Grigoriy Chukhray was in my opinion one of the great Soviet directors, and is underrated in the West. After Stalin died there was a creative thaw in the Soviet Union, and a few of these films were shown in the UK along with the unbanning of Eisenstein's ' Battleship Potemkin ' after far too many years. Along with ' Ballad of a Soldier ' ( a great, great film ) he made ' The Forty- First ' and it is visually and emotionally superb. War is still raging between Reds and Whites, and Izolda Izvitskaya is a woman sniper with the Reds who is given charge of guarding a handsome young white played by Oleg Strizhenov, and both are excellent in their roles. Slowly her passion develops for him, and finally it is reciprocated on an island which becomes at last a temporary peace, and a haven for their love. These scenes of tenderness and loving are astonishingly frank in their eroticism and beauty. It is quite simply one of the finest depictions of love in the cinema, and despite the rules of the outside world they create an idyllic space for themselves, fraught sometimes with political fights, and reconciled afterwards. This film has to my knowledge never been released on DVD but it can be seen on YouTube with English subtitles. I urge viewers to find it, and see yet again how uniquely powerful Soviet film can be at its best.
Review of The Forty-First
