MAGNET contributing writer Jud Cost is sharing some of the wealth of classic films he’s been lucky enough to see over the past 40 years. Trolling the backwaters of cinema, he has worked up a list of more than 500 titles—from the silent era through the ’90s—that you may have missed. A new selection, all currently available on DVD, appears every week.
Ballad Of A Soldier (1959, 88 minutes)
There must have been a mild thaw in the Cold War when U.S. art houses began showing Russian films during the Kennedy administration, with Grigori Chukrai’s Ballad Of A Soldier as one of the first. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, only recently pushing up the crocus, would have been appalled at the very idea.
Alexei Nikolaevich Skvortsov, Alyosha as he is commonly known, is a good boy. But when the orders came for him to join the Russian army and report to the eastern front, he didn’t even take time to say goodbye to his mother. In the middle of intense fighting, Pvt. Skvortsov’s radio post is attacked by a Nazi Panzer unit. Skvortsov bravely stands his ground until he can report the strength of the attack. “I see tanks, four of them!” he screams, somehow disabling one of them with his armor-piercing weapon, then runs for his life. As he’s about to be ground into dust, the second tank rears up over a boulder and gets stuck, allowing the soldier to send a death blow into the heart of the huge machine. “You don’t like that,” he says as though the tank were alive.
With word of his feat preceding him, Skvortsov is summoned to the General’s quarters when he returns to his unit. “Well, hero, come tell me everything that happened,” says the General. “They were so close, comrade General, I was scared,” says the private. “You were so scared that you knocked out two tanks?” inquires the General. “I wish everybody were so scared. I’m putting you up for decoration.”
Skvortsov thinks for a moment, then blurts out a request to go home to see his mother and fix her leaking roof, instead of receiving a commendation. “It will only take one day,” he pleads. After asking where the 19-year-old boy lives, the General mulls over his unusual request, then smiles. “The way things are, a day won’t be enough. I will give you two days to get there and two to get back. And two more days to fix the roof.” Overjoyed, Skvortsov thanks the General profusely before beginning the long slog home.
When the jeep carrying Alyosha gets stuck in a river crossing, troops trudging in the opposite direction give them a hand. “Hey friend, are you going home on leave to Georgievsk? I’m from Uzlovaya, we’re neighbors,” says one, asking Alyosha to look up his wife. “You have to change trains at Uzlovaya, anyway. We’re in Chekhov Street, not far from the station. Just tell Liza that Sergei is all right and you saw me.” The boys in Sergei’s outfit insist that Alyosha take a bar of soap as a gift for Liza. Unwilling to surrender the precious commodity, their grumpy sergeant finally hands over the soap. “Here, take it!” he says.
