Three Russian Girls

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Movie
Original title Three Russian Girls
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1943
length 81 minutes
Rod
Director Fedor Ozep
Henry S. Kesler (dialogue director)
script Aben Kandel
Dan James
production Gregor Rabinowitsch
music W. Franke Harling
camera John J. Mescall
cut Albrecht Joseph
Gregg C. Tallas
S. K. Winston
occupation

Three Russian Girls is an American propaganda film by the exiled Russian Fedor Ozep , which was made in 1943 and was intended to promote the ties between the United States and the war allied Soviet Union . He was supported by an American co-director. The three Russian girls were embodied by the native Russian Anna Sten , who, like Ozep, was once successful in Germany during the Weimar Republic , and the largely unknown Americans Mimi Forsythe and Cathy Frye. Kent Smith plays the male lead.

action

The story begins shortly after the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. When the German Wehrmacht approaches Leningrad, the former capital of Tsarist Russia becomes a front-line city. Everywhere people flock through the streets, wanting to develop their beloved hometown into a bulwark and to procure food in case of a siege. The young men are drafted and rush to the nearby front. The Red Cross of the USSR calls on all young women to register as volunteers. Some of them, the eponymous three Russian girls who are at the center of the story, are called Natascha, Tamara and Chijik. The oldest of them, Natascha, already has some experience as a nurse, while Tamara originally worked as a dancer. Little Chijik is almost still a child, but she is also determined to do her patriotic duty.

At the train station there is a moving farewell between Natascha and her fiancé Sergej Korowin, who has to go to the front. The following morning, army trucks transport the young, partly still quite inexperienced nurses to the nearby front. The medical officers there have to do their handful to provide medical care to the Soviet soldiers wounded in the fray and instruct the three young women to convert an old house nearby into a sick bed, a hospital. That same evening, the first wounded arrive, and the girls are confronted for the first time with the bloody reality of the war. An American aviator named John Hill also arrives. In loyal brotherhood in arms between the USA and the Soviet Russians, he was supposed to test a new fighter aircraft. During his mission, he and his buddy, the pilot, were shot down by German Messerschmidt pilots. An emergency operation saves John's life, but both of his legs initially remain numb. Since the actual pilot was killed in the emergency landing, Hill makes serious allegations. Natascha takes care of him, day and night. Gradually, Hill is getting better and he finds that he has fallen in love with his Russian nurse.

German troops soon approached the infirmary so that an order was issued to evacuate the hospital. With all the wounded, they go into retreat. The nurses help move all the injured onto the waiting trucks. But while the loading continues, German artillery pieces hit a wing of the disabled station. This delays the removal of all wounded and one has to wait for another transport option. Natasha is ready to hold out with those who have stayed behind, even at the risk of falling into German hands. The American John also stays behind. The couple seek shelter in an abandoned shelter with the others. The next morning Natascha, John and all the other wounded are rescued and transported to a hospital far away from the front. Here the American can gradually recover and can also feel his legs again. Natascha has long since fallen in love with him too.

However, there is a farewell when five nurses are to be recalled. Natascha is distracted the moment she tries to admit to John that she has a fiancé. At that moment, the young Russian learned that Sergei had already died at the front. As if in shock, Natascha leaves without making an explanation to John. Back at the front, she shows full commitment and even sets up a ski unit so that she can better reach the wounded in winter. She is wounded on one of her missions and then taken to hospital in Leningrad. Shortly afterwards, John Hill received the order to return to the USA. When they meet again, neither of the two talks about any feelings. John promises Natascha, however, to see her again once Germany has been defeated.

Production notes

Three Russian Girls was created under the working title She Who Dares from early July to mid-August 1943 and was premiered on December 30, 1943. The mass start was on January 14, 1944. The propaganda film was never shown in Germany.

In addition to the film artists already mentioned, who once fled westwards from the USSR and who were mostly stranded in Germany until 1933, the filmmakers Alexander Granach , who were also born in the tsarist empire, and Victor Trivas , who adapted one of the script drafts , also worked made, with. Sten's husband Eugene Frenke , also a Russian exile, worked here as production manager. The American Frank Paul Sylos and Eugène Lourié , another Russian exile, designed the film buildings. Irvin Talbot took over the musical direction.

W. Franke Harling's film composition was nominated for an Oscar .

useful information

The film was in the tradition of a handful of pro-Soviet US films that the World War allied USA had made since the winter of 1941/42, beginning with the documentary Our Russian Front . Tellingly, directors almost exclusively from Eastern Europe directed these films: Lewis Milestone , Michael Curtiz , Gregory Ratoff , László Benedek and Ozep. As a result of this politically wanted alliance, the films Ambassador in Moscow , The North Star , Song of Russia, Days of Glory and Three Russian Girls , among others, were made . Even Greta Garbo was slated for a pro-Soviet film in 1943 when she was offered the lead role in the project The Girl From Leningrad . After the negative to hateful reviews that she had received in part for her last film The Woman with Two Faces , MGM boss Louis B. Mayer decided not to let the film be shot again, whereupon Garbo was completely offended withdrew from the film business. Three Russian Girls , produced by the studio independent producer Gregor Rabinowitsch , is based on the template from The Girl From Leningrad ; a film that in turn is considered a remake of a Soviet propaganda production from 1941. Since September 1942 there were plans for a remake produced by MGM.

Those artists who had been involved in pro-Soviet films from 1942 to 1945 experienced considerable hardship in the United States when the Cold War began in mid-1945. They were accused of participating in pro-communist propaganda, and they soon fell into the crosshairs of the witch hunters led by Joseph McCarthy , who had been enforcing a kind of "purge policy" in Hollywood since about 1947. Some of the actors affected, such as Robert Taylor (leading actor in Song of Russia ), who was strictly politically conservative , felt compelled to quickly and publicly distance themselves from the film in question and openly display their patriotic-American sentiments.

Reviews

In the February 5, 1944 edition of the New York Times , star critic Bosley Crowther wrote that this film was as good as the Soviet Russian original and, in this version, easier to understand for an American audience. The plot was also kept as simple as in the Soviet template. “Most of all, Russian film was characterized by a straightforward, documentary style, and the producers have been very successful in maintaining that style in their remake. You have avoided obvious exaggeration. ”Commenting on the cast, Crowther said:“ Anna Sten is strikingly effective as a head nurse and Mimi Forsythe and Cathy Frye are quite believable than the other two women in white. Kent Smith is convincing and appealing in the role of an American aviator who loves Miss Sten, and so is Alexander Granach, Paul Guilfoyle and Manart Kippen as Russians of various stripes. "

The post-war assessment, which no longer had to take any military alliances into account, was much more sober:

Halliwell's Film Guide found: "Pure propaganda, almost impossible to see these days".

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Kay Less : The large personal lexicon of films, Volume 3, p. 177. Berlin 2001
  2. ↑ Prehistory to the film
  3. ↑ cf. The large personal lexicon of film, Volume 7, p. 620. Berlin 2001
  4. ↑ full review in The New York Times
  5. ^ Leslie Halliwell : Halliwell's Film Guide, Seventh Edition, New York 1989, p. 1026

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