The Fate of a Man (1959)

 

            “Fate of a Man” is a Soviet movie set in the Great Patriotic War.  It is also known as “Destiny of a Man” or “Destiny’s Man”.  It is based on a short story by Mikhail Sholokhov. The story was censored at first because its protagonist was an escaped prisoner of war.  The movie marked the directorial debut of Sergei Bondarchuk.  He also stars in it.  He went on to direct “War and Peace” and “Waterloo”.  The movie was a big hit with the public and was voted the most popular movie of the year by moviegoers.

            The film opens in the spring after the war.  We get a circular crane shot of a rural area.  Andrei Sokolov (Bondarchuk) flashes back to marriage, children, and an average life.  And then the war intrudes at age 40.  Train leaving scene.  He becomes a supply truck driver.  He’s just an average Ivan who gets captured.  (Bondarchuk is not playing himself as he was a decorated soldier in the war.)  He and others are held in a church.  In a unique scene, one of the prisoners is executed because he leaves the church to relieve himself.  He has dysentery and refuses to go in church.  Sokolov is not a hero, but he does suffocate a man who is going to rat out a commissar to the guards. He ends up a slave laborer.  In another remarkable scene, he is forced to down several shots of vodka in front of leering German officers.  They are in a good mood because Stalingrad is about to fall.  He maintains his composure long enough to go outside and throw up.  He eventually escapes and returns home to find a shell hole where his house used to be. (The movie does not intercut his soldier life with that of his family, so we don’t know what happened to them.) His life has been turned upside down, but life goes on.  Right, audience?  The movie ends optimistically and audiences left the theater feeling good about veterans

            I have seen a lot of Soviet movies and this one is a bit out of the box.  It is normal for a Soviet war movie to portray Red Army officers positively, but in this case the German officers are portrayed sympathetically.  One doesn’t kill him and another treats him well.  The movie does not demonize the Nazis. It does squeeze in a train of Jews heading for the gas chamber to remind viewers how bad the Germans were.  But Sokolov’s experiences as a prisoner are not nightmarish.  He is extremely lucky to survive.  This should have made his escape suspicious.  It is a fact that the Soviets did not greet returning prisoners with open arms.  Sokolov does not get the treatment a soldier like himself normally received from the authorities.  Returning POWs were automatically assumed to have been collaborators or deserters.  It is almost as though the government encouraged the making of the movie to refute the facts.

            The film is enjoyable to watch.  Bondarchuk shows the directorial skills that made him famous.  The cinematography is showy.  There are a lot of diagonals.  Bondarchuk was a great director, but he was also a very good actor.  Thank goodness, because he is in every scene.  His Sokolov is an everyman who fights not for his country, but for his family and his life.  He ends up losing his family, as many of his countrymen did.  But he recovers, as his country did.

GRADE  =  B-