Ballad of a Soldier (1959)
From the very pages of life itself!
Genre : Drama, Romance, War
Runtime : 1H 29M
Director : Grigoriy Chukhray
Synopsis
During World War II, earnest young Russian soldier Alyosha Skvortsov is rewarded with a short leave of absence for performing a heroic deed on the battlefield. Feeling homesick, he decides to visit his mother. Due to his kindhearted nature, however, Alyosha is repeatedly sidetracked by his efforts to help those he encounters, including a lovely girl named Shura. In his tour of a country devastated by war, he struggles to keep hope alive.
During a daring mission in Vietnam, a helicoptor squadron is downed. While the soldiers try to escape capture by the Viet Cong, clues that the copter was sabotaged lead to brutal infighting, as they search for the traitor among them.
Four Swedish volunteer soldiers are trapped in Russia. In front of them lies the front with enemy outposts and patrols, behind them the enemy minefields. Hope to return to their own lines decreases each day. Corpses of fallen, "dead of cold and hard as iron", forms the macabre landmarks in the winter landscape. Nearby is a burnt Russian village.
The film dramatizes November 11, 1919- a crucial date in the battle for Latvian independence. A year after the end of the official hostilities of WWI, a renegade German general and troops remain outside the Latvian capital. Latvian riflemen, most of them inexperienced volunteers, somehow managed to defeat a larger, better-armed force of German and Russian mercenaries.
This is a story about the fate of a broken family, about the uncertainty of Ruben, who left his family, about attempts to return father, and about a series of funny, but also sad events that bring this dead-end story to a conclusion.
The setting is the islands off the Dalmatian coast of Yugoslavia, during WW II. The islands are controlled by occupying Italian forces, and a resistence movement of Communists is dedicated to sabotaging and ending the occupation. When a wealthy young man joins the resistence, he falls in love with a woman who turns out to be a spy for the Italians. As a result of his liaison and her activity, they are both executed by a Communist comrade - a previous friend. The comrade is dedicated to the hard-line policies of the resistence, until he himself falls in love with the daughter of a bourgeois landowner on the island - a landowner who has collaborated with the Italians. Neither the Italian occupying army (one officer is shown in an attempted rape scene) nor the resistence fighters are stereotyped forces for good or evil, but all are equally subject to the dehumanizing effects of war.
A chronicle of the life of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner who was taken prisoner by Japanese forces during World War II.
Albin Skoda embodies a frantic Adolf Hitler in his last days, scrambling to keep the Third Reich alive as morale within the bunker wanes and Berlin is encircled by enemy troops. Based on Michael A. Musmanno's book Ten Days to Die, Oscar Werner costars as fictional Nazi Hauptmann Wüst, a disillusioned middleman.
The first Yugoslav Partisan air force unit. Loosely based on historical facts.
Telling the prisoners of a death camp. Boxer Tony Majer, who got into a concentration camp for a fight with the Gestapo, remembers the murderous work in quarries, on the cruel torture of the Nazis and prison solidarity that helped him survive.
The trenches of World War I provide for a captivating backdrop to the drama of Corporal Hoferik. In his devotion to the Habsburg Monarchy, he fanatically carries out his military orders, but he ultimately suffers the Empire's disfavor.
Belle and Sebastian is set high in the snowy Alps during the Second World War. The resourceful Sebastian is a lonely boy who tames and befriends a giant, wild mountain dog, Belle – even though the villagers believe her to be ‘the beast’ that has been killing their sheep.
Italian fugitives from German war camps unite to form "Lupo", a partisan brigade which uses their knowledge of the countryside to wage their own personal war on the Germans.
During the Nazi occupation of a Czech city civilians are being rounded up on the slightest of pretexts and shot. One day three high school boys who crack jokes about a recently deceased "hero of the Reich" are pulled out of school by the Gestapo.
During WWII, Darrel was stationed in Europe. Andrew was fighting in the Philippines. In the chaos of combat, each stole valuable treasures and hid them overseas before returning to civilian life in America. Sixty years later, back in America, neither man seems remorseful about their war crimes. Both want to recover the treasures they perceive as their own. They don't know each other but they both happen to know Lance, an inventor, used-car salesman, and amateur treasure-hunter, who, against all odds and better judgment, attempts to help them find their lost looted goods.
A band of determined Russian soldiers fight to hold a strategic building in their devastated city against a ruthless German army, and in the process become deeply connected to a Russian woman who has been living there.
During the 20 months before Italy's liberation from Fascism, a group of university students trade empty rhetoric for action by joining the Partisans into the mountains of Nazi-occupied northern Italy. There, group leader Gigi falls in love with his best friend's girl. As the Resistance struggle continues, some of the "little teachers" are killed, and the brutal reality of war leaves its mark on their youthful idealism.
While subjected to the horrors of WWII Germany, young Liesel finds solace by stealing books and sharing them with others. Under the stairs in her home, a Jewish refugee is being sheltered by her adoptive parents.
Two women, one house. An intimate story about a Pole and a German placed by war on enemy sides and their parallel lives accidentally brought together. The film reflects on the concepts of invaders, victim, guilt and forgiveness. It confronts different experiences and their paradoxical similarities. It deals with the controversial subject of the post-war accountings. The visual narration is flowing, guided by memories and archives. Traditional documentation confronts experimental use of archival footage in the cinematic impression about displacement.
Based on The Hand and the Flower, a novel by Jerrard Tickell, A Day to Remember stars Stanley Holloway as Charley Porter, captain of London darts team. When the team travels to the French town of Boulogne for the annual darts tournament, a good time is had by all--and more besides. Jim Carver one of the team's members, is reunited with a little French girl he'd befriended during the war, who has now developed into a beautiful young woman. And Fred Collins makes a poignant journey to the hotel where he'd honeymooned with his late wife. The film works best as a low-key comedy-drama; it is least successful when it ventures into O. Henry territory and strains for "surprise" story twists. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Robert Lund (Roy Bjornstad) is a weary man, and his days as a starring saxophone player seem to be near their end. The Nazis have occupied Norway for some time, and he has been passing the time by telling his son Bobby (Erik Andersson) some tales of his previous exploits.