Tag: Russia

Hussar Ballad

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★★★
“Russian off to war…”

This is an adaptation of a Russian play A Long Time Ago by Alexander Gladkov, but was inspired by the real-life exploits of Nadezhda Durova. She was a woman who basically pulled a Mulan, concealing her gender in order to defend her homeland in the Napoleonic and other wars of the early 19th century. Durova joined the army on her 23rd birthday and served honourably for a decade, even after her true gender was discovered. Tsar Alexander I was impressed when he heard about Durova, giving her a promotion after summoning the soldier to his palace in St. Petersburg. Wounded by a cannonball at the Battle of Borodino, she eventually retired in 1816, with the rank equivalent to captain-lieutenant.

Somehow this became a light and fluffy slice of musical rom-com. 17-year-old Shura Azarova (Golubkina) is an accomplished rider and tomboy, who meets Hussar officer Dmitry Rzhevsky (Yakovlev), and is mistaken by him as a brother in arms. [As usual in these things, significant suspension of disbelief is required!] When war with France breaks out, Rzhevsky returns to his unit and Shura convinces faithful family retainer Ivan (Kryuchkov) to help her join the army in disguise. She makes a name for herself as a skilled and brave courier, though her relationship with Dmitry is more adversarial than romantic. There’s a French actress on whom he has designs, triggering her jealousy. Mistaken as rivalry, Dmitry and Shura end up having a duel, though the war keeps interfering in its execution. 

All is forgiven after Shura is captured on a spying mission, Dmitry leading his platoon to the rescue, and leading to a rather decent extended fight, running through a ransacked stately home. [While the actual swordplay is no great shakes in general, the other stunts aren’t bad, including Shura leaping down off a balcony, which looks to have been done by the actress herself] The sudden moments where people burst into song are a little jarring initially, yet I got used to them – probably, again, a point of comparison to Mulan. The production is quite large in scale: there’s an opening ball sequence that’s impressive, and the battle scenes aren’t bad, albeit not quite War and Peace [though some of the costumes from it were recycled here!]

There is the obvious, and given the era probably entirely expected, patriotic theme, with discussions about defending the motherland. The film’s premiere took place on the 150th anniversary, to the day, of the previously-mentioned Battle of Borodino, a famous and bloody encounter between Russia and Napoleon’s forces – best known for inspiring the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky. However, it’s rarely heavy-handed, and for all its fluffiness, lack of substance and shortcomings in the motivation department, you do find yourself rooting for Shura. To be honest, perhaps to a greater degree than Dmitry, who comes off as a bit of an arrogant dick. Likely more genuinely progressive than anything coming out of Hollywood around the same time. 

Dir: Eldar Ryazanov
Star: Larisa Golubkina, Yuriy Yakovlev, Igor Ilyinsky, Nikolay Kryuchkov

On The Edge

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★★★½
“Makes a good point”

Whenever the Olympics are on, we love watching the weird sports that never get covered the rest of the time. That means things like handball, archery and fencing, so I was particularly interested by this Russian film, based around the quest for gold in the women’s sabre event. While it does struggle to move past the usual cliches of sports films, it’s done with enough energy to work. The two protagonists are Aleksandra Pokrovskaya (Khodchenkova), a veteran coming to the end of a long, successful career, and Kira Egorova (Miloslavskaya), a brash teenager who arrives on the scene with a blast, and whose unconventional style causes fits among other fencers. Aleksandra has one final crack at the prize which has eluded her – an Olympic gold – but Kira poses an unprecedented threat to that ambition. 

Yeah, like I said: it’s pretty much Sportsball Movie #4. You know from the start that Aleks and Kira are going to bash heads, but eventually come to a mutual respect for each other’s talents and abilities. Nor is it any surprise when Kira suffers a potentially career-ending injury, and Aleks overcomes her concerns to nurse her back to health [in fairness, she was partly responsible for the incident]. And could the two fencers possibly end up facing each other in the final match at the Olympics? Wild horses could not drag that answer to that question from my lips. 

