USSR's Revolution of 1917 would serve as influence for cinema's most successful coupling of artistic achievement and blatantly propagandist intentions and there was limited expertise in the field of documentary filmmaking to draw upon when the country would engage in war with Germany.
They were not to be deterred however, these Soviet filmmakers responded with utmost enthusiasm to the exhortations of the All-Union Cinema Committee to facilitate the moral, political and military defeat of Fascism. All throughout the war, in fact the Russians turned out some riveting documentaries and newsreels conveying their country's resolute defense and the defeat of their enemy.
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| Over there, way way way over there... |
Once at war, they filmed numerous propaganda pictures. Standout talents such as Alexander Dovzhenko, Roman Karmen, Yuli Raizman and Leonid Varlamov each contributed films to an ambitious cycle of documentaries. Varlamov made Razgrom Nemetskikh Voisk pod Moskvoi ( Defeat of the German Armics Near Moscow, 1942), which is known in certain circles as Moscow Strikes Back. Dovzhenko's wife Yulia Solntseva made The Fight For Our Soviet Ukraine with Dovzhenko overseeing and briefing the cameramen on the frontline, the couple would go on to co-direct Pobeda na Pravoberezhnoi Ukraine i lzgmaniye Nemetskikh Zakhvatchikov za Predeli Ukrainskikh Sovetskikh Zemel (Victory in the Ukraine and the Expulsion of the German From the Boundaries of the Ukrainian Soviet Earth, 1945). Now that's what I call a hook, can a title be any catchier? I shudder to think.
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| An invisible genius - Sergei Yutkevich |
Karmen would co-direct Leningrad v Barbe (Leningrad Fights, 1942) and other acclaimed compilations which would include Varlamov's Stalingrad (1943), Ozvobozhdennya Frantsiya (Liberated France, 1945) a film by Sergie Yutkevich and Razgrom Yaponti (Defeat of Japan, 1945) by Alexander Zarkhi and Josif Heifitz. Varlamov also supervised Mikhail Slutsky's Den Voiny (A Day of War, 1942), perhaps the most elaborate of the set; which was a compilation of contributions from the collective works of more than a hundred cameramen.
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| Raizman's absorbing Berlin. 1945. |
Indubitably, the most elating film of them all would have to be hands down Yuli Raizman's celebrated documentary -1945's Berlin, the unforgettably guileless photography, would come courtesy of Karmen and forty other cameramen, and would depict the ultimate and triumphant capture of the Reichstag after bitter street fighting. These films were all spectacular exercises in patriotism and Soviet audiences saw none of the retreat, death and disaster which the combat cameramen frequently would record.