like, yeah, like she mentions it out of the blue for
kind of no reason. I also feel like any of the news
reports that we get are meant tobe propaganda E So I don't think
(20:47):
there are actual real news reports, but still they're still
like talk of the war and the Russian forces state the Soviet
first. Like keep saying Russian, that's
wrong, right? The Sergeant versus as the
advance. Do you mean like propaganda?
Do you think that was the express point like purpose by
the filmmaker of including thosethings?
(21:08):
Do you think like you think the propaganda?
Do you think the do you think the filmmaker is trying to make
propaganda or the original clipsare propaganda?
No, the filmmaker I think is it's let's see, it's not anti
war isn't what I'm trying to say.
They do include things that don't really give you any
storyline progression, but are the backdrop of the war.
(21:32):
I don't know if I'm making my point correctly.
So maybe. Yeah, because I didn't get the
sense like that didn't feel propaganda to me.
Like, to me, what it felt like was that every time Ali OSHA was
hearing more news from the front, it was like, oh, the
troops have moved on and more time has passed and we're
supposed to get the sense that, like, he's running out of time.
(21:52):
Like that's what I felt like to me.
That's a good point. Actually, that might be a bit
more true than what I just said.I think I maybe actually agree
with that. So Alyosha is trying to get onto
his next train, and to do so, hehas to bribe a sentry called.
I don't know how to pronounce his name.
I've been trying to do it all day.
(22:13):
Go Frillskin, played by Alexander Kuznetsov.
This guy is really kind of sneaky.
And he's like, you cannot go onto my train, and I have to
guard this train because otherwise the Lieutenant, who's
a monster, will get mad at us both and will be in so much
trouble. And Alyosha then manages to
persuade him to let him go on a train with a can of meat.
(22:38):
It says luncheon can meet. And I immediately noticed that
this was not Russian. So some actually already knew
what this was. It is very likely that Alyosha
has acquired it through the LandLease Act, which was a policy
under which the United States supplied allied nations with
(22:58):
stuff like food, oil and materials between 1941 and 1945.
And this was signed into law on March 11, 1941.
So that would have been before the US officially entered the
war. So they were helping the war
effort, but we're not directly involved yet.
Yeah. And I think we talked a little
(23:19):
bit about this when we talked about D app.
The Allies were trying to run resupply convoys up past Norway
to get stuff to the Russians, and they were having a bit of a
tough time because the Germans kept intercepting them.
Yeah, I just thought it was interesting because I locked up
some of these can't meet things on the Internet and they would
(23:40):
have been in Russian, but for this movie they met them in
English. So Alyosha encounters another
stowaway named Shura. This is our female lead, played
by Shanna Prokarenko, whom he must prevent from jumping from
the train when she spots him. So she immediately panics.
And it's like, oh, my God, there's a man on here.
(24:01):
And you can tell she's a bit naive and sheltered and maybe
hasn't been alone with a man before.
And it's this whole thing where she's like, no, stay away from
me. And he's like, I'll do whatever
you want, but like, maybe don't jump off the train.
She throws out her like all her belongings too.
They end up in like river somewhere.
It's like, Oh no no, I've dropped all my belongings.
(24:22):
I want to get off the train and get them later.
And it's funny to me because shetries to jump 3 or 4 times and
he has to actually physically stop her from jumping off the
train. It's a long scene but it's kind
of cute. He's like kind of going to do
anything and she just doesn't believe him.
Feel when you meet a boy on the hay train and he has to stop you
(24:44):
from jumping out of the hay train 3 or 4 times.
You know that feel. That one specific feel he has
once Shuria kind of gets her from being afraid of him, she
and Alyosha and make friends andget a little flirty.
But then she says oh now I'm trying to visit my pilot fiance
and he's in hospital. But then our friend, the guy
(25:07):
Alyosha just bribed got broken. See Shura, he has to bribe him
again with more meat. Yes, Gavrokin spots his
opportunity because he's like, when they heard him coming, they
jumped into the hay together andhe's like, well, I saw your
boots together, I know you guys were laying in the hay, wink,
wink, nudge, nudge. So you better give me some more
(25:27):
canned beef or I'll tell everyone.
They share a bacon sandwich and her face when she eats a sun
brunch. It's like she's probably never
had the bacon sandwich before. She is loving that bacon
sandwich. And I was like, girl, I don't
blame you. I probably also look like that
when I'm eating a bacon sandwich.
(25:48):
Lieutenant, who is Govrilkin's boss?
So this whole time Govrilkin's been like, you better bribe me,
because my lieutenant's an asshole and he'll make a whole
thing of it if he catches you onthis train.
So when we actually meet the Lieutenant played by Evgeni
Tataren, he's fine with them being on the train and he
actually makes Govrilkin give the bribes back.
(26:09):
If you can call him the beast orsomething like he's some really
just me and tough guy. He's quite sweet.
So you can tell like a work and it's just kind of full of shit.
Yeah. And then Shura and Alyosha talk
friendship terms. She's like, do you think that
women and men can just be friends?
And he's like, of course, I think that.
Ayoshi gets off the train to getsome water.
(26:31):
This is a running theme in this movie.
But he ends up being left behindbecause he gets back to the
train tonight because he's listening to news of the front,
as we talked about before. And he goes to try and catch up
to the train and asks a truck driver.
It's a lady. She's played by Valentina and
Talagina. And she gives him a a very damp
(26:55):
and also very sleepy ride to thenext stage.
And I was like, jeez, are they going to crashed this van?
But he again misses the train when he gets there because they
just took too long. Yeah, the truck driver was
another character that I really enjoyed.
They're just like fun little moments that crop up in this
movie where you're like, what a fun, juicy little character, you
(27:17):
know? I liked it.
Yeah, it just made me laugh thatshe was just falling asleep.
I say it makes me laugh, but shesaid something about being awake
for 48 hours for whatever reason.
I was like, like, what's going on over there?
Why are you awake for 48 hours? But that's one of those, I think
one of those backdrops of the war that's kind of seeping into
(27:39):
the civilian life, that we get some little handoff.
It's very subtle. It's not in your face, but it's
there. And her son is at the front as
well. All.
Right, she tells him. Yeah, that's true.
But so Eliosha has missed his train.
But all is not lost because Shura has disembarked from the
train and she's waiting for him.So they reunite and they go
(28:02):
looking for some water and they finally get some water and then
Shura finds these big hunks of soap that were a gift for
Pavlov's wife Liza, and they realize that they just happened
to be in her town. So they go to see her to give
her this soap. How lucky that they are in the
exact time that they need to be in.
(28:22):
Shura also kind of suspect that A Yoshi has a girlfriend at this
point because she also found he's on a scarf for his mother
to take home. It's a present and she finds it
and she's like, who's this for? But she still goes with them
because they have to go and findPavlov's wife.
He's called Liza, she's played by Valentina Markova, and she's
(28:44):
living with another man. We don't see him, but we hear
him and we see proof that there's been another man in the
house. So Alyosha is not having this.