Oh, who am I kidding. Of course they do. But it is to the film’s credit that I genuinely did not know how that was going to turn out. For the makers do a very good job of giving us two well-developed characters. Rather than protagonist/antagonist in the Rocky mould, we get two protagonists, each with their own set of motivations and ambitions. Initially, Kira seems the less likable of the pair, but the more we learn about her background, such as the fraught relationship with her father, the more I came to understand her abrasive personality and don’t give a damn attitude. [Khodchenkova may be familiar, as she has appeared in some Western movies, including The Wolverine and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy]

It is an issue that fencing at the top level is astonishingly fast. It’s not like cinematic sword fighting, where battles go on for minutes. Here, if your first attack doesn’t hit the mark, you’re likely to find yourself on the receiving, pointy end of your opponent’s weapon. But Bordukov does a good job of capturing the speed, and making it work for the film’s benefit, rather than its detriment. While there may be precious little about the storyline that’s original, it still makes for an engaging couple of hours. If you weren’t a fencing fan before, this might change your mind. So, that’s fencing out of the way, and we already had our Olympic archery movie. and handball film. I just need to find a synchronized swimming movie – and, don’t be fooled, they are hardcore – then I’ll be happy.

Dir: Eduard Bordukov
Star: Svetlana Khodchenkova, Stasya Miloslavskaya, Sergei Puskepalis, Alexey Barabash

Abigail

  By

★★½
“In Soviet Russia, sorcerers stone you…”

There’s a battle in the middle of this, where the rebels and the authorities engage in a street-fight, and its absolutely beautiful to watch. Their weapons leave black smoke-trails criss-crossing, and the camera swoops and dives through the mayhem in truly lyrical fashion. Sadly, it’s over too soon, and when the characters open their mouths, it’s all ruined, thanks to clichéd lines like, “We can only win if we believe in what we’re fighting for.”

This Russian movie’s setting is dark steampunk, a walled city living in perpetual fear of an lethal, incurable disease. Inspectors monitor the population and at the first symptoms, the infected are spirited away and humanely euthanized. Ten years ago, the father of Abigail Foster (Dalakishvili) was one such victim. But she stumbles across evidence he may still be alive, which brings her into contact with the resistance and, eventually, the truth about the disease. She wants to find out what happened to her father. However, they, under leader and romantic interest Bale (Bochkov) are only interested in pushing forward with their previously scheduled rebellion.

The story is particularly poor, feeling like a hodgepodge of elements from a slew of YA fiction, most obviously Mortal Engines and Harry Potter. It feels very rushed, too, with Abigail going from outsider to at the core of the rebellion in about five minutes. I suspect a TV series might have been a better way to go, giving the ideas here – of which, admittedly, there are no shortage – room to breathe and be explored. Though, in general, the whole “chosen one” trope, in which the central character discovers their hidden gift, and it then blossoms to world-changing effect, is little more than a cinematic dead horse these days.

Not helping matters is the puzzling decision by the makers apparently to shoot in English, yet still post-sync most of the dialogue. This gives all the problems of a dubbed film, with no apparent benefit. It’s no surprise that the only non-synced actor, Eddie Marsan as Abigail’s father, easily comes off best among the performances. Yet even he pales beside the quite wonderful visuals, running from the first frame to the last. These are certainly comparable with the best Hollywood can produce, both in imagination and execution. Throw this on in the background when you’ve something else to do, and it’s near-perfect.

Dalakishvili is…okay as the heroine. She initially seems very resourceful and courageous, yet these traits seem to get submerged after she joins up with the resistance, with Bale doing more of the actual battling than I wanted to see. We do get resolution as to the question of her father, and I have to say, it was probably the film’s most effective moment emotionally, with some genuine poignancy. Coming as it does, with about five minutes left, it was the very definition of too little, too late, and this can only be filed in the box marked “Meaningless eye-candy.”

Dir: Aleksandr Boguslavsky
Star: Tinatin Dalakishvili, Gleb Bochkov, Rinal Mukhametov, Artyom Tkachenko,

Night Witches in the Sky

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★★★
“Spirits in the sky.”

kinopoisk.ru

This was made in the early eighties, when the Soviet Union and United States were making loud, growling sounds at each other. Being a product of that era perhaps explains the way this feels almost like a propaganda film, made to inspire the population to be prepared to fight in defense of the motherland. Its closest cousin on this site is therefore the similar Chinese film, The Red Detachment of Women. The topic here is one we’ve covered before: the renowned “Night Witches”, the all-female air force squadron, who carried out reconnaissance and bombing missions against the Germans on the Eastern front, during the second half of World War II.

