I finished watching Ballad of a Soldier earlier this week, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ballad_of_a_soldier/.
Ballad of a Soldier per Rotten Tomatoes, was “the first Russian film to score an American success during the Cold War era”. It was released in 1959. The movie has a relatively rare 100% rating in Rotten Tomatoes, one of the reasons why I added it to my elliptical-walker-exercise-queue.
The story tells of a young Russian soldier during World War II who is given leave to visit his mother at home as a result of him knocking out a couple of tanks during a battle. While traveling home random events occur which lead him to do a number of good deeds for people and end up limiting the time he actually was able to spend at home. We are told at the very beginning of the film that he died during the war, which strengthens our feelings toward these events.
It was interesting rereading the reviews after seeing the film. A number of reviews said that unlike standard Russian films which had patriotic idealism, this movie was ‘humanized with vivid characters and tender direction’. One said if it had received a greater number of views in 1960 ‘more Americans would have realized that individual Russians are real human beings’. One called it an ‘emotionally touching anti-war movie’, another ‘a simple, genuine, and non-dogmatic meditation on the … tragic cost of war’.
Perhaps my personal ideological perspective got in the way compared to these reviews, but I was much less enthusiastic. I thought the movie had some interesting individual scenes, but the characters overly simplistic. In fact, it felt to me almost like a film of propaganda showing how Russian soldiers were wonderful during World War II, always thinking of others (one example – fellow soldiers made a Sergeant give the soldier the only soap they had to give to family members at home).
Other than a pretty Russian girl who ended up spending time in the same train car the soldier had snuck into to get home and thus became an ‘infatuation-interest’, there was little that went on beyond the he-did-something-else-wonderful-which-will-reduce-his-time-with-his-mother.
The reviews said to see the Russian version with English subtitles, which I did, since the English dubbed version was poorly done. The movie did not meet my I-would-like-to-see-it-twice test. I would not recommend it unless seeing the first popular Russian film shown in the US is on your bucket list.