Anniversary of How I Unleashed World War II
On April 2, 1970 in Poland, a movie was released on the screens of movie theaters. In Polish the movie was called "Jak rozpetalem druga wojne swiatowa". The film is directed by Tadeusz Khmelevsky.
Translated into Russian, the name of the film looks like - "How I Unleashed World War II". But in our country it was released under the title "The adventures of Dolas the cannoneer".
Judging by the extremely small number of reviews on this film, on IMDB, on Kinopoisk, and on the complete absence of references to this film on the Rotten Tomatoes website, this picture is practically unknown in the world. Except, perhaps, for Poland and Hungary. There is no data on the demonstration of the film in the USSR, but I definitely remember that I watched it being pupil of of either the 6th or 7th grade, i.e., somewhere in the beginning of 70-s.
And the second time I watched this movie recently. And it was interesting to compare my impressions with me then, half a century younger, and today. I remember that then I laughed wildly at the session. A lot of funny moments in this movie.
Today, voluntarily or involuntarily, other points attracted attention. Well, firstly, I remember exactly that then, in the beginning of the 70s, the film consisted of two episodes and lasted a total of somewhere from two and a half to three hours. The full version, which I watched recently, lasts almost 4 hours and consists of 3 episodes. This is how much was cut out of the film by Soviet censorship! Weigh roughly - a whole third of the film.
However, neither then nor today would I be able to sit in the movie theater for 4 hours on this film. It’s good that now there is a lot of opportunities to watch movies at home on the couch. Although, to be honest, even lying on the couch, watching this film for 4 hours seemed to me a rather tedious task. So maybe the censors did some useful editorial changes at the time?
Secondly, during a recent viewing, I drew attention to a phrase uttered by one of the female characters when the action took place in Yugoslavia: "The Germans will be here soon. They have already occupied Hungary." Then, in childhood, my friends and I did not pay much attention to this phrase. Of course, bad fascists occupied good Hungary. Today, when we know that Hungary was the original and most loyal satellite of Hitlerite Germany and fought the Red Army until the very end, when the Germans themselves began to surrender, this phrase cuts the ear. More precisely, it cuts the ears of those who are aware that Hungary joined the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1939 and that, together with Germany, in the spring of 1941, took part in the invasion of Yugoslavia. And the German Wehrmacht occupied Hungary only in March 1944, when the Red Army was already very close to its borders.
Thirdly, look at the photo below. And tell me, where are these officers? Actually these are prisoners of the camp for POWs. Now compare with numerous photo documents about the camp conditions for Soviet officers in German camps for POWs. And as they say, feel the difference.
Such a comparison is especially relevant today, when some Polish, and not only Polish, politicians decided to attribute the beginning of the Second World War exclusively to Germany and the Soviet Union.
However, I think that everyone who watched this film in the 70s and watched it today will be able to find other changes in their impressions.
For the reasons stated above, the film "How I Unleashed World War II" had neither festival prizes nor reviews of authoritative film critics. But viewers praised this picture of Tadeusz Khmelewski: 70% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users around the world gave this film ratings from 8 to 10.
Based on this indicator, the rating of the film according to the version of FilmGourmand was 7,993, which allowed him to occupy 717th place in the Golden Thousand.