The two central characters are Galya Polikarpova (Druz) and Oksana Zakharchenko (Grushina). The former is recuperating from injury in hospital, but sneaks out against doctor’s orders in order to rejoin her colleagues on the front lines. The pair are hauled over the coals for this by their long-suffering commanding officer (Menshikova), but are able to escape punishment due to the shortage of fliers making operational needs more important. Thereafter… Well, to be perfectly honest, not a great deal happens, and the film comes in at less than 80 minutes.  At points, it almost feels like an edited-down version of a longer feature.

For instance, there’s one point where they are being harried by a Messerschmitt – then, suddenly, they’re landing in a field to sweep up an orphaned boy, Fyodor (Zamulin), who becomes an unofficial mascot of the squadron, despite efforts by the higher-ups to send him away. There’s also a long-distance romance between Galya and another soldier that didn’t do much for me.

However, one point about this production is particularly worth noting. Director Yevgeniya Zhigulenko was actually a “night witch” herself, having been a member of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment. Initially a navigator in May 1942, she became a pilot and eventually a flight commander. By the end of the war, she had flown close to a thousand sorties, and been awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. There can’t be many films from any country set in World War II, which were directed by someone who took part in the events depicted.

This was one of two features she made, and seems more functional than particularly artistic, though may have been constrained by its budget. Some of the flying sequences are… let’s say, not particularly convincing. But perhaps due to the director’s background, it does have a down-to-earth (pun not intended) approach which does occasionally work in the film’s favour. One example would be when the women are struggling to get their planes launched out of the mud, after heavy rain. But generally, the tempo is kept upbeat and patriotically optimistic, with only occasional nods to the heavy toll of life taken by the conflict. All told, a decent effort; I’d just give the edge to the TV series Night Swallows, whose greater length allows for more depth in its characterizations.

Dir: Yevgeniya Zhigulenko
Star: Yana Druz, Valentina Grushina, Dima Zamulin, Nina Menshikova
a.k.a. V nebe ‘Nochnye vedmy’

The Dawns Here are Quiet (2015)

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★★★
“Back to war”

While initially released as a film, what’s reviewed here is the extended cut, screened as four 45-minute episodes on Russia’s Channel One in May 2016. This is easily available, on both Amazon Prime and YouTube with English subtitles, so seemed more appropriate. However, it’s likely the case that your reaction will be determined largely by how familiar you are with the 1972 version. Having seen and reviewed that recently, this felt solid, but almost entirely superfluous, offering not enough in the way of a new spin on proceedings. But if you haven’t seen its predecessor, then this is potentially a little more accessible. Stemming from the post-Soviet era means it can be more cynical, and does play slightly less obviously as propaganda.

The story is almost identical. War-weary soldier Fedot Vaskov (Fyodorov) is invalided out to an anti-aircraft battery well behind the front lines. After complaining about the drunken and ill-disciplined soldiers under his command, he gets replacements – an all-female platoon. After being initially shocked, he realizes that they, under their leader Junior Sergeant Rita Osyanina (Mikulchina), are actually competent at their job. When one of them spots a couple of Nazi paratroopers in the enormous forest nearby, Vaskov takes Osyanina and four other soldiers into the woods to hunt the Germans down. Only, they discover there were actually considerably more than two, and the hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned Russians have to try and prevent the enemy from reaching their saboteurial objective.

If you’ve seen the earlier adaptation of Boris Vasilyev’s novel, there will be absolutely no surprises here. In terms of plot, this is almost point-for-point identical, and for me, that did rob the film of much tension, since I knew exactly where it was going to go, and who was going to survive. Again, though: that shouldn’t particularly be taken as a knock on this version, and the performances, especially from the two leads are equally as good. The differences are mostly stylistic: while both do use flashbacks in order to tell us about the women’s lives before the war, the ones here feel considerably more grounded, compared to the dream-like sequences in the seventies version. They are also notably harsher about life in Stalin’s Russia, such as one woman’s family being ruthlessly exiled to Siberia.

