THE 100 BEST WAR MOVIES: 29. The Dawns Here Are Quiet (1972)

 

 

                “The Dawns Here Are Quiet” is a Soviet film released in 1972. The title has a similar irony to “All Quiet on the Western Front”.  It was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar (losing to “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie”).  Director Stanislav Rostotskiy was determined to make a movie honoring females who served in the Great Patriotic War. A nurse helped him survive being run over by a tank in the war. The screenplay was based on the book by Boris Vasiliev. It was a bestseller in 1969. The book is considered one of the last “lieutenant prose”. These were books by lower-level officers who had served in the war. He wrote two other books highlighting patriotic contributions by female soldiers. Filming was done on the Karelian peninsula. It still showed signs of war damage and most of the crew had been in the war. The shoot was very difficult with cold temperatures and having to film in a swamp and forest. To better portray exhaustion, the actors put bricks in their backpacks.

              It is set in a village near Finland in 1942.  Sergeant Vaskov (Andrei Martynov) is in command of a unit that is noted for drunkenness and fraternizing with the village females.  His superior solves the problem by taking away his men and sending an anti-aircraft unit to replace them.  An all-female ack-ack unit!  Hey audience, Russian women could do men’s work. The girls laugh at Vaskov’s insistence on following regulations.  The village becomes like a girls summer camp.  They sleep together in a barracks.  They sing songs.  They dance with each other.  They take a steam bath together (with nudity, guys!).  But when there is an air raid, they kick ass.  They efficiently use their KPV multi-barreled heavy machine gun and shoot down a bomber.  Rita (Irina Shevchuk) coldly stitches a parachutist

            The first half of the film is entitled “In the Second Echelon”. There is a tonal shift from comedy to drama in the second half which was called “A Minor Local Fight” to stress that the movie is not about a significant incident. Lisa spots two German paratroopers in the woods and Vaskov decides to take her and four others to track them down before they can do whatever sabotage they are tasked for.  They cross a swamp and set up a strong defensive position to ambush the pair. Unfortunately, the pair turns out to be eight pairs.  Vaskov sends Lisa (Yelena Drapenko) back through the swamp for reinforcements. He and the remaining four will attempt to delay the Germans.  The movie now shifts to “who will survive?” mode. Get ready for some heart-tugging deaths.

ACTING:   B                 

ACTION:   C  (6/10)

ACCURACY:  N/A          

PLOT:  A-                     

REALISM:   A (there were female anti-aircaft batteries)          

CINEMATOGRAPHY:    A

SCORE:   C             

SCENE:  shooting down the German plane

QUOTE:  Vaskov:  War does not mean shooting better than the others. It means thinking better.

                “The Dawns Here Are Quiet” is not as renowned as other Soviet films like “Come and See” and “Ballad of a Soldier”.  The opening scenes seemed to confirm this.  Vaskov is a buffoon and the girls are giggly.  I was wondering if it was a comedy and whether it was truly a war movie.  Not that the first part isn’t entertaining.  The ladies are fetching and some are hot.  How often do you get a nude frolic in a steam bath in a war movie?  (A Soviet war movie at that.)  The director had to pursuade the actresses to perfom nude. He convinced them the scene would emphasize that when bullets hit them the bullets would be hitting female bodies. The same bodies that gave birth. Actually, only a war movie about the Red Army in WWII could realistically portray female soldiers like this movie.

  The air raid is a seriously good combat scene, but appeared to be an aberration in an otherwise fluffy movie.  Not that the movie was standard up to this point.  Early on a series of striking flashbacks kicks in.  The movie is crisply black and white, but the flashbacks are in color and slightly surreal.  They are used to give back-stories to the main characters.  For instance, Zhenya (Olga Ostroumova) had an affair with a married officer.  The cast is an ensemble and they are excellent, although only Ostroumova was famous at the time. By the end of the film, the five women who go on the mission have had their characters developed well.  It is a heterogeneous group.  There is the slut (Zhenya), the revenge-minded widow (Rita), the mousy (Lisa), the poetry lover (Galya), and the timid (Sonia).  More important is the character evolution of Vaskov.  He goes from a buffoon to a crafty leader.  He also shows commendable empathy for his charges in a big brotherly way.  And he turns out to be quite a warrior, as do the girls.  They participate in fire-fights using their Mosin Nagant rifles and captured German MP40s.

Director Rostotsky served in the army in WWII and went on to become a decorated film-maker after the war.  The movie is technically proficient.  The decision to show the flashbacks in a different style added pizazz to the movie.  The cinematography in the forest scenes is remarkable.  The biggest accolade I can bestow is that you do not realize without reflection how difficult it must have been to smoothly film the running about in the forest.  There is some POV and even some hand-held.  The lensing contributes to the fog of war aspect of forest fighting.  Rostotsky’s themes are apparent.  Female soldiers could be feminine and yet serve the Motherland effectively.  The movie is an homage to them.  They deserved it.

“The Dawns Here Are Quiet” is a must-see for anyone interested in Soviet war movies.  It belongs in the discussion about which is the best of this subgenre. It is no surprise it is beloved in Russia. It was at the top of the box office in 1973 (66 million Russians saw it) and polls have shown that it is the most popular film about WWII. This certainly can be credited to being very appealing to female viewers. But that is not because it pandered to women. It was based on actual heroism by females in the Red Army.