So he's like, I'm going to take myself back right now and I'm
going to give it to Pavlov's father instead, who's played by
Vladimir Bokovsky. And his father is injured, and
(29:08):
he makes On Your Shack stay withhim for a while and talk about
his son at the front, even though he doesn't really know
him and just pretends that he does.
And it's like, your son is a good man and he's doing so great
at the front. It's quite certain.
Yeah, this is a running theme for Alyosha, right?
Like, he's running behind. He barely has time to visit his
mother, but he's like, sure, here, I'll bring soap to this
(29:30):
guy's wife. And then he gets there, and to
him it just feels so morally terrible that this woman has
taken up with another man while her husband's at the front.
So he leaves the soap with her initially, but then he feels too
badly about us. We have to go back and get it.
And all of this is costing him time on his journey home.
And then he goes to see this oldman and give him the soap.
(29:50):
And then he barely knows the oldman's son, but he's still trying
to tell him all these nice things about him.
If Alyosha had been a little more of an asshole, he probably
would have gotten home on time. Yeah, I also just realized I'd
already kind of forgotten, but when they get to where their
home used to be, Liza's home, there used to be a house, but
it's been burnt, so she's staying at another place.
(30:13):
So that's another one of those. The war is definitely going on.
Yeah, Alyosha sneaks Shira onto a military train.
She's not allowed, but he puts his coat and his hat on her and
she manages to get on. So sweet.
Yeah, it's cute and when they have to leave when another at
sure stop, she admits that thereis no fiance.
(30:34):
She lied about having a pilot fiance in the hospital and she's
actually on her way to visit heraunt and Alyosha doesn't realize
until after they've separated that she was trying to tell him
that she loves him and that's why she spilled the beans.
You're such a boy. Like, come on, dude, it's so
obvious. But the scene on the train where
(30:56):
they're standing in between train carts or train wagons, I
don't know what you would call them in English.
It's so sweet. It's lit all beautifully, and
it's probably the most romantic looking scene from the entire
movie. They've made it really pretty
and all shiny and glimmery and pretty, and I love it.
But as Ayosha begins to feel really sad because he's left
(31:21):
Shura behind, his train that he's on with Ukrainians, I
believe he's sharing a cabin with some Ukrainians, is set a
place by German bomber. So he's once again delayed and
he must help rescue his father passengers.
So he's really running out of time and in the morning the
(31:42):
trainer comes to collect them, can only take the bullet and the
women and children. So he's probably having a very
good journey. He's just delayed and delayed
some more. Yeah, once again, nice guy
Alyosha delayed because he decided he was going to help all
these people. This scene kind of made me laugh
a little because there's just anoverlay of fire.
(32:03):
Some stuff is on fire, but then across the whole thing, it's
this transparent bit of fire theentire time and it just made me
laugh. You can tell that it's not a
high budget movie. It's very pretty, but it didn't
have any special effects, budgetor anything.
Yes, Yeah. So Alyosha, listen, it's like
(32:26):
the morning of the day that he'ssupposed to go home.
So he really doesn't have a lot of time.
But he rafts across the river. And when he gets across the
river, he has to convince another truck driver, played by
Yevgeny Yev Stignaev, to take him the last stretch home to his
village. And the truck driver is like.
But then he kind of turns aroundand ends up coming to get him
(32:47):
after all. He's also.
Like I could get arrested for taking you.
And I was like, why? Why can't he get arrested?
Well, I think it's because so few soldiers got to go on
furlough that he probably just didn't believe that he was
actually on furlough. He probably thought he was AWOL.
All right, right, That, that's my sense.
It's also it's so funny to me that there just happens to be a
(33:08):
raft just on the river watching for him.
Where there's a will, there's a way.
You know, sometimes you manifesta whole ass raft.
By being so nice to everybody else.
Literally. Exactly.
It's good karma. It's what it is.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
She gets home in the nick of time but only finds his
(33:28):
childhood friends. Oh yeah.
Played by Marina from Nova. And he's got 5 minutes to stay
home. He can't fix his mother's roof.
He gets to be a night with his mother very briefly as she is
running through the fields to meet him after she's been told
his home. And then he has to return to the
(33:49):
front. And he does give her her little
kerchief or scarf or whatever. It is a beautiful thing.
And she promises to wait for him.
And it's so sweet. But it's like, 5 minutes.
I'm like, really? It doesn't really only have 5
minutes to stay with her. It's so short.
And he's, like, very optimistically, I'll be back.
(34:10):
My mother. You're like, no, you won't be
because we know that he does. This is the moment you remember
that he's dead. Yeah.
One of the things that I thoughtwas really effective was the way
when him and his mother are embracing, there's no music,
it's just quiet. And I found that was so
impactful because everything wasleading up to this, you know,
(34:31):
even the the little funny moments, the sweet moments, the
cute moments, like ultimately the story was about them
reuniting, but knowing that it couldn't last kind of thing.
Yeah, and it makes you wonder how many mothers in this war
would have been waiting for their sons to return to him and
how many of them didn't. As you said in the beginning, so
(34:54):
many people died in this fight. So it's sad, but also it almost
doesn't feel sad in this scene. It feels very hopeful because
he's so optimistic and he's jumping back onto the truck
drivers truck that I'll take himback to the front.
I wonder if he even made it backbecause he's been so unlucky on
the way here. So who knows, yeah.
(35:16):
The voiceover from the beginningcomes back to tell us he,
referring to Alyosha, could havebecome a remarkable man.
He could have become a builder or beautified the land with
gardens. But he was an inner memory will
forever remain a soldier, a Russian soldier.
That's the only moment where I felt some kind of Russian pride.
(35:39):
It felt very like the very last line.
The repeating of a Russian soldier felt very patriotic to
me. The rest of the movie really
didn't. Well, I also think it's crucial
that they didn't say a Soviet soldier like they very
specifically mentioned Russia asa country.
It's singular, yeah. And that's the end of the movie.
(36:01):
I think it's a perfectly based movie.
Nothing drags or takes the law or nothing gets skimmed over.
None of the side characters are only there for one second.
It's just perfect in that way. Yeah, no, I agree.
I thought it was great. And I just liked how even though
(36:21):
we are basically seeing this whole story happen to this
character after he's died, we already know that his death is
pre written and there's nothing that's going to undo it.
You still have this sense of hopefulness.
Like you were saying, the inevitability doesn't really
sink in because them characters feel so vital and alive.
Yeah. And you still get to kind of
(36:41):
wonder, does he go back to Shira?
Does he go and find her? And we don't know.
We'll never know. It feels helpful in that way
that he will go back to the village where he left her and
look for her on the 2 seconds hehas left with his photo.
Right. That's the thing.
When they're leaving each other,he's trying to yell at her where
she can write to him and she can't hear him.
(37:04):
And I'm like wow y'all hung out for like 36 hours and not once
were you like this is the village that I'm from.
