Anniversary of the Trial on the Road

Half a century ago, in 1971, the film "Trial on the Road" was shot by the great Soviet director Aleksey German. According to some reports, 35 years ago, on November 6, 1986 (other dates are indicated as well), the film was released on the screens of Soviet cinemas. After 15 years of being banned .... And in 1988 the film was awarded the State Prize of the USSR.

This film became the first independently directed film in the work of Aleksey German. Prior to that, together with Grigory Aronov, he directed the film "The Seventh Companion" (1967). For his first independent production, Aleksey German chose the story of his father, the famous Soviet writer Yuri Pavlovich German. The story was called "Operation "Happy New Year". And was published by the publishing house "Military Literature" in the series "Military Adventures" in 1965.

The story "Operation "Happy New Year" was an almost documentary description of an episode from the life of a real person named Alexander Ivanovich Lazarev. Neither Yuri German in his story, nor Alexei German in his film even began to change the name of their hero, which once again emphasized the absolute reliability of the described events. More about the fate of Alexander Ivanovich Lazarev can be found here.

But it should be noted that Yuri Pavlovich dissuaded his son from staging a film based on his story. The fact is that after the publication of the story, Yuri Pavlovich learned that another person played an important role in the story he described - Vladimir Ivanovich Nikiforov, Hero of the Soviet Union, of extraordinary dignity, modesty, courage, nobility, a man with a difficult fate.

Alexey Herman told about this man in his interview with the magazine "Theatral": "Hero of the Soviet Union Nikiforov worked for me as a consultant in the picture. During the war, he was thrown into the rear of the Vlasov army. And he campaigned among them: "Go back to your own. You have a chance to redeem your betrayal with blood. The Soviet government guarantees you forgiveness." Having trusted these promises, people returned to the Red Army, fought honestly, many reached Berlin, received orders. And after the war they began to prison them. And then Nikiforov went to see Zhdanov: they say, how so? Zhdanov listened to him, said: "Free." A few minutes later, right there, in the Smolny corridor, Nikiforov was arrested. And he went for ten years to places where those who believed him were serving time. He told me a lot, in detail and without any lisping, about these people. That's what we shot our picture about."

To create the script of the film, Alexey German and Eduard Volodarsky, in addition to the story by Yuri German and consultations by Vladimir Nikiforov, used the materials of documentary newsreels. The process of making a film is well and repeatedly described, in particular, here. But when the film was ready, the communist leadership of the USSR State Committee for Cinematography met it literally with hostility. The film was accused of allegedly not revealing the themes of the guerrilla struggle against the occupiers, de-heroizing this great popular movement, that the partisan heroes appear to be broken, depressed people, that it is oversaturated with naturalistic details.

But these accusations were made by those who are usually attributed to the party nomenclature. And people who saw the war with their own eyes, and not through the prism of newspaper clippings enclosed in files, evaluated A. German's film quite differently. For example, the Hero of the Soviet Union, Major General Alexander Nikolaevich Saburov, who commanded a partisan unit during the war, which operated in Sumy, Zhytomyr, Volyn, Rivne and other regions of Ukraine, as well as the Bryansk and Orel regions of Russia and in the southern regions of Belarus, wrote to the leadership of the USSR State Committee for Cinematography in support of the picture "Operation "Happy New Year" (this was the original title of the film): "Director A. German did not deceive my hopes. I saw a serious picture of the first difficult days of the formation of the partisan movement....the first days and months of the war were replete with tragic episodes, so reliably shown in the film (the flight of the population from the punishers, burned villages, painful thoughts of partisan commanders)…»

Another Hero of the Soviet Union, Colonel Konstantin Dionisievich Karitsky, who headed the 5th Leningrad Partisan Brigade in 1943, spoke in the same vein. The brigade operated in an area that included the territories of the Leningrad Region. Under the leadership of Karitsky, the brigade liberated 367 settlements, creating a partisan region, saved more than 40 thousand Soviet citizens from being hijacked to Germany.

Support for the film was also expressed by many figures of Soviet culture and art, in particular, Grigory Kozintsev, Georgy Tovstonogov, Sergei Gerasimov, Joseph Heifitz, as well as front-line writer Konstantin Simonov. But the communist leadership of Soviet culture in the person of the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee P.N.Demichev, the future Minister of Culture of the USSR, Chairman of the USSR State Committee for Cinematography A.V. Romanov, and others remained deaf to the arguments of the heroes of the Great War and masters of culture. The party nomenclature really did not like the truthful and reliable depiction of the past Great War in works of art. However, as well as the current leadership of Russian culture, judging by the endless wave of film slags about the war, pouring from the screens of cinema and television screens under the guise of patriotic propaganda. Alexey German's film "Operation "Happy New Year" was not just banned, but written off at a loss. Miraculously managed to save him. And only thanks to perestroika, 15 long years after its creation, the Soviet moviegoer was able to see this movie masterpiece. However, already under a new name - "Trial on the Road".

However, judging by the almost complete absence of reviews of the film from American professional film critics both on the IMDB website and on the rottentomates website, Alexey German's film also did not get into the wide American distribution. Although the obvious reason for this is to prevent American moviegoers from finding out on whose side the Soviet Union fought in World War II, the "bond" of the American film business with the Soviet party nomenclature is obvious. The more valuable for us are the assessments given by film critics from other countries and non-professional film bloggers.

For example, Indian film critic Arun Kumar writes: "Director German’s film-form juxtaposes frantic movements in combat fields with lengthy meditative sequences. He depicts warfare as brutal and meaningless; a war mostly carried out in snowy waste-land, sparsely populated by ramshackle wooden cabins. In the sharply-edited war sequences, German observes more of the devastation than any display of bravery. In one powerful visceral scene, women run out of residential spaces, few of them cut down by shrapnel pieces. In another episode, Lakatov refuses to blow-up Railway Bridge since a boat full of Soviet POWs are passing under the bridge. The director’s intention is to question the inherent mythology of war: that anything is justifiable for achieving success (or the inane goals), even if it means obliterating your own people. German also excels in depicting the alleged heroic act in the final scene (scene with Soviet prisoners of war on a barge under the bridge - FG); an act that’s impeccably free from heroic illusions."

American blogger Donald Levit writes: "Trial on the Road" - "demythicized the heroism of war and solid peasant support. Low-keyed, visually impressive and real, "Trial on the Road" might be termed a philosophic consideration of the motives and acts of ordinary people in more than extraordinary circumstances."

According to an Australian film critic Kwenton Bellette "Trial of the Road was so shocking to Russian sensibilities in the way that it condemned the utter fiasco that was the era's Soviet forces that it was actually banned in the USSR for fifteen years. Trial of the Road is a bizarre and overwhelming experience, the strangest anti-war movie I have ever seen, and yet undeniably compelling and gorgeously shot. Aleksey German is truly a unique voice in Russian cinema."

Let's not ignore the assessment of the film by Russian film critic Vladimir Gordeev: "The film is too vital, too uncomfortable, too unpleasant. It is perfectly filmed, harmonious, as the world around us is harmonious, and at the same time as ambiguous as human life flowing in this harmonious world is ambiguous. The film was shelved because it broke established laws, including moral laws, and it was inconvenient for a society already accustomed to these laws."

The modern moviegoer highly appreciated Alexey German's film "Trial on the Road". 73% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated this film from 8 to 10. And 22% of users rated the film with the highest score - "ten".

With that said, the rating of Alexey German's film "Trial on the Road" according to Filmgourmand was 8,077, which allowed it to take the 609th Rank in the Golden Thousand.

A great movie about the Great War! Now they don't make such movies anymore.