War At The Movies - Back In The USSR

One could say that the Soviet Union's path through the war was equally as checkered as Italy's. After years of mounting tension on its western borders with the dismembered parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Stalin concluded the Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler in 1939. Feature films illustrated the occupation of Poland, the invasion of Finland; items with anti-German slants such Professor Mamlock (1938) which was remade in 1961 and Aleksande Nevskii (Alexander Nevsky,1938) swiftly returned to the vaults. But they soon would emerge after June 22,1941, when Germany's shock invasion brought the pact to its close. Film studios were now uprooted from Moscow to safer surroundings. Various Soviet policies were modified and reworked and the customary anti-religious bias was now abandoned. Suddenly the much despised Tsarist generals received homage from the cinema for their part in the Napoleonic wars and other national conflicts. There were also new forms of presenting films in the Soviet Union during the war.

From August 1941, the 'Fighting Film Albums' would appear in cinemas on a monthly basis and these were compendiums of short films that included miniature drams, farcical japes and war-effort propaganda. Front line cameramen maintained their perpetual stream of filmed dispatches which were edited and pieced into thought-provoking documentaries. Alexander Dovzhenko would oversee and would pen a moving commentary for 1943's Ukraine in Flames which was a reflection of his personal feelings for his homeland.

The Mosfilm signature

Soviet features had a tendency to follow the tradition of social propaganda and would oft spotlight the German atrocities or the heroic activities of the partisans. But as the case in other countries pure entertainment would never be a neglected artform; indeed its quantity increased as the war marched on. One of the most popular films of 1944 was in fact a musical; Ivan Pyryev's Six PM After the War.

Professor Mamlock (1938) was no Mister Chips

From Lev Arnstham's Zoya (1944)

The lauded auteur Sergei Eisenstein spent most of the war engaged on the production Ivan The Terrible in Mosfilm's wartime headquarters at Alma-Ata in Kazakhstan. By the end of December 1944 - the first part of the projected trilogy was finally ready for its big debut.  The film was a monumental excursion into Russia's past with Tsar Ivan bludgeoning his way from childhood to coronation and conquest.