Yeah, no, I think it's really good.
It's definitely made me want to look into the Eastern Front, or
like all of these movies do as we watch them.
It's so good. It's such a nice, gentle way of
(37:24):
going into that conflict becauseit's so big, so much stuff
happened, but it also makes me want to see other sort of yet
productions, if there are any good ones that we can understand
and find and have good subtitlesfor.
Yeah, for sure. This one was released in the
(37:53):
United States in 1960 as part ofa Soviet American film exchange
during a thaw in the Cold War. And so this was a movie that
wasn't necessarily just made forSoviet audiences or just
appreciated by Soviet audiences,that did get wider release.
And it actually received quite alot of praise from American
viewers and critics. It was nominated for an Academy
(38:14):
Award for best original screenplay.
I just find it so interesting. The period of time in which
movies were made so often just really informs them.
Like, I just think that's so interesting.
Yeah. It almost makes me.
Wish I had studied movie making a little bit more in university
before we were doing this broadcast.
I never thought of movies as anything other than
(38:36):
entertainment, but they're also just such a product of the time,
and they're so informative of the time that it's so
interesting to think about them in that way.
Yeah. And this one, a lot of the
movies that were made in sort ofthe earlier Soviet era did tend
to be a lot more nationalistic and quite more obviously back to
(38:58):
the gills with propaganda. But this movie was made during
what they call the Khrushchev thaw, which Stalin died in 1953.
This movie was made in 1959. And during this period, there
was this kind of like liberalization.
And so it's much less propagandaheavy.
It's much more acceptable to reference the human tragedy of
(39:19):
war and to actually depict things, things that aren't
necessarily 100% flattering to Stalin and his policies.
And this period didn't last. It ended when Khrushchev was
ousted as Soviet leader in 1964.So this is a really kind of
interesting window of time from which to watch Soviet movies.
(39:39):
Yes, I wish I could tell any of you which other movies to watch,
but we've only just watched thisone, so I'm sure we'll try and
find some more in the future. Definitely do look this one up
on YouTube. So we've still gonna rate this
movie? We're rating this movie
appropriately. We're rating it tends of can
(40:02):
meet out of 10. Why do we always pick these
tongue twisters? It's like done on purpose to
spite me. We could have picked something
else. I didn't realize it would be a
tongue twister. Everything is a tongue twister
for me, so maybe I shouldn't be on your case about this.
Right, I'm being unfairly maligned.
I will rate this movie 8 tins ofcanned meat out of 10.
(40:25):
I thought that the pacing was good, as you said.
I thought the acting was good. It felt really authentic to me.
And I would say that's true for pretty much all the supporting
cast as well. I thought all of these people
were really well chosen. They fit into the movie super
well. Just a really simple story, but
(40:45):
also a really powerful one. It was a fun window into the
civilian experience during the war for the Russian people, and
it gave me an opportunity to do a bit of homework on something I
didn't necessarily know very much about.
And I'll probably try and pick up some books so I can learn a
little bit more. But yeah, it's a charming little
(41:05):
movie. I honestly think that people
should check it out. Like, go on YouTube, throw on
this movie. It's only 90 minutes.
Like, I don't think you'll regret it.
I agree, I'm going to read it. Also 8 since it can be part of
time. I also just really enjoyed it
for all the reasons you've already mentioned.
I also thought the music was quite fun, very old timey
(41:28):
obviously, but still fun. And the acting was unforced, I
want to say. And maybe that's because there
were such newcomers too, acting and just felt like they were
people having a regular conversation where there just
happened to be a camera on this.And yeah, I think the biggest
thing from me compared to other old timing movies is the
(41:50):
pissing. And the length of the movie is
just perfect. I would like the others to be a
little bit more like this. But yeah, definitely go watch
it. I definitely recommend.
Are you reading anything? I am reading something.
(42:11):
I am reading a memoir by Martha Gilhorn, who was a wartime
correspondent. But her memory is called Travels
with Myself and Another, and it's not really a war memory so
much as it is she was also a travel writer.
So she just writes her memoir based on travels that she's
(42:32):
taken. And they're all but she calls
horror truffles. So they're all just terribly.
She just has terrible misfortune.
She was the wife of Ernest Hemingway, but she never calls
him Ernest Hemingway in the book.
She only calls him, you see, which stands for Unwilling
Companion. So it just gives you an idea of
(42:53):
their relationship as well. It didn't last very long.
They got kind of sick of each other after World War 2 and they
broke up their marriage. It's a really funny memory, She
writes in a really funny way, soI'm looking forward to finishing
that. And I did recently buy seven
books, so I've quite a couple more to read.
(43:15):
How about you? Well, in the time it takes you
to read those seven books, I will be reading Alan Turing The
Enigma by Andrew Hodges of 660 pages of it.
Well, I'm guessing you'll be finished with that book and then
I'll have finished one of my 7 much smaller books.
Anyway, those two things should give you another hint into what
(43:39):
we'll be discussing very soon onthe podcast, so I'm looking
forward to that. Yes, me too.
You can listen to us wherever you get your podcasts.
You can rate US five stars. You can definitely send this
episode to a friend. You can visit our website
rosiethereviewer.com or you can follow us on Instagram at Rosie
the Reviewer Podcast. Thank you for listening and see
(43:59):
you next week. Bye.
Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer. We're your host.
I'm Sam. And I'm.
And we like World War 2 media and we want to talk about it.
Welcome back to Rosita, reviewer.
This week we are talking about the movie Ballad of a Soldier
from 1959. It was directed and written by
(00:25):
Gregory Chukai, also written by Valentin Yasov.
These are Russian names. It's a Russian movie, guys.
I will book for this and I will not apologize.
So the director Guy served in World War Two, first in the
communications battalion and later in the airborne trips.
His next film called The Clear Skies was also a World War 2
(00:48):
movie. The movie Ballad of a Soldier
tells the fictional story of a young Russian soldier whose
journey home from the Eastern Front to visit his mother is
full of set decks in the laves. But he also meets the goal of
his dreams. It received the Lemon Prize in
1961, which is a famous Soviet art prize.
(01:09):
And you can watch this movie on YouTube, which was very
convenient for us. And it has group subtitles.
So what did you think of this movie?
Aw man, I liked it and I watchedit before you and I sent you a
message and I was like, I think you're going to like it too.
There's some artsy components. I think the cinematography is
good. Everyone, of course, the two
(01:31):
main actors are very good looking, but most of these
people are just ordinary lookingpeople with interesting faces,
older people, and the camera work just makes them look really
beautiful in a way. And they have these big bright
eyes. And I found that all of the sort
of little supporting characters felt really fleshed out and real
to me in a way that I really liked.
(01:51):
I haven't seen any Russian movies about World War 2 before,
I believe, so it was really coolto get that perspective.
It was super interesting to watch this movie, especially
given when it came out in 1950 9while the Soviet Union was still
in full swing. So yeah, a good movie, I would
say. What about you?
