Die Ballade vom Soldaten

"Ballada o soldate" has one of the most poignant sequences of all war movies:when the mother holds only for a few minutes, her dear boy in her arms,it's impossible to hold back your tears .I saw the movie for the first time thirty years ago and I have never forgotten it.Far from politics ,"ballada o soldate" is an universal poem,enhanced by a magnificent grandiose score,which enhances the simple beauty of the pictures,climaxing on a symphony for the finale.

Aliocha's furlough is so short (48 hours) and it's such a long way to his dear home.His journey becomes an odyssey ,but ,unlike Ulysses,his happiness will be short-lived.He and the girl form one of the most touching,lovable and innocent couple you will see on a screen.Their simple joys ,particularly when they share the soldier's food,or when they meet again in the desert station,are the ones which make a life worthwhile,even in the hell which surrounds them.

Sometimes recalling Sirk's " a time to love and a time to die"(1958)from Erich Maria Remarque ,the great German pacifist writer,with which it shares the same disgust of war ("I wanted to film a subject which could condemn war",the director said),"ballada o soldato" is one of these rare movies that will reward you each time you watch it.

This is one of the greatest anti-war movies ever made and a touching little human drama that has not lost any of its power after half a century. After fifteen years since I first saw it, it remains among my ten favourite movies of all time from any country. It is full of poetry and visual beauty; a humble masterpiece from a young director at that time, who encountered all sorts of problems and restrictions during the shooting. Nevertheless, his perseverance to bring this work to life and the touchingly realistic performances of the cast make of this movie not only one of the best films that ever came out of the Soviet Union but also a classic gem of world cinema.

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic" is the famous quote by Stalin. In this movie we see a marvellous illustration of the sentiment.

Don't worry; I didn't spoil anything. We learn from the opening narration that this is the story of a fallen hero. With that in mind, the atmosphere of impending tragedy colours the entire film despite the film's rather charming presentation. It's a wonderful irony, because the director opens with such a powerful & nihilistic statement, but then he follows with a sweet and inspiring presentation which you might even call "innocent".

I'm not exactly a fan of war movies, but I don't consider this to be one at all. There are very few details about the war, no politics, no propaganda. Essentially you can replace the Russian uniforms with British, German or Japanese, and the story would remain the same--"The Ballad of a Soldier". Oddly enough, it's the compelling portrayal of rustic life (which he encounters along his journey) that provides the backbone and theme of this film, a very human story.

It reminds me of the Italian classic "Bicycle Thieves" as well as the Japanese masterpiece "Ikuru" by Kurosawa. Each scene packs a lot of heart, and the grand finale brings it all together poetically and artistically. I won't mention any names, but I sure wish certain other artsy Russian directors could be as lucid and authentic in their presentations.

One more thing... I can't end this review without mentioning the SUPERB MUSIC. The composer is listed as Mihkail Ziv, but IMDb offers no biographical info on him. The melody is powerful and epic while being traditional and intimate at the same time. It really mirrors the theme of the film perfectly: things of great importance come in simple packages.

This movie gets 9 stars from me, which is about the highest rating I ever give. See it if you ever get the chance.

In World War Two, almost thirty million Russian soldiers and civilians were killed in the fight against fascism, a fact mainly ignored during the paranoia of the Cold War. In our attempt to demonize everything Russian, we also overlooked stories of individual heroism. In 1959, Russian director Grigory Chukhraj made a film attempting to describe "what happens when the world loses a single person" and it is a masterpiece. The beautiful and moving Ballad of a Soldier tells a personal story that illuminates how war can ravish both an individual and a country. The film is set in Russia in the midst of the war. Pvt. Alyosha Skvortsov (Vladimir Ivashov), a signaller, has earned a commendation by destroying two German tanks. Instead of accepting a medal, he requests to be granted a four-day leave to go home and visit his mother.

We learn early through the narration that this soldier did not survive the war so his journey home to visit his mother for one last time becomes all the more poignant. The film, however, is not about a destination but about a journey. The four-day trip encompasses a lifetime of experience. Before hiding out in a freight car, Alyosha encourages a soldier (Yevgeny Urbansky) who has lost his leg to go home to his wife. Along the way, he hitches a ride on a rain-soaked road with a woman deprived of sleep for 48 hours. He brings a present of soap to an unfaithful wife of another soldier but changes his mind and gives it to her father who longs for his son's return. He also meets Shura (Zhanna Prokhorenko), a radiant young woman who, like him, hides out in a freight car. Reluctant at first and fearful of Alyosha, the young couple experiences their first love in several sensitive scenes but it is to be short-lived.

Ballad of a Soldier, of course, aims to present Russian soldiers in the best possible light yet Chukhraj does not hesitate to show his characters as real human beings with flaws. A venal security guard is willing to grant the young soldier free passage in a freight car in exchange for cans of beef, and the wife of a soldier is unfaithful to her soldier husband, a sequence that landed the director in trouble with the Russian censors. In Alyosha, Chukhraj has created a good person: kind, loving, and noble but not larger than life, a soldier perhaps typical of millions of young men who gave their lives to protect their homeland. Their struggle and personal sacrifice has been immortalized in a great film.

Ballad of a Soldier (1959)

An old fashioned but utterly gorgeous film about a soldier discovering something bigger about himself than even the war could teach him on the battlefield. It's a drama about life, photographed with what strikes me as a European poetic visual sensibility. In its lyrical flow, it is amazing. No other word for it.

In 1959, the Soviet Union was only 14 years away from the end of the war that cost them 23 million deaths (10 million of these were soldiers). And a ravaged countryside. This is monumental in a way that we Americans have trouble appreciating, even though our own losses were around 1 million, including civilians directly and indirectly. But with this kind of staggering history, the very touching tale of a very innocent boy wanting to get back to his mother for a single hug is heart wrenching. Director Grigori Chukhrai, himself Ukrainian, seems to know that his role, in the Khrushchev era of Cold War USSR, is to show the best of the Soviet heart and soul.

The journey, for the viewer, is often filled with silence, and with carefully composed shots of the boy, alone or with other travelers (often soldiers). The light and the framing is moving even on its own terms. Many times the key face in foreground is sharp and softly stark while many other faces fall out of focus around this, camera tilted, or looking up, with flickers of light from trees outside the train window or a diffused glow of a grey sky drenching it all with melancholy.

Alyosha, the young man who by some fast wits and luck knocked out two tanks in the first scene and earned this special trip, meets a variety of people on his way who each represent a part of the Soviet (mostly Russian, but with a nod to Ukrainians) experience: a wounded man going home without his leg, a young conscript heading to the front to probably never return, this same young man's father in a hospital apparently dying, and a girl his own age, equally pure and nearly untouched by life's horrors. In every case, there is a kind of Soviet optimism that is almost refreshing even if it is just slightly reminiscent of their earlier propaganda movies. Because, the wounded man meets his wife at the station and is renewed, the young conscript is cheerful and hale, the father is proud and glad his son is a good soldier, the mean officer has an understanding heart, the sergeant gives his only soap to the traveller, and so on.

But this kind of goodness is part of what makes the film special. There is no room for noir cynicism, or even existential loneliness. After all, Alyosha has found the truest of true love, and even though he may be returning to the war to never return, the boy and girl have elevated each other, and the movie, and the viewer, with a real sense of what being good is all about. If you can find this movie, see it by all means.