There are a couple of sequences of gratuitous, albeit entirely innocent, nudity, which I didn’t expect in a TV series. I’ll leave it up to you to decide, whether this is a recommendation or a warning. Personally, I had no complaints. However, I would definitely have preferred it if the makers had been a little more inventive in their adaptation. While going down the same path as the earlier, well-loved movie was probably the safer approach, it renders the entire thing largely pointless. Well-made and still entertaining, don’t get me wrong. But carbon copies [Kids! Ask your parents!] are always going to feel inferior, to the source which they are imitating.

Dir: Renat Davletyarov
Star: Pyotr Fyodorov, Anastasia Mikulchina, Evgenia Malakhova, Agniya Kuznetsova

The Dawns Here Are Quiet

  By

★★★½
“Can’t see the forest for the Nazis”

It’s the summer of 1942, and Soviet forces are facing the invading German Army. After Sergeant Major Vaskov (Martynov) requests soldiers for his anti-aircraft battalion who won’t get drunk and molest the local women, he gets what he wants. Except, the new arrivals are an all-female squad of soldiers, with whom Vaskov is initially singularly ill-equipped to deal. However, they prove their mettle, led by the efforts of Rita Osyanina (Shevchuk), and eventually win Vaskov’s respect. While returning to the barracks one night, Rita stumbles across two Nazi paratroopers; she, along with four colleagues and Vaskov, form a search party, and head deep into the surrounding forest to capture the Germans. However, they discover the real force is significantly bigger, and must begin a guerilla warfare campaign to disrupt the enemy’s mission, harrying them through the wooded and marshy terrain.

In contrast to larger epics, it’s a very small-scale, up close and personal approach to the war, taking place well away from the front lines. Released in two parts (though at 188 minutes, it’s less then twenty longer than Saving Private Ryan), the first section takes place at the anti-aircraft emplacement. The action there is mostly far overhead, and in the early going, it is a little tough to separate the rush of similar-looking women to whom we are suddenly introduced. Though I did like the stylistic approach of having the war take place in harsh black and white, while the soldiers in more peaceful times are depicted in colour, with an almost dreamlike version of reality.

When we get to the meat of the story, the film improves significantly. It’s fairly standard “small group taking on a larger force” stuff, a topic which has been mined frequently for war movies, from Zulu and The Alamo through Ryan to 300.  Yet it’s still effective to follow Vaskov and his handful of untested soldiers, as they go into battle with far more experienced warriors. Quite deliberately, the enemy are kept almost faceless, given no humanity at all: their speech is left unsubtitled, for instance. As the losses mount inexorably, there’s a genuine impact to them, and you’re left with an up-close and personal look at war and the human cost it has. Yet at the end, a radio broadcast casually dismisses the preceding three hours of heroic sacrifice with, “During the day of June 3rd, no major engagement took place on the front. However, some minor local fighting occurred in certain sectors.”

Based on Boris Vasilyev’s 1969 short novel of the same name, there was also a 2015 mini-series for Russian television (a review of that is coming soon); a Tamil-language Indian film (Peranmai); a Chinese TV series; and more unusually, the story was turned into not one but two operas, one in Russia and the other in China. However, this version was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, where it lost out to Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. No death before dishonour there. 

Dir:  Stanislav Rostotsky
Star: Andrey Martynov, Irina Shevchuk, Yelena Drapeko, Yekaterina Markova

Night Witches: Red skies at night

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From left: Rufina Gasheva, Irina Sebrova, Natalia Meklin, Marina Chechneva, Nadezhda Popova, Seraphima Amosova, Evdokia Nikulina, Evdokia Bershanskaya, Maria Smirnova, Evgeniya Zhigulenko

[I covered the women tagged by their enemies as “Night Witches” – two years ago as part of our feature on Russian World War 2 women fighters. But having recently both read a book and watched a TV series about the exploits of these wartime flyers, it seemed appropriate to revisit the topic in some more depth.]

“We bombed, we killed; it was all a part of war. We had an enemy in front of us, and we had to prove that we were stronger and more prepared.”
  — Nadezhda Popova, deputy commander, 588th

The regiment has its origins in October 1941, when Joseph Stalin signed Order number 0099, creating the 221st Aviation Corps: a group where women would not only be pilots, but engineers and ground support staff [men were later allowed in to fill some positions, though remained in a small minority]. His decision was in part due to a campaign by Marina Raskova, a noted aviator and friend of Stalin. She sought to take advantage of the high number of women with flight training, who had previously been barred from serving in the armed forces, except in ancillary roles. 

