Word: films
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Heroes of Shipka is quite a delightful venture into Soviet cowboys and Indians. The film depicts in ardent propagandist terms the Russian victory over the Ottomans in 1876 when the Russians, out of sheer humanity, came to the aid of their "oppressed" Bulgarian brothers. The whole show is fraught with an enthusiasm and naivete that Hollywood no longer offers...
...photography is striking and beautiful; every scene features at least one sunset, a device which conveys, albeit cheaply by more sophisticated and "decadent" western standards, the heroic mood that is the life-blood of the film's credibility. Carrying through this effect is the usual lyrical and stirring Russian music...
...rather sketchy sub-titles don't communicate the relationship between characters as well as the dialogue undoubtedly does. The transition between scenes seems ridiculously careless and abrupt, but this may be due to failures in this particular print and not general ineptness on the part of the Russian film-makers...
...film then gains its merit from sheer movement and color and makes its myth come momentarily true in the abstract as if it were an opera and not a supposed documentation of an historical event. The Turks are all red-fezzed ogres, the common soldier and the people's general win the war for their oppressed brethren, and the Tzarist general staff is composed of dunderheads and tools of women. Bullets cannot touch the heroic leader, and his heroic troops stem the Turkish hordes by hurling rocks and corpses. A Bulgarian captive breaks away from his captors and, standing silhouetted...
What is particularly amazing is this film's ability to create an authentic empathy for shallow flag-waving, and if we all know in our hearts that war is not glorious, and the Russians must know this most of all after Stalingrad, the vision of national and violent heroism still comes alive and intoxicating for the moment, even transplanted out of the culture that it speaks...