Der Pfirsichdieb

Ivo is a Serbian POW & Lisa is the wife of the Bulgarian Colonel who is practically the head of the cantonment town. The Colonel is well-respected by his unit. He is also quite a committed and ruthless army man who is not above starving the POWs if only to avoid a mutiny. Although he seems to have positive aspects too but he is capable of being quite cold, even with his own wife. He knows that his country is on the verge of losing the war but he refuses to believe that all the suffering & casualties could soon amount to nothing. His wife Lisa, on the other hand, is a kind-hearted & intellectual woman who is sick of seeing the war & the suffering & wants it all to be over. She is feeling trapped & suffocated in her marriage with a man who rarely ever shares his true feelings with her. Moreover, so fixated is the Colonel on the war and his country that he fails to see his own wife's desperation and despair.

Ivo enters Lisa's life at this very crucial point. He is a Serbian officer who used to be a teacher before he was enlisted in the war. Ivo & Lisa realize that even though they have different nationalities, they both want a peaceful existence. I must concede that the romantic angle could have been justified a bit better but I can see how these two people would gravitate towards each other. If all you see around yourself is death & destruction, then you are bound to rush towards a like-minded individual who offers you love and a few moments of peace.

The only thing that could've made the movie a bit more interesting would have been the Colonel getting to know about the affair & his reaction to it. Would he have realized that between love and war, it's the former that is more important? Or would he simply have branded his wife an adulteress & given her up? Or would he have ignored the affair & carried on with their lives as before? Lots of potential there.

My first film by the acclaimed Bulgarian director was an awesome experience, an amazingly shot story of doomed love set in the background of WWI. The wife of an army officer falls in love with a Serbian POW, and their relationship secretly grows under all the restrictions of the time. Navena Kokanova is gorgeous as the trapped wife and in some shots you cannot move your eyes from her. Yes I would say that the love story is a bit overdone and goes slightly overboard given the situation, but the making more than easily makes up for it. The B&W visuals are gorgeous, the images are crisp and the use of shadow and light is awesome. The times are depicted well in the film – it's the end of the Great War, Bulgaria is losing under the multi-pronged attack and the soldiers are on the verge of revolt, the Typhus plague is also in the air. The prisoner, Ivo, meets Lisa while he had sneaked into the garden to steal peaches – she listens to him and serves him food. They both find some sort of hope in each other and even under the overwhelming factors that weigh against them, their love ultimately finds expression - but under the shifting political scenario, it's soon put to test. The plot is quite simple and has been repeated over time, but the simple framing concepts and intelligent editing turns it into a great film. I fell in love with the couple of shots depicted beneath, and I absolutely admire the sequence where the Serb POWs break into a song – there are a number of beautiful shots in this visually elegant film. The effects of war are not explicit but implied, and the bleak ending that brings despair to all mirrors the crisis of the times. Through Rade Markovic, we feel Ivo's anguish and helplessness, and through Kokanova, we feel the dilemma between society and heart; and both of them come together to create a fatalistic and sensuous chemistry. Definitely worth a look.