No Path Through Fire
On June 1, 1968, in the USSR, the premiere of the film "No Path Through Fire" took place. Director Gleb Panfilov.
This is the first full-length film by Gleb Panfilov. In this film, the great Russian actress Inna Churikova played her first major role. You can read more about their work on this film here.
In 1969, at the Locarno International Film Festival, the film received the main prize - the Golden Leopard. In fairness, it should be noted that in that year 4 Golden Leopard Prizes were awarded. Curiously, for all these four films, this Golden Leopard was the only film award received.
American cultural scientist and film expert, considered to be a specialist in Russian and Eastern European art, Dennis Grunes, noted: «The same year as the enormously expensive, spectacular War and Peace (Sergei Bondarchuk, 1967), another war film emerged from the U.S.S.R.—this one, modest, in black and white, and twenty times better. Gleb Panfilov’s No Path Through Fire is a tremendous achievement. …. I don’t know how many times I’ve watched scenes in other films where lovers part as the boy boards a train that will take him into combat. The one here devastates as no other. Indeed, the entire film is urgent and overwhelming. This is the rare film that really does seem to transport us back into the past. Panfilov’s camera is liberated; every shot aches with immediacy.»
However, even despite such a flattering characterization of this film by a specialist who is known for his pretty critical attitude towards the communist regime, the film was not shown in the USA and most Western countries. Although, probably, an explanation can be found for this fact: most likely, Western film distributors did not see the commercial potential in the picture of Gleb Panfilov. And this is understandable: in the Soviet box office, the film was not that it failed, but was received rather restrained by the Soviet cinema audience. We can say that the film was opened on the "green street" on the screens of Soviet cinemas: the number of copies released was very significant - 1303. But in cinemas it was watched by 7.7 million moviegoers. However, perhaps this is due to the fact that the film was repeatedly shown on television in the late 60s.
62% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users around the world gave this film a rating of 8 to 10.
According to the FilmGourmand version, the film has a rating of 8.272 and takes 421st Rank in the Golden Thousand.
