Got something to say or just want fewer pesky ads? Join us... 😊

Saving Private Ryan



Uncle Spielberg

Well-known member
Jul 6, 2003
43,098
Lancing
Casualties of war 7.9
Hamburger Hill 7.4

Both excellent and under rated.
 




Dandyman

In London village.
Come and See

Directed by Elem Klimov

1985 (USSR) Running time 146 minutes
Language Russian

Come and See is a 1985 Soviet/Belarusian film (a coproduction), directed by Elem Klimov and starring Aleksei Kravchenko and Olga Mironova in the leading roles. The film is set in 1943 in various villages in Belarus during the Nazi occupation.

The screenplay was written by Ales Adamovich in collaboration with Elem Klimov. The words Come and See quote from The Apocalypse of John, chapter 6, ...and I heard one of the four living creatures saying, as with a voice of thunder, "Come and see" (Also quoted in Johnny Cash's "When the Man comes around")

Plot summary

The film begins with two young boys digging around a sand field looking for rifles.

One of the boys, Florya, finds a rifle and the next day partisans arrive at his house, taking Florya with them. The militia prepares to confront the Nazis but at the last minute the commander decides Florya will stay behind in the partisan camp, which rather disappoints the boy. He meets Glasha, a girl who is also staying behind. Suddenly, German airplanes appear and bomb the camp.

Florya temporarily loses his hearing and returns to his village, certain that his family hid on an out-of-the-way island. There, he meets many villagers who fled the Nazis and eventually realizes that his family did not survive. He and three resistance fighters leave to find food for the starving villagers who are hiding on the island but they find that the Germans are advancing far faster than they had anticipated and that storehouses of food are nowhere to be found. One by one they are killed until Florya is once again left by himself. They manage to steal a cow from a local farmer but the cow is shot in a field during the night before Florya can walk it back to the hungry villagers.

Morning finds Florya in a farm field, near a village that is close to being occupied by the Nazis. An old man takes Florya and gives him the identity of one of his grandchildren, telling him to hide his rifle in a haystack so that the Germans do not suspect him. The Germans move into the village and herd all of the people into the wooden church until it is filled wall-to-wall with families. German propaganda vans drive throughout the village while the villagers are being rounded up, their loudspeakers making announcements such as "Germany is a civilized country". Once nearly all of the villagers are inside, the church is set ablaze. Florya escapes this - everyone who has no children is invited by an SS officer to leave through a tiny window. Villagers, mostly old women with many young children, stare in disbelief, screaming "animals". Florya climbs out and his life is spared. He watches the human inferno as drunken Nazis and Polizei applaud their efforts.

Florya recovers his rifle and meets the resistance fighters, who have managed to capture the Nazis. The Nazi leaders are given a chance to justify their actions and they do this in different ways; that they were either following orders or sincerely believe that Russians carry the disease of communism. One of the Nazi officers confirms Florya's claim that he indeed offered those without children the chance to leave and escape the fire. With partisans staring at him in silence he says that all troubles are from children. A woman cuts this short by shooting at them and the others join in the fusillade.

As the resistance fighters begin to march after the retreating German army, Florya notices a portrait of Adolf Hitler in the puddle. What follows is perhaps the most famous scene from the film:

Florya starts shooting at the portrait. Each shot, separated by about 15 seconds, is interleaved with a montage that goes backwards through time: We see corpses at a concentration camp, Hitler congratulating a young German boy, some Nazi party congresses during the 1930s, stills from Hitler's service in World War I, stills of Hitler in school, and ending with a picture of Hitler as a baby on his mother's lap. After each of those scenes Florya shoots at the picture again, symbolically undoing those images, but Florya does not fire a last shot which would have symbolically destroyed Hitler as an innocent baby.

The final scene in the film is of Florya catching up to the partisan column and after following him, the camera lifts up to the sky. There is no end - even after all of the horrible things that the protagonist has witnessed, he is not given a reprieve. It is implied that the war will go on forever.
 






Albion and Premier League latest from Sky Sports


Top
Link Here