I. Also, like you predicted, I
really liked it. I almost wouldn't say it's much
(02:13):
of A war movie, and I don't meanthat in a negative way.
You basically follow the soldieron furlough, so you don't see
well. It opens with an interesting
tank chase, but other than that you don't really see any
fighting, so it's mostly about this young boss journey.
Harm. They do something with the
(02:35):
lighting that makes everyone look really pretty.
I think that's mostly it. It's got really good lighting.
It's in black and white. It also makes me wonder if
people just look better in blackand white in general.
As an amateur photographer, I find that if photos look shitty
and you turn them black and white, they look much better.
So maybe. And it's funny, it's very sweet,
(02:58):
it's a little sad, it's got a little bit of everything.
The music is really classic. And obviously it's in Russian,
so I couldn't make any sense of it without subtitles.
But like I said, this one has good subtitles, so it's quite
easy to follow. The dialogue is interesting.
So yeah, I liked it. It's not very long either, It's
(03:20):
90 minutes or something. It's not one of those at all if
you're glued to your screen for three hours.
The subtitles are really good. I find that sometimes when you
get subtitles, you can tell thatthey're just spit out by a
computer. But I felt like these ones, I
mean, I don't speak Russian either, but I felt like they
gave me a sense of more of the tone of what was being said.
(03:42):
I mean, it was very like kind ofcolloquial, and you really got a
sense for who the characters were.
It wasn't just specifically the direct meaning.
You were also getting some of the subtext and stuff too.
Yes. So I would definitely recommend,
we'll do a little rating at the end, but I would recommend you
watch it maybe even before you listen to the rest of the
episode. Well, don't watch it now and
(04:03):
then. Come back to us.
Definitely go watch it now. Right, let's get into the plot.
We open on an idyllic village scene.
There's a woman played by Antonina Maximova, who is
(04:24):
walking alone. We see her walk past her
neighbors, but they don't reallyspeak with her.
And she sort of walks to the edge of the village and she's
looking down this long road. And this shot kind of gets
repeated at the end of the movie, So it's sort of bookended
by this. We learned from a voice over
that her son, Alyosha has died in the war and is buried far
away. And we get told that the movie
(04:45):
will portray a story about her son that not even she knows.
So we know that our main character is deceased before the
story even starts, but somehow this movie manages to imbue him
with life and make his story so interesting and kinetic in a way
where you almost forget that that's the case, and you're
(05:06):
rooting for him to survive and for him to live happily ever
after throughout the movie. Yeah, I almost feel like he
could have survived. Like we don't see him die.
The only reason we know he's dead is because it opens that
way. So in my head he's still alive.
He just made it. I don't care.
He lives alone. Well, between 9:00 and 11:00,
(05:26):
million Russian soldiers died inWorld War 2.
And if that sounds like a fuck off, huge number it is.
More than 80% of all combat in World War Two took place on the
Eastern Front. It was definitely a gap in my
knowledge, I would say. And I think that perhaps in the
West we're a little less knowledgeable about that side of
things. So that was one of the reasons
why I was super excited to watchthis movie and get the chance to
(05:48):
look into it a little bit more. I also did.
Now that 75% of the German army fought on the Eastern Front,
that's a lot. It makes you think, like, if
there hadn't been to France, howwould the war have turned out?
We're not going to answer that in this podcast, but so many
people were fighting on the Eastern Front and I had no idea
(06:09):
of the sheer numbers of that. Well, it's even crazy when you
think of the geography, like theborder of France and Germany is
like 300 miles. The border that the Germans and
the Russians were fighting on was like 1800 miles.
I don't know what that is in kilometers.
It's really fucking far. It's like 2500 kilometers.
It's wild to think that so many of these people were on foot
(06:32):
too. They were just marching for
hundreds and hundreds of kilometers.
It's crazy. Well, and there were still big
chunks of both armies that were on horseback and they had their
big artillery guns that were being pulled by horses.
I mean, we think of this being avery technological advanced war
compared to everything else thathad happened in history, but the
(06:55):
Germans were literally using hundreds of thousands of horses.
My old I didn't know anything about business from front.
I'm a bit embarrassed to admit, but I guess that's because the
Netherlands is so involved in the other part of the world that
that's what you learn about in school.
Again, this movie is a very goodreason for you to go and check
out some more resources. Even though the movie itself is
(07:18):
fictional and there's some vaguereferences to stuff that
actually happened, but you couldinterpret it in in different
ways so you will have to do yourown research.
The movie is not going to point you in any sort of direction.
The one thing that I did like was as Aliosha was traveling
through Russia to go home from the front to visit his mother,
(07:40):
you do see in the background theimpacts of the war.
He's passing through these places that are bombed out.
People are sifting through rubble.
They're eating these tins of beef.
They don't have enough food. They're having a hard time
accessing supplies and this kindof stuff.
So you are kind of getting a sense of how everyone's been
impacted in the background. All of it's artsy, like even the
(08:01):
backgrounds are artsy and to me at the beginning it kind of
feels like you're and maybe the landscape was like that, like
you're just looking at a bunch of fields with people in them.
It feels very kind of desolate and it probably would have been
because it's such a long ass strip of land that they've got
to cover, so a lot of it would have been Farland.
(08:22):
Even that looks pretty, even though Ropal and the destruction
looks kind of pretty. So they did a great job of
making it look cinematic. Yeah, for sure.
So after our flash forward, where we see Alyosha's mother,
we go back to the Eastern Front on July 1942.
We need young signalman Private Alyosha skirts off, played by
(08:45):
Vladimir Ivashov, and he's trying to warn a superior about
uncommon tanks before beating a history treat.
We see him run away, and the tanks kind of pursue him.
Some of it's upside down for some reason and arrival it's fun
and as he's escaping he destroys2 tanks that are pursuing him
(09:06):
which is like pretty heroic and amazing thing for him to do.
Yeah, and it's interesting because his superiors obviously
view it as heroic as well. But I think you can tell from
his body language and the look on his face that for him it was
a matter of survival. Like he did it because he had
to, and he was panicked and scared the whole time, which I
(09:27):
enjoyed. That sort of little sense that
you got from it. Yeah, At the same time, it felt
almost a little bit slapstick tome because he was being chased
by this huge tank and there was no one else around, just him on
this tank. Like going across the field and
then upside down and then, oh, look, there's a bazooka.
I don't know, I don't think it'sa bazooka, but it looks like a
(09:48):
bazooka to me. But at least empty tank weapons
and he takes them and he just destroys them.
I find the destroying itself to be quiet on the roaming, but it
doesn't have to be big and flashy, it works.
Yeah. I mean, this is probably the
highest budget part of the movie, so it's not specified
(10:11):
necessarily when exactly we are.You kind of get hints because
throughout the movie, every now and again, you'll get fragments
of radio broadcast talking aboutthe movement of Russian troops
and that sort of thing. So there are hints that this
falls during the Battle of the Caucasus, which was a series of
German operations to gain control over the Caucasus area
(10:33):
and its oil fields beginning in July of 1942.
