On his way home, Alyosha helps one-legged soldier Vasya (Evgeniy Urbanskiy) reunite with his loyal wife, then has a lengthy and enjoyable stint with hottie peasant girl Shura (Zhanna Prokhorenko). Alas, they must eventually separate, so Alyosha can heroically save wives and children from a burning train, and have his momentary visit with his long-suffering mother before returning to the front.
How others will see it. Ballad of a Soldier was the high water mark of Chukhray's film career, though a prior movie, The Forty-first, had caused a minor stir at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival. Key to the success of Ballad of a Soldier is its incorruptible and idealized soldier, who would rather pay a visit home to see his mother than desert to save his hide, or accumulate medals that might advance his rank out of the front lines.
Beautiful young Zhanna Prokhorenko also drew attention in her debut role. The romance between Shura and Alyosha, epitomized by her waiting at the train station for him instead of latching onto another soldier, also elicits sympathy from the audience.
Still, one wonders how viewers would have liked the movie had Shura turned out to be 35 and pudgy. Or if Alyosha had been run over by the tank in the opening scene, as he should have been.
As it is, though, Ballad of a Soldier won Best Film at the prestigious BAFTA and Bodil festivals, and was nominated for the Golden Palm at Cannes. Today at imdb.com, the film has an extremely high user rating of 8.1 out of 10, which climbs to 8.3 among non-U.S. viewers. But the least impressionable demographic, women over 45, are less impressed, and bestow only a 5.1. Presumably, they would like the see the two young would-be lovers end up together, instead of sending Alyosha off to his preordained but unshown death at the front.
How I felt about it. My favorite actor from the movie is neither of the two leads, but Evgeniy Urbanskiy, the one-legged soldier. He is a real scene-stealer. I also like Aleksandr Kuznetsov, as the train sentry who thinks with his stomach.
I am less enamored with the director's cliché of the woman running breathlessly after her man, whether it is Elza Lezhdey, the invalid's wife; Antonia Maksimova, the long-distance running mother; or Shura bolting after the train. We are skeptical that the world's most beautiful 19-year old girl would climb unaccompanied into the same train car as Alyosha, and Alyosha's endless idealism is also tiresome. Doesn't he ever smoke, or spit? The idealism extends to the elderly truck driver (Valentina Telegina) and the train station laborers. We are supposed to condemn, as does Alyosha, Pavlov's wife Liza (Valentina Markova), since she is cheating on her husband with a wealthy paramour.
But all in all, it is a compelling movie. I am impressed with the hospital scene with Alyosha and Pavlov's father, Vladimir Pokrovskiy, which have the two exchanging well-intended lies about Vasya's bravery, Pavlov's father's health, and Pavlov's wife's fidelity.