The corps created by Stalin included two other regiments as well as the Night Witches. The 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment were first into combat, on April 16, 1942, and destroyed 38 enemy aircraft in 125 air battles. The 587th Bomber Aviation Regiment, commanded by Raskova until a plane crash took her life in January 1943, flew 1,134 missions, and dropped almost a thousand tons of bombs. But the one which achieved the biggest impact is the 588th Night Bomber Regiment.

Staffed with around 400 women, they received a brief but intensive course at the Engels Military Aviation School, before being deployed to the Eastern front where the Germans were advancing through the USSR, toward the end of May 1942. The lack of equipment intended for female use was problematic. Uniforms, for example, were hard to find in anything approaching the correct size, and often had to be modified by the recipient in order for them to fit.

The regiment’s aircraft were little better than hand-me-downs. They flew Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes, which were used more as training craft or crop dusters, and were incredibly slow, with a top speed of just 94 mph. But that became one of the regiment’s major advantages: the German planes were unable to fly at the Polikarpov’s speed, making it very difficult to shoot down [The aircraft is the only biplane with a documented jet “kill”: during the Korean War, a Lockheed F-94 Starfire stalled and crashed, while trying to engage one] Shooting down a Night Witch eventually became such a feat, it reportedly resulted in an automatic Iron Cross for the Luftwaffe pilot responsible.

“We were psychologically prepared to be killed. It was a tense situation all night. I told my co-pilot that no matter how terrible things got, to stay calm because I might need just one split second to do something to save our lives and if she shouted at me, we might lose that vital second.”
  — Klavdia Deryabina

The low air-speed made them sitting ducks for ground fire, so the regiment flew at night. This wasn’t just safer, it made them into a psychological weapon, disrupting the enemy’s sleep as well as causing material damage with their bombs. The standard attack “involved flying only a few meters above the ground, rising for the final approach, throttling back the engine and making a gliding bombing run, leaving the targeted troops with only the eerie whistling of the wind in the wings’ bracing-wires as an indication of the impending attack.” Along with the female pilots, this sound, which the Germans likened to a broomstick, earned the regiment the nickname of Nachthexen, or “night witches.”

Their Polikarpovs had other limitations, too. As well as being dangerously flammable, every unnecessary item was removed to reduce weight and allow the aircraft to carry more bombs instead. The items stripped included radios, heaters for the open cockpits and even parachutes, so if the plane went down, so did the two-woman crew. They were still extremely limited in the munitions they could carry, so to make up for this, the planes made multiple sorties, returning to base and landing only for long enough to refuel and reload. The regiment’s deputy commander, Nadezhda Popova, flew eighteen bombing missions in one night.

We should not forget the work of the ground-staff: while less directly risky, their work was even more physically demanding, keeping the planes armed and able to fly. Senior mechanic Nina Karasyova-Buzina recounts, “Some nights we lifted 3,000 kilos of bombs. Three of us lifted the bombs, working together. We did our work at night and were not allowed to have any light to work by, so we worked blind, fumbling in darkness… We worked in mud, frost, sleet and water, and we were very precise in fixing the bombs. We had to work barehanded, so that we could feel what we were doing.”

In the early days, the regiment mostly operated in the Caucasus – not far from where the Amazons of Greek lore are believed to have lived. But as the German advance into Russia slowed, halted, and was eventually reversed, they were relocated to other theatres, including Byelorussia, Poland and Germany. They continued to fly right up until May 1945, when the Nazis surrendered, coming within 40 miles of Berlin. Disbanded that October, the Night Witches accumulated 28,676 flight hours, dropped over 3,000 tons of bombs and over 26,000 incendiary shells, damaging or completely destroying 17 river crossings, nine railways, two railway stations, 26 warehouses, 12 fuel depots, 176 armored cars, 86 firing points, and 11 searchlights.

Their efforts were not without cost. At its peak, the regiment had 40 two-person planes, but lost 31 members over the course of its missions, including one black night where four planes were lost, each with both of their crew. Many other members were shot down, some on multiple occasions, only to rejoin the regiment and continue flying. But their courage did not go unrecognized. Of the 95 women ever to receive the highest distinction awarded in the USSR, Hero of the Soviet Union, almost one-quarter (23) went to women who were part of the 588th. Ten of these women are shown below.