And the Caucasus is an area thatstraddles Eastern Europe and
Western Asia between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.
And the way this fits into the whole battle on the Eastern
front is that despite the earlier non aggression pact, the
Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941 in Operation
(10:54):
Barbarossa. The German forces were super
successful at first, but they ended up being unable to take
Moscow for a whole bunch of different reasons, so they
changed focus to the Caucasus inthe summer of 1942.
Stalingrad was a large industrial center and an access
point to the the oil fields thatthey wanted to get to, so this
became a focal point for a mighty clash between the two
(11:15):
armies. The Battle of Stalingrad from
July of 1942 to February of 1943was the bloodiest battle of
World War 2 and it was also considered a turning point in
the war. The German surrender on February
2nd, 1943 was the first surrender by one of Hitler's
field armies, and so right at the beginning of this part of
the war is where we are. And the Germans were ultimately
(11:37):
repulsed from the whole of the Caucasus area and fighting ended
in that area in September of 1943.
It amazes me how long some of these battles were to on the
Eastern Front. You talk about some of them
being a couple weeks or a coupledays or, but some of these were,
I don't remember which city was preceded by the Germans, but it
was preceded for like 980 days or something.
(12:01):
It's Leningrad, yeah. And it was just under three
years or something. I think that's.
A hell of a lot time also upon doing research about why Hitler
wanted to invade the Soviets in the 1st place.
Other than Hitler being a land girly bastard, Germany didn't
have very many resources and it had obviously no connection to
(12:24):
many of the Pixies so there was no way of getting any of the
resources. So they weren't looking for it
in different countries and that's probably why they
targeted the oil fields to supply their own war.
So Hitler needed those to even continue the war, which is also
ultimately part of why he failedis not being able to get
(12:47):
resources. Well, I mean, we touched on this
in a previous episode, but rightat the end of the war, the
Germans trucks were being pulledby horses like they were
completely depleted of oil. They had to eventually invent A
synthetic oil in order to be able to continue flying planes
and that kind of thing. Yeah, that was in our ex company
episodes. Yeah.
(13:07):
Go listen to those too. Yeah.
And the other thing that we've discussed on podcasts before,
too, is this idea of Liebenstraum, where the Germans
wanted more quote, UN, quote, living space.
And they figured that if they advanced into Russia, they could
get that. And they also had this sense
that Slavic people were subhuman.
And the German propaganda mill was quite good at putting out
(13:29):
this message. And so the Germans were just
convinced that they could take over this land and it wasn't
really going to hurt anybody. So wild to me how that happens,
but then it shouldn't be that wild because it's still
happening today to other people's, but it just never
changes and just makes me sad. Anyway, I'll go back to the
movie now. Alyosha, after having escaped
(13:52):
his pursuers, reports to the general, played by Nikolai
Krajewskov, who applauds him forhis bravery.
At first you think he's going tokind of reprimand him for
retreating, but then he's like, oh, you're actually kind of
brave. So he says that he's going to
give Alyosha a suggestion, but instead Alyosha asks for
(14:13):
permission to go home and visit him his mother because he wants
to see her and also he wants to fix her roof.
So he gets six days leave 2 for truffle 2 his mother, 2 to fix
the roof and two to come back tothe front.
Yeah, there's a super cute little moment in this where
Alyosha bonks his head on the door when he's going out.
(14:34):
This movie is full of little moments like that, and I just.
I really liked it. It was so charming.
I bet it's just an accident and I just cut it in there.
It looked super real to me. Can we also briefly just mention
how young this guy looks? I feel like this was an actual
young guy. He was 19.
Yeah, right. And he's adorable.
(14:55):
He's so pretty. All of them are so pretty.
But this guy's got cheekbones for this.
Yeah, him and the female lead who will meet in a bit were both
virtual unknowns when they were cast.
And that was a conscious choice.They wanted people who were
inexperienced in the industry that people hadn't really seen
before, some kind of fresh faces.
And they were both really young.I think maybe they were both 19.
(15:18):
And they both went on to have long careers in Soviet cinema, I
gather. It feels very natural.
It's tricky for me a little bit to judge whether the acting is
good, because it's in a languageI don't understand and it always
this makes it harder to touch, but it doesn't feel first or
anything. Yeah, Private Suryoshi Pavlov,
played by Jenna D Yuktin, asked Alyosha to take word and some
(15:43):
soap because soap's a big ticketitem.
They don't have much of it, and so this will be a real treat.
So he asked Alyosha to take somesoap home to his wife, whose
town he'll be passing through onhis way home.
And they're trying to bully thisSergeant into giving over these
big hunks of soap that Alyosha can take.
It's really cute. They're bullying him into giving
up first one chunk of soap and then the second chunk of soap.
(16:05):
And that's all the stuff they have, too.
It's so funny. It's like, I only have two.
They're like, well, you can justgive him the second one, too.
Then it doesn't really matter. There's not enough anyway.
Yeah. So you'll see throughout this
movie that Alyosha kind of bumpsinto all these different really
colorful characters on their way.
And one of them is someone he meets next.
(16:26):
At the train station, he helps awounded soldier called Russia by
the Afghani Urbanski, and Fasciais is working on what are they
called in English crunches. And Fascia is worried about
going home to his wife. He's married, but he isn't the
same man as when he left becausenow he's wounded and he's
(16:47):
disabled and he's like, I can't go home.
And then he goes in to write a telegram home and then doesn't
help for the trains or Yoshi goes over to him and finds him
soaking and a woman at the station tells him to stop being
a dumbass and he's like okay I'll stop being a dumbass now.
And this man is very good looking.
(17:08):
I have some feelings about this man.
He's good looking, but I don't think he's good looking in a way
that would turn your head if yousaw him on the street.
Like, he's got sort of an interesting face for sure, and
it's like very expressive, but Iwouldn't say he's a classical
handsome dude. No, he's got very outspoken
features and stuff, but I feel like it's also a little bit just
(17:30):
this movie that makes him interesting looking.
Yeah, I actually looked him up because I was curious to see
sometimes, as we've seen in these movies before, I think it
was the best Years of Our Lives where they had cast an actual,
like, war veteran who's disabled.
So I was just curious to see if they had done the same here.
And instead I found out that he actually died performing a stunt
(17:52):
in a later film, aged just 33. No, that's so sad.
Why? I mean, I can't speak for the
Soviet film industry, but I do wonder if maybe there wasn't a
lot of health and safety precautions.
I also wonder if it's a respected job to be an actor in
Russia. I don't know.
(18:13):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know, but yeah, RIP this guy.
So Alyosha's on the train, and he's with a bunch of soldiers,
and they're talking and joking and having a good time.
They're initially skeptical of Alyosha's accomplishments.
He tells them that he took out acouple of tanks, and they're
like, oh, sure, you took out some tanks, did you?
