Review of Ballad of a Soldier

Some Americans at the time, must have thought, that the godless Soviets were just cold-blooded killers without any sense of a soul. This 1959 war film movie directed by Grigori Chukhrai, proves them, wrong, big time with its gripping story about love! Ballad of a Soldier is not primarily just a war film. It recounts, within the context of the turmoil of war, various kinds of love: the romantic love of a young couple, the committed love of a married couple, and a mother's love of her child, as a Red Army soldier named Pvt. Alyosha Skvortsov (Volodya Ivashov) tries to make it home during a leave, after being rewarded for taking out two German tanks. On the way, he meets several people and help them deal with the stress of war time life. But with each random act of kindness, spells less time for him to reach his love ones before he has to go back to his life as a soldier on the war front. This Soviet love road movie came out, and really surprised the world! It even surprising got an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay in the US, where most people show them as just the enemy. The film paint a very positive light of the red army without going over patriotic. It didn't felt like a propaganda film. It shows, a realistic tone to the war with the amount of loses that Russia was taken. The film show a subversive or critical tone to lose. Things like this, would be banned or censored under Stalinism. It illuminates how war can ravish both an individual and a country. Coming off, from the death of totalitarian Joseph Stalin, a few years earlier in 1953. Soviet movies makers can now have a little bit freedom, as the regime became more, reformed. It did help that the Soviet leader, at the time, Nikita Khrushchev was a fan of the director, so Chukrai was given more flexibility than normal. It really shows here with how the soldiers were portray. The movie is about the incredible ability of humans to adapt to the most extreme conditions on survival instinct, love and courage. The film is beautiful well-shot. Just watching it, you can see the how much work was put into this film from the wide shots of farmland to the harsh reality of the battlefield. Beautiful cinematography for a black & white film. Another great thing about the movie is the music by Mikhail Ziv. You be clutching at your heart-strings for it. Another thing, great about the movie is the pacing. For a movie that's 88 minutes long. They really put a lot of things into it that are pretty well-delivery stories. The movie didn't need a lot of dialogue, as the movie show more than it told. The movie had such a convincing and humane performance from both Vladimir Ivashov and Zhanna Prokhorenko, as his love-interest Shura. They make a beautiful couple. They had amazing chemistry. Zhanna was stunning, she had the face of an angel. Her character had a lot of depth. Even supporting actors help show the stress, love has to go through like the ex-soldier, Vasya (Evgeniy Urbanskiy) sub-plot of being a burden to his wife due to him, losing a leg. Another great scene is when Alyosha visit a fellow soldier's wife (Valentina Markova), only to find out that she was cheating on him. Really heart-breaking. The whole film is very touching. The movie faults could be that it's pretty predictable and somewhat depressing. After all, the movie opening really set the tone of the film, by stating out what happen to Alyosha during the war. I didn't felt the narrative prologue was needed in the beginning, since they repeat it in the end, as well. It really makes you wonder, why am I'm watching this film, if something really bad is going to happen him in the end. It kinda guilt-trip you into an emotional trap. The warmth is missing in the overdubbed voices, in the dubbed version of the film. If you find a copy, watch the movie in Russian, with English sub-titles. One version worth checking out is the Criterion one. It remove instances of dirt, debris and scratches. The result of Criterion's efforts is a presentation that's pretty extraordinary, considering this is pretty old film. The image looks slightly better than the others DVDs, out there. Overall: This movie left a deep impression to me. Marvelously acted, powerful and often thought-providing film is worth the watch.