Word: colt
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...ninth-ranking World War II ace with 204 planes to his credit. The two spoke through an interpreter for a few minutes in the glaring Tunisian sun. They shook hands, posed for pictures. When Hafner admired Widen's wings, the American gave them to him, and his Colt pistol and his P-38's identification tag as well. As they parted, Widen invited Hafner to visit him in Philadelphia after the war. It was a scene worthy of Richthofen himself, or Hell's Angels...
This is animal week at the Brattle. The hero of The Colt is, of course, as awkward a spindly-legged beast as ever pranced across the screen at a Saturday matinee. This should have tipped me off as to the identity of Mumu, but my suspicions began to subside as the second film got through half its length without paying undue attention to any of the barnyard animals that lurked in the background. But, finally, Mumu turned out to be a puppy, and vindicated my hypothesis...
...Sholokhov piece, The Colt, is the simpler, but also the more profoundly motivated, of the two. Its hero is born in the middle of a cavalry campaign during the civil war that followed the 1917 Revolution. The Red Army soldier who owns its mother, Andrei Matreyev, curses and spits and finally decides to keep it. The squadron commander, Dmitri Parkhovomenha, blusters and shouts, and finally decides to let him keep it, too. So the colt tags along through the battle and bivouac, until the soldier is killed during an attack, while trying to save it from drowning...
...acting and the photography combine to produce a sufficiently convincing portrayal of simple men at war, as when the terrified colt stumbles about the battlefield, the film gives an effective picture of life dancing innocently with death. But the attempts at artistry tend to be as heavy handed as the choir that wades in when the wind blows across the steppes...
...lives of its inhabitants. But this feeling is often close to sentimentality and melodrama. The soldier sways back and forth for fully a minute with a bullet in his back, while the orchestra rises and swells in the background, before he falls into the river and ends The Colt. All the characters seem to be so easily moved to pity and warmth that it was hard to believe that anyone actually could have pulled the trigger...