Mir vkhodyashchemu / Peace To Him Who Enters

Мир входящему / Peace to Him Who Enters. Lidiya Shaporenko (Barbara, the German woman who gives birth on Victory Day) and Viktor Avdyushko (Ivan Yamschikov, the soldier who has stopped speaking after his family has been slaughered in the war). Behind them a signpost to Kwickau.

Мир входящему / Peace to Him Who Enters. Viktor Avdyushko (Ivan Yamschikov), Aleksandr Demyanenko (Ltn. Shura Ivlev), Lidiya Shaporenko (Barbara).

Мир входящему / Mir vhodjashtshemu / Ei kenenkään ihminen / Ingens människa / Paix à celui qui entre / Pace a chi entra.
    SU 1961. PC: Mosfilm. P: Ilya / Ilja Gurman. D: Aleksandr Alov, Vladimir Naumov. SC: Leonid Zorin, Vladimir Naumov, Aleksandr Alov. Cin: Anatoli Kuznetsov – 35 mm – b&w. PD: Jevgeni Chernjajev. Cost: T. Kasparova. Makeup: Jekatarina Jevsejeva. M: Nikolai Karetnikov. S: Vladimir Sharun. ED: Nadezhda Anikejeva.
    C: Viktor Avdyushko / Avdjushko (Ivan Yamschikov / Jamshtshikov), Aleksandr Demyanenko / Demjanenko (Lieutenant Shura Ivlev), Stanislav Khitrov / Hitrov (Pavel Rukavitsyn / Rukavitsin),  Lydia / Lidiya / Lidija Shaporenko (Barbara, German woman expecting a baby), Vera Bokadoro (French woman), Nikolai Grinko (American chauffeur driving a Studebaker), Nikolai Timofeev / Timofejev (battalion commander), Izolda Izvitskaya / Izviskaja (Klava, female military traffic regulator), Andrei Fajt / Fayt (old Serb), Stepan Krylov (Colonel Chernyaev), Vladimir Marenkov (foreman), Nikolai Hryaschikov (wounded man in Kwickau), Erwin Knausmüller (German officer), Viktor Koltsov (General), Mikhail Logvinov (Hitler Jugend storm trooper), Vasili Makarov (Lieutenant), Vladimir Marenkov (Sergeant Major), Galina Samokhina (interpreter at the commandant's office), Aleksandr Kuznetsov (Slava).
    Helsinki premiere: 23.2.1962 Allotria, Capitol, released by Kosmos-Filmi with Finnish / Swedish subtitles – telecast 19.9.1964 YLE TV1 – VET 59515 – K16 – 2451 m / 89 min
    Vintage 35 mm print.
    Screened at Kino Regina, Helsinki (History of the Russian Cinema), 31 March 2019.

I have been wanting to see Peace to Him Who Enters for a long time for instance because I remember Herman G. Weinberg having liked it. It is one of the most sympathetic Thaw films, a war film with an anti-war message, a Soviet film without chauvinism. The international cast of characters is portrayed with respect. Besides Russians we meet a French woman, a Serb, an American chauffeur – and Barbara, the German woman who gives birth on Victory Day.

Three Red Army soldiers get a mission to escort Barbara from the ruins of Berlin to give birth in Kwickau. The father of the baby is a Nazi, but the baby belongs to the future and not to the past. In the final twist it marks a pile of discarded arms with its piss.

The chauffeur Pavel is a happy-go-lucky fellow who has seen it all and is quick to get acquainted with women. There is an affinity with the protagonist of Vasili Shukshin's debut film There Lives a Lad. Pavel is a survivor but he gets killed in a Nazi ambush on the way to Kwickau.

Travelling in the car is also Ivan, a soldier whose family has been slaughtered in the war and who has stopped speaking suffering from a post traumatic stress disorder.

In charge of the mission is the young officer Shura whose first mission this is. Senior officers, aware of the fact that the war is about to end, want him sent to safety from the dangerous ruins of Berlin. The movie is Shura's Bildungsroman. He needs to make quick decisions in seemingly hopeless circumstances, he gets into his first combat, and he gets drunk with an American chauffeur. Most importantly, he escorts his charges to safety although he loses Pavel on the way.

For Barbara the journey is a terrible ordeal of ruins, bad roads, night, rain, and ambushes. But she survives and gives birth.

The movie contains a holocaust episode, rare in a Soviet film. The travellers encounter a group of concentration camp survivors, including ones with a yellow star. In a scene straining credibility the survivors help move the car over a river where a bridge has been destroyed.

The film has been flamboyantly shot by Anatoli Kuznetsov. The expressionistic vision is full of compositions in depth, exciting camera movements, ambitious night sequences, breathtaking crane shots and bold camera angles including extreme low angles and startling high angles. The cinematography has an affinity with the virtuosity of Viktor Urusevsky in The Cranes Are Flying and I Am Cuba. Time and again there are startling juxtapositions, credible in terms of the surrealism of ruined landscapes. Which reminds us that surrealism was born in a war. For instance René Magritte was a WWI veteran.

Some of the most moving scenes seem to be authentic newsreel footage of starving civilians running for food.

The story is too good to be true. It all happens like in a movie. Maybe the best way to approach Peace To Him Who Enters is as a fairy-tale. The only glory in this war is that it ends.

A watchable vintage print (with some duped looking passages) that has seen a lot of service bringing the duration down to 84 minutes, yet there are no obvious plot holes.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: OUR PROGRAM NOTE BY JARI SEDERGREN:
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: OUR PROGRAM NOTE BY JARI SEDERGREN:

Aleksandr Alovin ja Vladimir Naumovin vuonna 1951 ohjaama neuvostoliittolainen draama on samalla myös sotafilmi, jolla on yleisinhimillistä humaanisuutta korostava teema aikana, jolloin maailma Berliinin ja Kuuban kriisien vuoksi kiristyi maailmansodan partaalle. Äärimmäinen esimerkki tästä on, että amerikkalaiselle sotilaalle elokuvassa annetaan myönteinen kuva.

Toisen maailmansodan viimeisiin päiviin sijoittuva tarina kertoo kolmesta puna-armeijan sotilaasta, vasta valmistuneesta upseerista, trukkikuskista ja sotatrauman myötä mykäksi joutuneesta taistelijasta, jotka saamansa käskyn mukaan yrittävät pelastaa venäläisten linjojen taakse jääneen, raskaana olevan saksalaisen naisen viemällä hänet sairaalaan.

Matka on vaivalloinen ja vaarallinen tulipaloineen ja räjähtävine miinoineen. Tapahtumarikkaan matkan varrella on nähtävissä myös toivoa siitä, että lopulta rauha voittaa ja he kaikki voivat vihdoinkin aloittaa uuden elämän. Nuorelle luutnantille, jonka esimiehet ovat lähettäneet tälle matkalle suojaan rintamalla uhkaavasta kuolemasta, matka muodostuu myös kasvutarinaksi.

Ei kenenkään ihminen -elokuvan sanomaa ja tekotapaa arvostettiin myös 22. Venetsian kansainvälisillä filmijuhlilla, jossa ohjaaja Alov sai Juryn erikoispalkinnon parhaasta ohjauksesta, lisäksi italialaiset kriitikot antoivat elokuvalle Pasinetti-palkinnon, joka myönnetään parhaalle ”ulkomaalaiselle filmille”.

– Jari Sedergren 2019