Wise use of close-up.wonderful images.
Taking place during the Russian Revolution this movie focuses on a female sniper, Maria Filatovna, who is fighting for the Red Army and Vadim Govorkha, who is fighting for the White Army. As the movie progresses they eventually form a deeper relationship when they are stranded on an isolated island after their boat is capsized in a sudden storm on their way to the Red Army headquarters.
The Forty First is a film about two star-crossed lovers who meet a tragic end as a consequence of the time period in which they belong. Set in the years during the Russian Civil War, the film follows Maryutka a red army soldier whose group captures Vadim, a cadet for the white army whom she eventually develops feelings for after connecting with him on a deeper level.
The Forty First is pretty much a Soviet Romeo and Juliet. Romance aside, the film offers some praiseworthy elements cinematographically.
Grigori Chukhrai's film, The Forty First, sets itself up to be understood as a mythic series of events; the opening scene's churning waves seem to take the viewer away to a different world and the narration sets the story in the post-Revolutionary Civil War. This narration gives the effect of a story being told, and the way the landscape is portrayed creates an unreal landscape.
The feature debut of Soviet Union director Grigoriy Chukhray (who would subsequently acquire international fame for BALLAD OF A SOLDIER in 1959, his second feature), THE FORTY-FIRST is a potentially engrossing romance happens in the two warring parties during the Russian civil war, a Red Army sniper Maria (Izvitskaya) and a White Army officer Lieutenant Vadim (Strizhenov).The storyline is straightforward and linear, based on the eponymous novel by Boris Lavrenyev.
A Soviet Love Story such as Forty First as is one of the best foreign movie, I ever saw. Produced in the Soviet Union, during the height of the Cold War, this film is one of the first significant films to be produced after the fall of Stalinism after de facto leader Joseph Stalin died a few years before this film came out.
Quite a filmmaker this Chukhrai was. Not much available from him, but I am happy to have seen two of his movies.
Like many films from the same period, the poetry of image saves it from the ideological web. because the basic aesthetic virtues are only parts of a splendid love story in the time of war.