Sluchay s Polyninym

The time is the winter of 1941 and the scenario a Soviet air base near Murmansk. British pilots are around; a wing of the RAF, fresh from success in the Battle of Britain is in operation since September. The wing's mission: to escort Allied convoys to Murmansk in their last leg around the top of Nazi-occupied Norway, subject to attack from Luftwaffe bases. News from the front are largely suppressed although everybody knows the situation is grim. The only point of light seems to be the November full dress parade commemorating the Bolshevik Revolution held in Red Square in defiance of the Nazis during the battle of Moscow, the front only a few kilometers West.

Nikolay Polynin, the commander of the base has been injured and is temporarily laid out. He gets acquainted with Galina, a Moscow actress assigned to a theater troupe touring the front to entertain officers and soldiers. They fall in love, and the rest of the movie is on the ups and downs of their romance, complicated by Polynin's assignment to the Moscow region. The script, cowritten by novelist Konstantin Simonov is witty and mature; characters are sculpted with deft touches and clichés and flag waving are absent. Moral judgments, if any, are left to the viewer and the story is nowhere romanticized or artificially sweetened. There are some intriguing observations (in-jokes?) about the 1941 movie Suvorov, another morale raiser of the time. Direction by Aleksey Sakharov (also cowriter) moves the story along a good pace and the movie is never boring; acting is first rate.