What did you take them out with?You know, they're kind of
(18:35):
razzing them. And when Alyos so should change
his trains, he sees Vasya meet his wife, played by Elsa Leshte,
and she's a factory worker and she welcomes him home with open
arms. And it's actually a really sweet
reunion scene. I really thought it was cute.
I also. Thought it was cute and also I
expected some face sucking like old Hollywood style but they'll
(18:58):
do something different in Russia.
Apparently they're just smush faces but it was very sweet.
Yeah, Sometimes in movies, you can see, like, actors kissing or
embracing, like, they know the camera is on them and it's meant
to look good. And this was just two people who
had been apart for a long time and were just, like, very
(19:19):
emotionally greeting each other.She's, like, kissing his face.
It's like it's not meant to lookpretty because, right?
Displays of human emotion don't have to.
No, I did kind of love it. And they walk off together and
you see, and I've seen it before, but you, I think you
only noticed at this specific scene that Russia only has one
(19:42):
leg. I.
Don't know if it's that, I didn't notice, but I think that
that's the moment where it really hits home how wounded he
is. It does because he's wearing a
trench coat. You see him sometimes full body,
but most of it's just his face in the store.
So and then he walks away with her and it's like this really
outspoken silhouette of him and his trance coat and this one leg
(20:04):
and his scratches. I did notice, I don't know if
you saw it, but she tries to kind of hold on to him, to be
affectionate with him, but he done pushes her away.
So there is that little bit of distance as they walk away.
And I thought that was really telling.
I also thought it was interesting how they went out of
their way to mention that she was a factory worker.
(20:25):
In some of the reviews I saw from this movie, they were like,
oh, there's no Soviet propaganda.
And I'm like, well, I don't knowthat I would say there's no
Soviet propaganda. They really go out of their way
to be like, yeah, like she mentions it out of the blue for
kind of no reason. I also feel like any of the news
reports that we get are meant tobe propaganda E So I don't think
(20:47):
there are actual real news reports, but still they're still
like talk of the war and the Russian forces state the Soviet
first. Like keep saying Russian, that's
wrong, right? The Sergeant versus as the
advance. Do you mean like propaganda?
Do you think that was the express point like purpose by
the filmmaker of including thosethings?
(21:08):
Do you think like you think the propaganda?
Do you think the do you think the filmmaker is trying to make
propaganda or the original clipsare propaganda?
No, the filmmaker I think is it's let's see, it's not anti
war isn't what I'm trying to say.
They do include things that don't really give you any
storyline progression, but are the backdrop of the war.
(21:32):
I don't know if I'm making my point correctly.
So maybe. Yeah, because I didn't get the
sense like that didn't feel propaganda to me.
Like, to me, what it felt like was that every time Ali OSHA was
hearing more news from the front, it was like, oh, the
troops have moved on and more time has passed and we're
supposed to get the sense that, like, he's running out of time.
(21:52):
Like that's what I felt like to me.
That's a good point. Actually, that might be a bit
more true than what I just said.I think I maybe actually agree
with that. So Alyosha is trying to get onto
his next train, and to do so, hehas to bribe a sentry called.
I don't know how to pronounce his name.
I've been trying to do it all day.
(22:13):
Go Frillskin, played by Alexander Kuznetsov.
This guy is really kind of sneaky.
And he's like, you cannot go onto my train, and I have to
guard this train because otherwise the Lieutenant, who's
a monster, will get mad at us both and will be in so much
trouble. And Alyosha then manages to
persuade him to let him go on a train with a can of meat.
(22:38):
It says luncheon can meet. And I immediately noticed that
this was not Russian. So some actually already knew
what this was. It is very likely that Alyosha
has acquired it through the LandLease Act, which was a policy
under which the United States supplied allied nations with
(22:58):
stuff like food, oil and materials between 1941 and 1945.
And this was signed into law on March 11, 1941.
So that would have been before the US officially entered the
war. So they were helping the war
effort, but we're not directly involved yet.
Yeah. And I think we talked a little
(23:19):
bit about this when we talked about D app.
The Allies were trying to run resupply convoys up past Norway
to get stuff to the Russians, and they were having a bit of a
tough time because the Germans kept intercepting them.
Yeah, I just thought it was interesting because I locked up
some of these can't meet things on the Internet and they would
(23:40):
have been in Russian, but for this movie they met them in
English. So Alyosha encounters another
stowaway named Shura. This is our female lead, played
by Shanna Prokarenko, whom he must prevent from jumping from
the train when she spots him. So she immediately panics.
And it's like, oh, my God, there's a man on here.
(24:01):
And you can tell she's a bit naive and sheltered and maybe
hasn't been alone with a man before.
And it's this whole thing where she's like, no, stay away from
me. And he's like, I'll do whatever
you want, but like, maybe don't jump off the train.
She throws out her like all her belongings too.
They end up in like river somewhere.
It's like, Oh no no, I've dropped all my belongings.
(24:22):
I want to get off the train and get them later.
And it's funny to me because shetries to jump 3 or 4 times and
he has to actually physically stop her from jumping off the
train. It's a long scene but it's kind
of cute. He's like kind of going to do
anything and she just doesn't believe him.
Feel when you meet a boy on the hay train and he has to stop you
(24:44):
from jumping out of the hay train 3 or 4 times.
You know that feel. That one specific feel he has
once Shuria kind of gets her from being afraid of him, she
and Alyosha and make friends andget a little flirty.
But then she says oh now I'm trying to visit my pilot fiance
and he's in hospital. But then our friend, the guy
(25:07):
Alyosha just bribed got broken. See Shura, he has to bribe him
again with more meat. Yes, Gavrokin spots his
opportunity because he's like, when they heard him coming, they
jumped into the hay together andhe's like, well, I saw your
boots together, I know you guys were laying in the hay, wink,
wink, nudge, nudge. So you better give me some more
(25:27):
canned beef or I'll tell everyone.
They share a bacon sandwich and her face when she eats a sun
brunch. It's like she's probably never
had the bacon sandwich before. She is loving that bacon
sandwich. And I was like, girl, I don't
blame you. I probably also look like that
when I'm eating a bacon sandwich.
(25:48):
Lieutenant, who is Govrilkin's boss?
So this whole time Govrilkin's been like, you better bribe me,
because my lieutenant's an asshole and he'll make a whole
thing of it if he catches you onthis train.
So when we actually meet the Lieutenant played by Evgeni
Tataren, he's fine with them being on the train and he
actually makes Govrilkin give the bribes back.
(26:09):
If you can call him the beast orsomething like he's some really
just me and tough guy. He's quite sweet.
So you can tell like a work and it's just kind of full of shit.
Yeah. And then Shura and Alyosha talk
friendship terms. She's like, do you think that
women and men can just be friends?
And he's like, of course, I think that.
Ayoshi gets off the train to getsome water.
(26:31):
This is a running theme in this movie.
But he ends up being left behindbecause he gets back to the
train tonight because he's listening to news of the front,
as we talked about before. And he goes to try and catch up
to the train and asks a truck driver.
