Die fünfte Offensive - Kesselschlacht an der Sutjeska

This 1973 rather sad and gripping World War2 story takes place in former Yugoslavia. Though close to being too "patriotic", showing the people of Yugoslavia:s sacrifices and struggle against diabolic Germans, the movie is quite realistic. We follow supremecommander Tito, rather well-played by Richard Burton, who leads the Yugoslav forces. Tito is shown as a peoples man who fights together with his people and helps the wounded. As usual the story base upon the not to original "good guy/bad guy" idea. In this story the good thing is that it is not the US or English army that act as good guys - but the partisan army. The film is not the greatest I have seen, and as a WW2 drama I can only recommend it for the rare opportunity of following another army than the US or English.

I saw THE FIFTH OFFENSIVE recently weekend in Italian without subtitles (I speak English), cut to some 100 minutes, to the review will be short but ought to give you an idea of what the film is like.

Richard Burton plays Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito, who leads the Yugoslav Partisans on a trek to safety, culminating in a huge battle at the Sutjeska River.

The film features a ton of familiar faces, from familiar Hollywood actors to Yugoslav commoners. Bata Zivojinovic (BATTLE OF THE EAGLES) is one of the main partisans; Milena Dravic (THE BATTLE OF NERETVA) is his love; Ljubisa Samardzic (THE BATTLE OF NERETVA) commands an artillery gun; Stole Arandjelovic blasts away with a machinegun in the final battle; Relja Basic (THE FIFTH DAY OF PEACE) is one of the British commandos; Gunter Meisner (THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN) is the German General and Anton Diffring (KILL ROMMEL!) is his executive officer. Familiar names of Boris Dvornik, Rade Markovic, Kole Angelovski, Petar Banicevic, Marinko Sebez and Dusan Tadic are all credited, but I have no idea who they play. The Partisan commander from BATTLE OF THE EAGLES features prominently in the second half of the film, but I can't quite put my finger on which character he is.

The film features a number of big battle scenes with a good number of extras, a few Russian tanks, plenty of explosions and some vintage aircraft. It's all set to a great, rousing musical score, made up of actual Partisan chants (one of which was used for HELL RIVER a year later). One great combat scene has the partisans rushing up one side of a hill, not knowing that on the other side the Germans are charging as well, racing to capture the high ground first. A great hand-to-hand battle ensues. There are also some rather graphic attack-dog maulings thrown in for good measure. The scenery, as with all Yugoslav war films, is breathtaking.

I saw this on a rip from an Italian video, titled LA QUINTA OFFENSIVA. It was in Italian with no subtitles, cut from 130 minutes to about 100 minutes. It was hard enough for me to follow in Italian, even harder with so much footage cut. The colors are washed out and there is plenty of print damage, ranging from flurries of speckles to scratches and many holes in the print. The pan-and-scanning is bad in some very important dialog scenes, too.

Overall, this looks to be a pretty good Yugoslav war picture, better than usual. It's probably as good as THE BATTLE OF NERETVA, but I'll have to see it in English before I can write a really strong review.

RATING: 7/10

Here is the real antifascist army fighting the real antifascist war. Richard Burton plays the beloved Yugoslav president Tito, who cast Burton himself. Milena Dravic, Bata Zivojinovic, Boris Dvornik, Ljubisa Samardzic were the A-listers of former Yugoslavia, all of them with drama school background. All actors in Yugoslavia were required to have a degree in acting. So, Burton was surrounded with quite a cast. Beautifully photographed on real locations, with great fight scenes and explosions that Yugoslav partisan films were famous for, this is a film about very sad events in history. Just like The Flags of Our Fathers, it's realistic and heart-wrenching. You don't wanna see it twice.

The film takes place in 1943, when the Germans make a last effort to destroy Tito and his partisans in the Balkan mountains. The battle scenes are pretty well made - although it's clearly the same 5 or 6 fighter planes that keep attacking the partisans throughout the whole movie. The movie's weakness is the characters (!) - the partisans are all heroes who die in the arms of their friends and lovers, and the Germans are all Germans as we know them from so many Hollywood films - speaking german with an evil nazi accent and only thinking about vengeance and destruction (they might as well be zombies or vampires!). We never really get to know anybody, apart from general Tito who is portrayed as a saint (he was still alive when the film was being made) by Richard Burton, the only star in the film. It is refreshing to see a WWII film where it's not american G.I's slaugtering nazi's. The heroes in this movie are communists with red stars on their caps fighting for their country. Too bad it's such a poor script, there is a lot of goodwill here, and it could have been a very exciting and different film about the dark years of Europe.

This film was supposed to tell the story of the 5th German offensive in the Balkans. When someone who does not know historical events watches this film, he can only be confused. Although there is an impressive cast, the film is very poorly produced like all WW2-themed films from that era, big budget, cooperation with the JNA, big scenes with a lot of extras. Although it had all the predispositions to be a masterpiece, it was reduced to a series of propaganda images, partisan clichés, shallow characters, bad acting, repetition of the same scenes. From a military point of view, very funny. I'm sorry to say, but this is a very poorly told story of our rough and tumble history. It is not the pride of Yugoslav cinematography.