Rainbow (1943)
The German conquerors are above nothing, not even the slaughter of small children, to break the spirit of their Soviet captives. Suffering more than most is Olga (Nataliya Uzhviy), a Soviet partisan who returns to the village to bear her child, only to endure the cruelest of arbitrary tortures at the hands of the Nazis. Eventually, the villagers rise up against their oppressors-but unexpectedly do not wipe them out, electing instead to force the surviving Nazis to stand trial for their atrocities in a postwar "people's court." (It is also implied that those who collaborated with the Germans will be dealt with in the same evenhanded fashion).
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Reviews
Pretty Good
Highly Overrated But Still Good
Gripping story with well-crafted characters
Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.
Characters in this low-quality propaganda-movie are so phony they're not characters at all, just living cartoons with stock personalities: the wicked Germans, the male collaborator, the female collaborator-concubine, the enduring villagers, the patriotic Orthodox priest, the innocent children, the conscious female teacher, the partisans.The script is so childish you think it was meant for 5-year-olds or maybe for a village public that had never seen a motion picture in their life. The only moments my resigned boredom was interrupted was when one or two points where naivety touched comical levels caused amused giggles among the public (including me).The director, Mark Donskoy, has shot The Childhood of Maxim Gorky and The horse that Cried, which, although not special, are passable movies. But here he has really touched bottom.
This film was shot during the war in 1941 and was released in the USA in 1945 with an English language voice-over narration. The idea apparently was to display the hardships endured by our (then) allies just before they were to capture Berlin.Nazis occupy a Ukrainian village and brutalize the inhabitants. The victims include a pregnant woman who is tortured in the most harrowing sequence. Surprisingly, for a Soviet film, Christianity is tolerated.I saw a version at MOMA without subtitles or English narration, but I followed the action easily. "The Rainbow" is beautifully shot, and director Mark Donskoy was a strong visual storyteller. Recommended.