It's a lady. She's played by Valentina and
Talagina. And she gives him a a very damp
(26:55):
and also very sleepy ride to thenext stage.
And I was like, jeez, are they going to crashed this van?
But he again misses the train when he gets there because they
just took too long. Yeah, the truck driver was
another character that I really enjoyed.
They're just like fun little moments that crop up in this
movie where you're like, what a fun, juicy little character, you
(27:17):
know? I liked it.
Yeah, it just made me laugh thatshe was just falling asleep.
I say it makes me laugh, but shesaid something about being awake
for 48 hours for whatever reason.
I was like, like, what's going on over there?
Why are you awake for 48 hours? But that's one of those, I think
one of those backdrops of the war that's kind of seeping into
(27:39):
the civilian life, that we get some little handoff.
It's very subtle. It's not in your face, but it's
there. And her son is at the front as
well. All.
Right, she tells him. Yeah, that's true.
But so Eliosha has missed his train.
But all is not lost because Shura has disembarked from the
train and she's waiting for him.So they reunite and they go
(28:02):
looking for some water and they finally get some water and then
Shura finds these big hunks of soap that were a gift for
Pavlov's wife Liza, and they realize that they just happened
to be in her town. So they go to see her to give
her this soap. How lucky that they are in the
exact time that they need to be in.
(28:22):
Shura also kind of suspect that A Yoshi has a girlfriend at this
point because she also found he's on a scarf for his mother
to take home. It's a present and she finds it
and she's like, who's this for? But she still goes with them
because they have to go and findPavlov's wife.
He's called Liza, she's played by Valentina Markova, and she's
(28:44):
living with another man. We don't see him, but we hear
him and we see proof that there's been another man in the
house. So Alyosha is not having this.
So he's like, I'm going to take myself back right now and I'm
going to give it to Pavlov's father instead, who's played by
Vladimir Bokovsky. And his father is injured, and
(29:08):
he makes On Your Shack stay withhim for a while and talk about
his son at the front, even though he doesn't really know
him and just pretends that he does.
And it's like, your son is a good man and he's doing so great
at the front. It's quite certain.
Yeah, this is a running theme for Alyosha, right?
Like, he's running behind. He barely has time to visit his
mother, but he's like, sure, here, I'll bring soap to this
(29:30):
guy's wife. And then he gets there, and to
him it just feels so morally terrible that this woman has
taken up with another man while her husband's at the front.
So he leaves the soap with her initially, but then he feels too
badly about us. We have to go back and get it.
And all of this is costing him time on his journey home.
And then he goes to see this oldman and give him the soap.
(29:50):
And then he barely knows the oldman's son, but he's still trying
to tell him all these nice things about him.
If Alyosha had been a little more of an asshole, he probably
would have gotten home on time. Yeah, I also just realized I'd
already kind of forgotten, but when they get to where their
home used to be, Liza's home, there used to be a house, but
it's been burnt, so she's staying at another place.
(30:13):
So that's another one of those. The war is definitely going on.
Yeah, Alyosha sneaks Shira onto a military train.
She's not allowed, but he puts his coat and his hat on her and
she manages to get on. So sweet.
Yeah, it's cute and when they have to leave when another at
sure stop, she admits that thereis no fiance.
(30:34):
She lied about having a pilot fiance in the hospital and she's
actually on her way to visit heraunt and Alyosha doesn't realize
until after they've separated that she was trying to tell him
that she loves him and that's why she spilled the beans.
You're such a boy. Like, come on, dude, it's so
obvious. But the scene on the train where
(30:56):
they're standing in between train carts or train wagons, I
don't know what you would call them in English.
It's so sweet. It's lit all beautifully, and
it's probably the most romantic looking scene from the entire
movie. They've made it really pretty
and all shiny and glimmery and pretty, and I love it.
But as Ayosha begins to feel really sad because he's left
(31:21):
Shura behind, his train that he's on with Ukrainians, I
believe he's sharing a cabin with some Ukrainians, is set a
place by German bomber. So he's once again delayed and
he must help rescue his father passengers.
So he's really running out of time and in the morning the
(31:42):
trainer comes to collect them, can only take the bullet and the
women and children. So he's probably having a very
good journey. He's just delayed and delayed
some more. Yeah, once again, nice guy
Alyosha delayed because he decided he was going to help all
these people. This scene kind of made me laugh
a little because there's just anoverlay of fire.
(32:03):
Some stuff is on fire, but then across the whole thing, it's
this transparent bit of fire theentire time and it just made me
laugh. You can tell that it's not a
high budget movie. It's very pretty, but it didn't
have any special effects, budgetor anything.
Yes, Yeah. So Alyosha, listen, it's like
(32:26):
the morning of the day that he'ssupposed to go home.
So he really doesn't have a lot of time.
But he rafts across the river. And when he gets across the
river, he has to convince another truck driver, played by
Yevgeny Yev Stignaev, to take him the last stretch home to his
village. And the truck driver is like.
But then he kind of turns aroundand ends up coming to get him
(32:47):
after all. He's also.
Like I could get arrested for taking you.
And I was like, why? Why can't he get arrested?
Well, I think it's because so few soldiers got to go on
furlough that he probably just didn't believe that he was
actually on furlough. He probably thought he was AWOL.
All right, right, That, that's my sense.
It's also it's so funny to me that there just happens to be a
(33:08):
raft just on the river watching for him.
Where there's a will, there's a way.
You know, sometimes you manifesta whole ass raft.
By being so nice to everybody else.
Literally. Exactly.
It's good karma. It's what it is.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
She gets home in the nick of time but only finds his
(33:28):
childhood friends. Oh yeah.
Played by Marina from Nova. And he's got 5 minutes to stay
home. He can't fix his mother's roof.
He gets to be a night with his mother very briefly as she is
running through the fields to meet him after she's been told
his home. And then he has to return to the
(33:49):
front. And he does give her her little
kerchief or scarf or whatever. It is a beautiful thing.
And she promises to wait for him.
And it's so sweet. But it's like, 5 minutes.
I'm like, really? It doesn't really only have 5
minutes to stay with her. It's so short.
And he's, like, very optimistically, I'll be back.
(34:10):
My mother. You're like, no, you won't be
because we know that he does. This is the moment you remember
that he's dead. Yeah.
One of the things that I thoughtwas really effective was the way
when him and his mother are embracing, there's no music,
it's just quiet. And I found that was so
impactful because everything wasleading up to this, you know,
(34:31):
even the the little funny moments, the sweet moments, the
cute moments, like ultimately the story was about them
reuniting, but knowing that it couldn't last kind of thing.
Yeah, and it makes you wonder how many mothers in this war
would have been waiting for their sons to return to him and
how many of them didn't. As you said in the beginning, so
(34:54):
many people died in this fight. So it's sad, but also it almost
doesn't feel sad in this scene. It feels very hopeful because
he's so optimistic and he's jumping back onto the truck
drivers truck that I'll take himback to the front.