Nadezhda Popova

Natalya Meklin

Makuba Sirtlanova

Irina Sebrova

 Antonina Khudyakova

Zoya Parfenova

Yevgeniya Rudneva

Tatyana Makarova

Olga Sanfirova

 Nina Ulyanenko

“I knew the only way to survive was to be ice inside, to feel absolutely nothing.”
  – Klavdiya Pankratova

After the war was over, the survivors of the 588th – or the 46th “Taman” Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, as it had been renamed in honour of its role in two Soviet victories on the Taman Peninsula – returned to civilian life, though I’m sure this remained a defining experience in all their lives. Some stayed with aviation. Others became teachers. One, Yevgeniya Zhigulenko, became a film director, and made a movie about her experiences in 1981, In the Sky of the Night Witches. Members of the regiment were alive at least as recently as last year, when Evdokia Pasko passed away at the age of 98.

I don’t want to ignore the other two regiments, who have received less attention than the 588th – perhaps because both eventually became mixed-gender. The 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment was tasked with protecting ground-based targets from enemy attack. Among those who flew with the regiment at one point, were Lydia Litvyak and Yekaterina Budanova, the only two female fighter aces ever. The former, nicknamed the White Lily of Stalingrad, holds the all-time record, with twelve individual and four shared “kills” before her death in combat at the age of just 21. [She may well merit an entire article of her own down the road].

The 587th Bomber Aviation Regiment was renamed, in honor of its original commander and for its distinguished combat performance, to the 125th “M.M. Raskova” Guards Dive Bomber Regiment. During the war, five of its women in addition to Raskova became Heroes of the Soviet Union. As a sample of why, Klavdia Fomicheva’s bomber was hit by enemy fire on the way to its target, and the left engine went up in flames. She continued her mission, and dropped her bombs before turning back to friendly airspace, only bailing out after making sure her navigator had parachuted away. Despite suffering serious burns, Fomicheva was back the air barely three weeks later.

While these three regiments were the result of extraordinary circumstance and severe necessity, with every asset Russia possessed being pressed into service, it would be more than 50 years, in April 1993, before America would allow women pilots officially to fly any combat missions. Even setting aside the poor conditions, underwhelming equipment and the doubts of their superiors, it’s remarkable how far ahead of their time the Night Witches and their colleagues were. 

Women pilots of the 586th fighter aviation regiment in 1942. From left Sergeant Lydia Litvyak, second Lieutenant Yekaterina Budanova and Lieutenant Maria Kuznetsova

 

Night Swallows

  By

★★★
“Flying tonight…”

This week, we’ve been focusing on Soviet military heroines of World War II, and as well as Spies, I also found this Russian TV series, about the female biplane pilots, known to the Germans as the “Night Witches”. Here, their name has been changed for the series title – a tad unfortunately, in some regards – and this falls short of Spies in terms of emotional wallop and overall coherence, among other angles. It’s still worth a look though.

The two lead characters are Galya Shevchenko (Nilova) and Zhenya Zvonareva (Arntgolts), members of the 46th Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, founded to take advantage of an untapped resource of women pilots, navigators and engineers. Except, the former has been grounded after going off-book and bombing a German convoy for reasons more personal than military. It takes intervention by legendary flier and regiment founder Marina Raskova for Galya to dodge a court-martial, and that sets the tone, with Galya the wild-card, working with the more restrained Zhenya, under their long-suffering commanding officer.

It seems the makers didn’t think the straightforward bombing missions would generate sufficient drama to propel the series, and I can see how that might be a little limited in scope. They tack on various other plots, such as the efforts by their CO’s assistant to get the women in trouble – it’s a bit more gender mixed than the real 46th. The main thread is their work in support of an undercover team, operating behind German lines, run by Alexander Makeev (Nikiforov). For example, the regiment provide air cover for a raid on a convoy carrying important military documents, or a mission to recover technology from a downed plane – the latter, also used in Spies. [Sidenote: I always thought night vision wasn’t invented until, maybe, Vietnam. But the series has it used by the Germans in WW2, and Wikipedia confirms this]

