During the 'thaw' that followed the long overdue death of Joseph Stalin, thirty-eight year old Grigori Chukhrai established himself in the front rank of directors with a splendid remake of 'The Forty-First' and followed up with what is indisputably his greatest and most popular film. Unlike the earlier film the love between the two leading protagonists, despite the strong mutual attraction, remains chaste and unspoken.
Chukhrai's humanism here replaces Soviet propoganda whilst his romanticism brings a ray of light into the drabness of social realism. The character of Alyosha played by Vladimir Ivashov in his debut role, has been inspired, in the words of Chukhrai, himself a decorated war veteran, by 'the men who became soldiers as soon as they left school' whilst the almost unbearably moving Antonina Maksimova as his mother holds the deepest resonance for the countless numbers whose sons never returned.
The film's effectiveness is enhanced by the lyrical cinematography of Nikolayev and Savelyeva who have given debutante Zhanna Prokhorenko as Shura her own light which accentuates her wide-eyed, mesmerising gaze whilst the score by Mikhail Ziv is by turns thrilling and idyllic.
A compassionate and indelibly powerful opus which continued the trickle of Soviet films welcomed in the West in the late 1950's, it not only won an award at Cannes and a BAFTA, it also holds the unique distinction of being the first USSR entry in an American film festival, winning top prize in San Francisco.
Along with 'The Cranes are flying' of Kalatozov which was shown in America as part of a USA-USSR cultural exchange programme, it helped rehabilitate Russian cinema, finally freed from the shackles of Stalinism, in the international community.
Chukhrai's humanism here replaces Soviet propoganda whilst his romanticism brings a ray of light into the drabness of social realism. The character of Alyosha played by Vladimir Ivashov in his debut role, has been inspired, in the words of Chukhrai, himself a decorated war veteran, by 'the men who became soldiers as soon as they left school' whilst the almost unbearably moving Antonina Maksimova as his mother holds the deepest resonance for the countless numbers whose sons never returned.
The film's effectiveness is enhanced by the lyrical cinematography of Nikolayev and Savelyeva who have given debutante Zhanna Prokhorenko as Shura her own light which accentuates her wide-eyed, mesmerising gaze whilst the score by Mikhail Ziv is by turns thrilling and idyllic.
A compassionate and indelibly powerful opus which continued the trickle of Soviet films welcomed in the West in the late 1950's, it not only won an award at Cannes and a BAFTA, it also holds the unique distinction of being the first USSR entry in an American film festival, winning top prize in San Francisco.
Along with 'The Cranes are flying' of Kalatozov which was shown in America as part of a USA-USSR cultural exchange programme, it helped rehabilitate Russian cinema, finally freed from the shackles of Stalinism, in the international community.