I wonder if he even made it backbecause he's been so unlucky on
the way here. So who knows, yeah.
(35:16):
The voiceover from the beginningcomes back to tell us he,
referring to Alyosha, could havebecome a remarkable man.
He could have become a builder or beautified the land with
gardens. But he was an inner memory will
forever remain a soldier, a Russian soldier.
That's the only moment where I felt some kind of Russian pride.
(35:39):
It felt very like the very last line.
The repeating of a Russian soldier felt very patriotic to
me. The rest of the movie really
didn't. Well, I also think it's crucial
that they didn't say a Soviet soldier like they very
specifically mentioned Russia asa country.
It's singular, yeah. And that's the end of the movie.
(36:01):
I think it's a perfectly based movie.
Nothing drags or takes the law or nothing gets skimmed over.
None of the side characters are only there for one second.
It's just perfect in that way. Yeah, no, I agree.
I thought it was great. And I just liked how even though
(36:21):
we are basically seeing this whole story happen to this
character after he's died, we already know that his death is
pre written and there's nothing that's going to undo it.
You still have this sense of hopefulness.
Like you were saying, the inevitability doesn't really
sink in because them characters feel so vital and alive.
Yeah. And you still get to kind of
(36:41):
wonder, does he go back to Shira?
Does he go and find her? And we don't know.
We'll never know. It feels helpful in that way
that he will go back to the village where he left her and
look for her on the 2 seconds hehas left with his photo.
Right. That's the thing.
When they're leaving each other,he's trying to yell at her where
she can write to him and she can't hear him.
(37:04):
And I'm like wow y'all hung out for like 36 hours and not once
were you like this is the village that I'm from.
Yeah, no, I think it's really good.
It's definitely made me want to look into the Eastern Front, or
like all of these movies do as we watch them.
It's so good. It's such a nice, gentle way of
(37:24):
going into that conflict becauseit's so big, so much stuff
happened, but it also makes me want to see other sort of yet
productions, if there are any good ones that we can understand
and find and have good subtitlesfor.
Yeah, for sure. This one was released in the
(37:53):
United States in 1960 as part ofa Soviet American film exchange
during a thaw in the Cold War. And so this was a movie that
wasn't necessarily just made forSoviet audiences or just
appreciated by Soviet audiences,that did get wider release.
And it actually received quite alot of praise from American
viewers and critics. It was nominated for an Academy
(38:14):
Award for best original screenplay.
I just find it so interesting. The period of time in which
movies were made so often just really informs them.
Like, I just think that's so interesting.
Yeah. It almost makes me.
Wish I had studied movie making a little bit more in university
before we were doing this broadcast.
I never thought of movies as anything other than
(38:36):
entertainment, but they're also just such a product of the time,
and they're so informative of the time that it's so
interesting to think about them in that way.
Yeah. And this one, a lot of the
movies that were made in sort ofthe earlier Soviet era did tend
to be a lot more nationalistic and quite more obviously back to
(38:58):
the gills with propaganda. But this movie was made during
what they call the Khrushchev thaw, which Stalin died in 1953.
This movie was made in 1959. And during this period, there
was this kind of like liberalization.
And so it's much less propagandaheavy.
It's much more acceptable to reference the human tragedy of
(39:19):
war and to actually depict things, things that aren't
necessarily 100% flattering to Stalin and his policies.
And this period didn't last. It ended when Khrushchev was
ousted as Soviet leader in 1964.So this is a really kind of
interesting window of time from which to watch Soviet movies.
(39:39):
Yes, I wish I could tell any of you which other movies to watch,
but we've only just watched thisone, so I'm sure we'll try and
find some more in the future. Definitely do look this one up
on YouTube. So we've still gonna rate this
movie? We're rating this movie
appropriately. We're rating it tends of can
(40:02):
meet out of 10. Why do we always pick these
tongue twisters? It's like done on purpose to
spite me. We could have picked something
else. I didn't realize it would be a
tongue twister. Everything is a tongue twister
for me, so maybe I shouldn't be on your case about this.
Right, I'm being unfairly maligned.
I will rate this movie 8 tins ofcanned meat out of 10.
(40:25):
I thought that the pacing was good, as you said.
I thought the acting was good. It felt really authentic to me.
And I would say that's true for pretty much all the supporting
cast as well. I thought all of these people
were really well chosen. They fit into the movie super
well. Just a really simple story, but
(40:45):
also a really powerful one. It was a fun window into the
civilian experience during the war for the Russian people, and
it gave me an opportunity to do a bit of homework on something I
didn't necessarily know very much about.
And I'll probably try and pick up some books so I can learn a
little bit more. But yeah, it's a charming little
(41:05):
movie. I honestly think that people
should check it out. Like, go on YouTube, throw on
this movie. It's only 90 minutes.
Like, I don't think you'll regret it.
I agree, I'm going to read it. Also 8 since it can be part of
time. I also just really enjoyed it
for all the reasons you've already mentioned.
I also thought the music was quite fun, very old timey
(41:28):
obviously, but still fun. And the acting was unforced, I
want to say. And maybe that's because there
were such newcomers too, acting and just felt like they were
people having a regular conversation where there just
happened to be a camera on this.And yeah, I think the biggest
thing from me compared to other old timing movies is the
(41:50):
pissing. And the length of the movie is
just perfect. I would like the others to be a
little bit more like this. But yeah, definitely go watch
it. I definitely recommend.
Are you reading anything? I am reading something.
(42:11):
I am reading a memoir by Martha Gilhorn, who was a wartime
correspondent. But her memory is called Travels
with Myself and Another, and it's not really a war memory so
much as it is she was also a travel writer.
So she just writes her memoir based on travels that she's
(42:32):
taken. And they're all but she calls
horror truffles. So they're all just terribly.
She just has terrible misfortune.
She was the wife of Ernest Hemingway, but she never calls
him Ernest Hemingway in the book.
She only calls him, you see, which stands for Unwilling
Companion. So it just gives you an idea of
(42:53):
their relationship as well. It didn't last very long.
They got kind of sick of each other after World War 2 and they
broke up their marriage. It's a really funny memory, She
writes in a really funny way, soI'm looking forward to finishing
that. And I did recently buy seven
books, so I've quite a couple more to read.
(43:15):
How about you? Well, in the time it takes you
to read those seven books, I will be reading Alan Turing The
Enigma by Andrew Hodges of 660 pages of it.
Well, I'm guessing you'll be finished with that book and then
I'll have finished one of my 7 much smaller books.
Anyway, those two things should give you another hint into what
(43:39):
we'll be discussing very soon onthe podcast, so I'm looking
forward to that. Yes, me too.
You can listen to us wherever you get your podcasts.
You can rate US five stars. You can definitely send this
episode to a friend. You can visit our website
rosiethereviewer.com or you can follow us on Instagram at Rosie
the Reviewer Podcast. Thank you for listening and see
(43:59):
you next week. Bye.
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