Fate of a Man

A Soviet film set during and after the Second World War. A man sits on a riverbank with a boy, waiting to cross. He begins telling his story to a stranger. Andrei was a driver before the war. Married, three children, an ordered life. He goes to the front. He is taken prisoner quickly and moved from camp to camp. From there the film takes place in captivity. A night in a church, an interrogation room, a glass of vodka and years of labour. He escapes and gets back to his own lines. Then he learns that his house was bombed and his wife and daughters are dead. His son is alive and has become an officer. He loses him too, on the last day of the war. From there the film follows a man who does not know what to do. He drives in a small town, he drinks, and he sees a boy outside a canteen. The boy is an orphan with nobody. The man tells him he is his father. What the narrative is interested in is not war but continuing: the film restarts a man after he has lost everything, and does it with a single lie. The interrogation is its best known section. A camp commandant offers him a drink before shooting him and the man drinks three glasses and refuses the food; the whole scene takes place between the two of them. The source is a short story by Mikhail Sholokhov. Sergei Bondarchuk both directed and played the lead; it was his first work as a director and he would later make a far larger production. The film drew a great deal of attention in the Soviet Union and won the grand prize at the first Moscow Film Festival. Sergei Bondarchuk, Pavel Boriskin and Zinaida Kirienko are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes postwar Soviet cinema and drama built on one character. Who it is not for: anyone looking for pace; the narrative is heavy and runs on voice-over throughout.