Liberation series (1970-71)

 

            “Liberation” was the Soviet  answer to western films like “The Longest Day” which did not even mention the Soviet contributions to the victory in WWII.  Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev wanted a “monumental epic” to commemorate the Great Patriotic War.  Yuri Ozerow was chosen to direct.  He had been drafted into the Red Army in 1939. He participated in several battles including the Battle of Moscow and made a pledge to himself that after the war he would make a film that told the story of the great Red Army.  After the war, he became a director at the Mosfilm studio.  His project was overseen by Brezhnev and his propaganda machine.  Movies like it reflected a more conservative portrayal of the eastern front.  This was a change from the “Khruschev Thaw” which had resulted in more realistic and truthful films like “The Cranes Are Flying” and “Ballad of a Soldier”. Movies like “Liberation” were part of the “Cult of the Great War”.  The movie was a joint Soviet, Polish, East German, Italian, Yugoslavian production.  It used 150 tanks.  They could not find any Tigers or Panthers, so replicas were manufactured.  2,000 artillery pieces were used and 5,000 extras, mainly Soviet troops.  Several actual locations were used, including the site of the 1944 Hitler assassination attempt.  The Kursk battlefield could not be used because of all the unexploded bombs and mines.  The site was recreated with 30 kilometers of trenches.  The series covered the Battle of Kursk, the Lower Dnieper Offensive, Operation Bagration, the Vistula-Oder Offensive, and the Battle of Berlin.

            PART 1 -  The Fire Bulge:  The series opens strong with a Tiger tank moving toward the viewer.  A T-34 puts a hole in it.  Hitler (Fritz Diez playing him for the fourth time) is there for this demonstration and postpones Operation Citadel (the attack on the Kursk salient) until the Tigers are uparmored.  Stalin meets with his advisers and Zhukov predicts the attack and guarantees victory.  Then comes the battle which is large scale.  Several characters are focused on.  One is a T-34 commander.  We follow the tank in an epic tank battle.  The movie jumps around to several locations, including the Yugoslavia front.  The film is a mixture of command decisions, battles and common soldiers/nurses/civilians.  One of the characters is a tank commander named Vasilev.  A nurse named Zola is another recurring character.  Lt. Yartsev is an infantryman and Tzvetaev is an artilleryman.

            The first film in the quintet.   The mixture creates a choppy narrative and some of the breaks from battles to command conferences are jarring.  It is fun to see historical figures like Stalin and Hitler depicted.  These characters are identified on screen.  The command scenes are shown in black and white to contrast to the fictional characters.   The film is narrated which gives it a documentary feel and maps are provided so you can follow the westward advance of the army.  The Germans (like Gen. Erich von Manstein) are surprisingly portrayed as worthy adversaries.  And the Soviets are not all  heroes.  One scene shows some of their soldiers running in panic.  The soundtrack is patriotic, but not pompous.

            The battles are the main reason for watching it.  The Battle of Kursk segments are awesome.  In one shot, you get 50 tanks.  The camera pans over the battlefield.  There is a reddish tinge and surreal music and some long takes.  We see the interior of a tank.  It uses its machine gun (a rare occurrence in a war movie).  It gets hit so it drives into a river.  The crew gets out and fights with a German crew!  This is some wild stuff.  If you love tanks, these movies is for you.  The films are full of tanks driving over fields.  Take a drink whenever that happens.  Unfortunately, the battle scenes jump to less interesting dialogue scenes. 

GRADE  =  B

            PART 2 -  Breakthrough:  This part covers Hitler meeting with Mussolini and his rescue by commandoes led by Otto Skorzeny.  Orel is liberated.  The Dniepper is crossed.  Lukin’s regiment is sent forward as a diversion and it is wiped out.  There is some focus on an artillery piece and its crew.  The Battle of Kiev.  The Teheran Conference gives us the Big Three meeting.  One theme of the series is FDR and Churchill are undependable allies who are secretly negotiating with the Germans.

            This film is weaker than the first.  There is not as much action and the performances are mostly wooden.  The movie used 18 WWII era planes and some appear in this episode.  However, they look like trainers.  All the German tanks look like Tigers.

GRADE  =  C

            PART 3 -  Direction of the Main Blow:  Fighting in Ukraine.  The nurse goes into no man’s land to help the wounded.  Stalin meets with his advisers to plan for 1944.  FDR  discusses D-Day with Eleanor.  Operation Bagration.  A French squadron flies with the Soviet air force.  A Russian flotilla attacks a German pontoon bridge and lands soldiers.  The Battle of Minsk.  T-34s attack a railway station similar to Odd Ball’s tanks in “Kelly’s Heroes”.  There is a long segment on Operation Valkyrie that includes a good reenactment of the explosion.

            Part 3 tends to be repetitive.  The big set piece battles are too  brief.  There is more fly on the wall at command meetings.  Churchill is shown talking about being glad that Hitler survived! Stalin is always depicted as a calm and reasonable leader.  He wants to show off all the prisoners that have been taken.  Footage is used to show POWs marching through Moscow.  Extensive use is made of archival footage throughout the series. 

GRADE  =  C

            PART 4 -  The Battle of Berlin:  Stalin kindly agrees to move up his offensive to help the Americans when the Battle of the Bulge occurs.  We see tons of tanks moving over snowy fields.  Warsaw  is liberated.  At the Yalta Conference, Stalin scolds FDR for  having Allen Dulles meet with a German agent.  Jews are rescued from a train.  Stalin insists Generals Zhukov and Konev win the race to Berlin.  He pits the two against each other.  There is a surreal night attack using searchlights.  The Battle of Berlin.  Vasilev’s tank drives through the streets.

            The series has a shaky relationship to historical accuracy.  Ozerow used Zhukov (who was persona non grata among Soviet leadership) as an unofficial adviser.  Ozerow had access to Zhukov memoirs.

GRADE =  B

            PART 5 -  The Last Assault:  Street fighting in Berlin.  Lt. Yartsev’s infantry and Tzvetaev's battery are involved in the capture of the Nazi capital.  In a highly imaginative scene Yartsev meets Zola and her boyfriend in an apartment.  Josef Goebbels picks up a phone to prove phone service is still working and he randomly calls the apartment!  Hitler’s last days are reenacted, including his wedding.  The Soviet flag is raised over the Reichstag.

            This is the best episode.  It does not meander between battles.  It is focused just on the Battle of Berlin.  It is a pretty good history lesson on Hitler’s last days.  The three main common soldiers and nurse have made it to the end.  There are two great set pieces.

GRADE = B+

            The series does a good job balancing the soldiers with the generals, but it is still about 70% scenes of generals planning.  Zhukov gets the most screen time and is depicted positively.  He may have been ostracized by the politicians, but Ozerow did not get the memo.  Stalin also matches his wartime image.  The Khruschev Thaw was clearly over as Stalin is resurrected as the main hero of the Great Patriotic War.  The series is definitely  propaganda, but is not ladled on thick.  It is more of a patriotic film than a propaganda film.  Despite the historical flaws, it is a good history lesson, especially for westerners who are clueless about the Soviet Union’s role in the war.  You can fast forward through the FDR and Churchill scenes.  They clearly reflect the chillier Cold War during Brezhnev’s reign and uses falsehoods to stain their historical images.  But overall, the film achieves its goal of showing what happened on the Eastern Front.

GRADE  =  B-