The Dawns Here Are Quiet

1942, Karelia. A small unit guards a railway depot in a remote village. Sergeant Vaskov complains about the soldiers he is sent; they drink and there is no discipline. He asks for a new crew. The crew that arrives is women: five young women serving in an anti-aircraft unit. One day German paratroopers are seen in the forest. Their number is thought small and Vaskov sets out with the five to stop them. The further into the forest they go, the clearer it becomes that the enemy is larger than supposed, and there is no way back. Stanislav Rostotsky directs. The source is Boris Vasilyev's novel. The film reached very large audiences in the Soviet Union and was nominated for the foreign film Oscar. There is a choice in the form: the present is in black and white while the characters' lives before the war are shown in colour. The matter it works at is on whom the war falls; the past of each of the five is described separately and each had built another life before. The deaths are not built as heroism; the narrative shows each one separately and quietly. The section in the marsh is its most cited part. At the end the narrative moves forward many years, and that section carries the film's emotional weight. Who it is for: viewers who like Soviet war cinema and realist front line narratives. Who it is not for: it is long, the register heavy, and the technical quality carries the limits of its time.