This approach does make it somewhat fragmented; there’s less flow, and also less sense of character development, than Spies managed. Must say though, it’s all rather too glamorous to be convincing: the four lead actresses all appear to have arrived straight out of Supermodel Flight School. It almost feels as if the Soviet Air Force recruited mostly from Robert Palmer’s backing dancers [Kids! Ask your parents!]; in reality, flying ability was valued over how good you looked doing it, and the regiment covered the full spectrum of attractiveness. The horrors of life during wartime here are largely limited to some cute smudges of grease now and again, rather than the reality of life described by one pilot: “We were filthy, exhausted and hungry. We were just trying to survive.”

If you don’t get much feeling of the women being part of a larger battle – in part because there’s no updates  on the ebb and flow of the war elsewhere – the individual episodes are generally fine. The best is probably one where the regiment and Makeev’s team have to infiltrate a German chemical weapons testing ground, which is using Russian civilians as the subjects. It’s chilling, and reminded me a little of a similar element in Wonder Woman. Speaking of chilly, the bleak, snow-covered landscapes are a fittingly frosty backdrop, against which the cold-hearted conflict of the Eastern front can unfold, and the cinematography is effective, making the most of the landscapes. However, the flight aspects are a bit up and down: some scenes work very well, yet others are obviously composites and/or shaky CGI.

I’d perhaps have been more impressed if I’d seen this before Spies, which set the bar really high in terms of quality. Compared to that, this is a little disappointing, if decent enough. While other attempts to tell the Night Witches story have foundered, I’m simply pleased to see anything that covers the topic, even with room for improvement. The entire 8-episode series is available on YouTube, with English subs, so you can give it a shot easily enough.

Dir: Mikhail Kabanov
Star: Tatyana Arntgolts, Elizaveta Nilova, Denis Nikiforov, Evgeniy Ganelin
a.k.a. Ночные ласточки and Nochnye lastochki

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Spies

  By

★★★★
“Red spies delight.”

I stumbled across this Russian TV series on Amazon Prime during our annual freebie month, but not until the final weekend, so wasn’t able to watch it there. Happily, I discovered the entire show has been uploaded to YouTube – embedded below, complete with English subtitles – and it’s well worth a watch. It’s set during World War II, and tells the story of two young women, from diverging backgrounds, both of whom are recruited in 1941, somewhat unwillingly. to act as intelligence operatives, during the early day

The first is Arina Prozorovskaya (Ivanova), a party girl – as in Communist Party, being a true believer whose idealism is tested after her father is accused of activities against the state. Then there’s Zoya Velichko (Ustinova), a criminal who is Nikita‘d out of prison by the spy group’s commander, Major Egorievich Vorotynnikov (Vdovichenkov). Adding to the tension between them: Zoya was involved in a robbery that went wrong, leading to the death of Arina’s mother at the hands of Zoya’s then-boyfriend. The pair end up being the top students in the class, even though training is cut short due to the German invasion. When Vorotynnikov needs two women for a mission, it’s therefore Arina and Zoya who are dispatched to risk everything, on the first of a number of dangerous jobs behind enemy lines.

Once we got past a weirdness about its presentation (we’ll get to this in a moment), both Chris and I thoroughly enjoyed this. The two Svetlanas make their heroines multi-faceted characters, who have fascinating arcs over the dozen 50-minute episodes. Arina becomes far more cynical, largely due to the treatment she and her husband, a member of the Red Army, suffer at the hands of authorities. Conversely, Zoya’s hard exterior, where the only person that matters is her young daughter, gradually softens. She falls for Vorotynnikov’s deputy, Captain Nikolay Petrov (Pronin) – really the first person to have shown genuine affection in her adult life – which helps her become a strong, loyal and fearless agent. Credit is also due to a solid supporting cast:  Vdovichenkov is outstanding as a man forced to navigate between his loyalty to the state and to those under his command, as well as Irina Apeksimova in the role of spy teacher Matilda, a role apparently influenced by Jeanne Moreau’s in Nikita.

