052 - Ballad of a Soldier, 1959, Soviet Union. Dir. Grigoriy Chukhray.

Tuesday, February, 21, 2017

052 - Ballad of a Soldier, 1959, Soviet Union. Dir. Grigoriy Chukhray.

Do you believe in friendship? . . . I mean between a boy and a girl.

This is the question the girl Shura asks the army private Alyosha.

They are on a train.  In a freight car.  Sitting on hay bales.

She had snuck into the freight car not knowing he was already there.  When she saw him, she panicked and tried to jump off, even though the train was moving fast by then.  She had assumed he was hiding, lying in wait, looking to pounce.  He had tried to stop her from jumping, but his actions only reinforced her fears.

She says she has jumped the train to go home, to see her fiancé, a war pilot, recovering in the hospital.

He is on the train on leave, going home to see his mother.

The guard has already allowed him on after demanding a bribe of canned meat.  The guard claims that the lieutenant is a beast and that Alyosha will need the guard to protect him.  Now the train has stopped again, and the guard has demanded two more cans--in exchange for Alyosha, for the new girl that is now with him, and for the insult Alyosha has just made to the guard.

The lieutenant catches them, looks at Alyosha's papers, sees that Alyosha is a hero, commends him, and lets him stay on the train.  He assumes that Shura is with Alyosha and allows it.  Then he requires the guard to return the two cans of meat, and he commits him to five days in the stockade.  The lieutenant is a beast--to the guard.

Shura sees that Alyosha is good, that he is not a threat to her, that he intended her no harm.  They were both on the train in hiding.  Both heading home.  Both in danger of being caught.

She looks at him and asks the question.

Do you believe in friendship? . . . I mean between a boy and a girl.

She is, after all, engaged to someone else.

He enthusiastically agrees.  Yes.  A boy and a girl can be friends.

The train moves on.  Shura's eyes sparkle.  Alyosha does not notice.

Alyosha is a private in the army, and we began the movie with him in position, on the front, a signalman, watching enemy tanks approach.  His comrade insists that they must flee.  He insists that he has a duty to report the number and position of the tanks.  His comrade runs.  He stands firmly.  He picks up the field telephone.  He places the call.  He makes his report.

The tanks are driving up on him.

He runs from a tank.  It chases him.  An army tank chasing a single man.

A 19-year old man.

A boy.

He dives into a hole.  A shallow bunker.  Behind some barbed wire.  The tank can run over the barbed wire.  But it gives him time to set up his gun.  He fires.  The tank retreats.  He fires again.  Another tank.

He takes out two tanks from his position in the hole.  The shallow bunker.

Alyosha is a hero.  The general wants to decorate him.  He asks respectfully if instead he may take leave to visit his mother, to hug her and to fix her roof.  She has written him that the roof is leaking.

Alyosha requests a day.  The general gives him six days--two to go, two to be there, two to return.  Just be sure to be back on time.

Alyosha goes.  He meets people along the way.  We see his goodness.

He agrees to take two cakes of soap--the rations of an entire platoon--back to a soldier's wife to let her know that her husband is alive and thinking of her.  The entire platoon insists on it.  We will find out what happens when we get there.

He meets another soldier who is missing one leg and giving up in despair, assuming that his wife will not want him.  Alyosha insists that he return to his wife, and he helps him home.  She greets him with open arms.

Will Alyosha make it home?  Will he see his mother?  Will he fix the leaking roof?

Will he make it back to the front on time?

Will he have a friendship with Shura?

The actor, Vladimir Ivashov, plays Alyosha with courage, innocence, spontaneity, joy.  He is a most likeable and most remarkable character.  It was his first film.  Ivashov would go on to act in films for several more decades.

Alyosha's mother comments on him at the beginning and end of the film.

The life that could have been.

The life that was.