Ballada o soldate
Russia,
1959, 89 min
Shown in 1960
CREDITS
- dir
-
Grigori Chukhrai
- prod
-
M. Chernova
- scr
-
Valentin Ezhov, Grigori Chukhrai
- cam
-
Vladimir Nickolalyev, Era Saveleva
- editor
-
Mariya Timofeyeva
- mus
-
Mikhail Ziv
- cast
-
Vladimir Ivashev, Zhanna Prokhorenko, Antonia Maksimova, Nicolai Kryuchkov, Yevgeni Urbansky, Elza Lezhdey, Aleksandr Kuznetsov
- prod co
-
Ministerstvo Kinematografi
- source
-
Mosfilm Production
- gga award
-
Best Film; Best Director, Grigori Chukrai: Feature Length Films
- premiere
-
U.S. Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Grigori Chukhrai, Vladimir Ivashev and Zhanna Prokhorenko accompanied the film in person.
OTHER
A lyrical exposition of love arrives from Soviet Russia in its Ballad of a Soldier—the film honored with a Best Participation award at the Cannes Film Festival. Three elements of love receive finely sensitive handling in this story of war that is not primarily a war story. There is young, adolescent love between a soldier, still a boy, and a girl, almost a child, when they meet on a military train. Marital love is observed as a painfully maimed soldier fearfully meets his wife in their tragic new status. A mother runs desperately through fields to see her son for only moments, to greet and part with him on his road back to war and the dissolution of all things.
FACTOID #173
Though he starred in an Opening Night film (1967’s How I Won the War), lent his image and songs to 1968’s Festival entry Yellow Submarine and was scheduled to appear at the 1971 Festival with wife Yoko for an evening of their short films, John Lennon never attended the SFIFF.