It is a little fragmented in the early going, and not initially clear where the focus of the show will lie. However, once it settles on Arina and Zoya, it gets into a very good rhythm. Each mission takes place over a couple of episodes, allowing them to develop without feeling rushed. They’re varied enough to avoid repetition, showcasing different facets of espionage, from reconnaissance and infiltration, through to Arina becoming a “red sparrow”, and having to overcome qualms about being faithful to her husband.  There’s a sense of danger almost every moment (enhanced by my experience of Russian novels, where everyone usually dies tragically!).

This is most apparent in an episode where Zoya helps a badly-injured Petrov through a forest, only for a dramatic reversal at the end, which ranks among the most impactful “bait and switches” in our TV viewing history. This is just one of the memorable moments that will stick in our mind. Another is Arina’s “honey-pot” target, who initially seems decent enough… until he describes to her an incident where his Luftwaffe squadron attacked a civilian target, killing Russian women and children, after he over-rode the objections of his men. The expressions that flicker across Arina’s face as he tells the story, and she is clearly struggling to suppress the urge to stab him repeatedly on her throat, are quite awesome.

In the YouTube version at least (I can’t speak for the Amazon Prime edition), there is an oddity whenever characters speak any language but Russian – mostly German, as in the scene mentioned above. As well as the English subs, that dialogue is also over-dubbed into Russian, and all characters, male or female, get the same male voice. While I believe this is standard practice in that country, it takes a bit of getting used to, especially when it’s two women who are conversing! However, it certainly didn’t significantly interfere with our entertainment.

By the end, Chris and I were completely engrossed and on the edge of our seats as to whether Arina and Zoya would make it out alive. I won’t spoil that, though have to say we felt it was entirely appropriate, and left us emotionally satisfied. If this is in any way typical of Russian television, we’ll have to see what other hidden gems might be out there for us to find.

Dir: Felix Gertskhikov
Star: Svetlana Ivanova, Svetlana Ustinova, Vladimir Vdovichenkov, Evgeny Pronin
a.k.a. Разведчицы

First Squad

  By

★★★
“The first Russian anime mockumentary, I presume.”

firstsquadA strong concept here. Indeed, perhaps too strong for a feature which runs not much over an hour, credits to credits. It’s set in 1942 Russian, when Soviet forces are struggling to beat back the Nazi invasion. Behind the mundane warfare is a supernatural struggle, with both sides using occult methods to their advantage. The German Ahnenerbe group [which was a real thing] seek to revive the spirit of Baron von Wolff, a knight from the Middle Ages and his ghost army, while Section Six of Russian intelligence, put together a team of psychics as a counter-measure. The Soviet squad is wiped out, safe for 14-year-old Nadya (Chebaturkina), but the Russians have created a machine which allows her to enter the afterlife, and contact her late colleagues. With a battle looming which both sides know will be a “moment of truth” – a tipping point in history – the lines are drawn for a confrontation in both the real and paranormal fields of conflict.

Animated in Japan, but with a Russian cast and crew, the film also includes live-action interviews with “historians” and “veterans” designed to give the impression this is based on actual events, beginning with historically plausible stories and gradually moving into the occult. It’s an interesting idea, though some viewers may find these interludes take them out of the story, and you wonder if the time would have been better spent progressing things – some elements just end without resolution, such as the Nazi twins sent to assassinate Nadya. It feels almost like a pilot for a series, doing a good job of building characters or setting, and pointing the way forward; it’s better at asking  questions than answering them, as part of a complete story. The final fight between Nadya and the Baron is disappointingly short, despite the heroine’s apparent skill with a sword, though I did appreciate her colleague Zena’s enthusiastic use of a flame-thrower.

It’s a rich universe, with potential that is undeniable, and its share of effective sequences, such as when Nadya is being pursued through the streets of Moscow by the Nazi twins, or skeletal “zombie knights,” riding into battle, in a way which reminded me of Amando de Ossorio’s Blind Dead movies. On the other hand, the apparently unfinished nature of the storyline is a shame, with an excess of loose ends and ideas that are set-up and never executed. After seven years, I think the chances are sadly slim of ever getting a sequel that will address this problem, and what you’re left with is a somewhat frustrating exercise in impressive imagination. The entire film has been made available by the distributor on YouTube, if you are interested in seeing more, after watching the trailer below.

Dir: Yoshiharu Ashino
Star (voice): Elena Chebaturkina, Michael Tikhonov, Ludmila Shuvalova, Damir Eldarov