Reviews on movie More v ogne (3)

The film causes conflicting feelings, on the one hand good, on the other bad.
The good thing is that in the film the main characters are created with bright characters and well played. It's nice to see, live people and everything like a selection of pleasant, kind or at least understandable.

There is nothing good in the film.

The plot is strange, ragged, it is unclear what is happening, when, why. Plus, all this is mixed with personal stories and it turns into porridge. In the same 'Liberation' all clearly, clearly, show the map, explain what is happening and why, personal stories are deftly woven into the plot, first the story, then the personal.
Also, some personal stories are simply not needed. They do not carry a semantic load, do not pay attention to historical events, in liberation & #39; personal & #39; just distracts from the main story so that the viewer can rest, calm down. Here'personal' foreground.

And yet, they did not have time to reveal more than one hero, did not reveal anyone really. We don't see the characters, the motivation, we don't understand who it is, where it comes from, why, why you're here. It turned out a team solyak: a lot of heroes, a lot of events, a lot of questions.
In 'Liberation' these piles are quickly disassembled. They simply explain first what the main event is, then for each small event, the comments, the personal there are not really disclosed, they showed the main thing, the rest is clear.
In 'Sea' go the other way: all in a pile, each story approximately the same amount of time, personal time and historical time, all time. As a result, there was no timekeeping left.

The history of the defense of Sevastopol is well shown, but there is no explanation that we are shown why it is shown to us, at least where it is located. The author apparently does not quite understand that not all were in Sevastopol and Crimea. Not everyone knows the history of Sevastopol. I had to turn to Wikipedia to understand what I was talking about.

Not to mention the low quality of photography. Especially ugly looks shooting on the screen in the cinema. For example, two people go allegedly in a car (in a convertible), but you can see that they are sitting in the cinema as if on the couch, and behind them is a film with the background of the trip. And there's a lot of that. Always talking in the background of pictures. And this is compared to 'Liberation' where there is no such insertion of video or pictures instead of the background, where we see large battle scenes, involving a lot of equipment and people. This, by the way, is also not in the film ' The sea is on fire', only minor skirmishes with the Germans, very poorly staged battles.
It feels like all the soldiers and sailors could do was stand still and shoot around, or blow themselves up with grenades. The question arises, then, how did the Germans, with their technique and experience, simply not dare these utter ineptitudes? The answer is simple: there are no Germans in the film. There's only Manstein and a few tanks, and a man of 10 infantry. And about 5 times superior forces only talk. Then why didn't everyone just attack and take Berlin? There were almost no Germans!

And the equipment of the Germans is not that strange, it's just our tanks stripped of plywood, it is logical that these boards flew from the shot of an anti-tank gun. In principle, against wooden tanks and a machine gun would be suitable. Still pleased ' German' Ural trucks with branches in front of the engine, apparently masking poor preparation for filming. I venture to assume that the ships we see in the film were slightly more modern than the ships of 1941-42.
Conclusion: Don’t be fooled, this film is not a masterpiece. Just a craft that doesn’t compare to 'Liberation'. By all parameters 'Liberation' better. 1 time film ' The sea on fire ' you can watch, I will not revisit exactly.

The merit of the authors and the plot itself is a dynamic combination of many locations, characters, plots and allusions to plots within the genre of military epic implying the presence of episodes with both high-ranking military leaders and soldiers of the enlisted personnel, documented historical events and artistically supplemented episodes. And on all the above multi-directional lines, this is the most balanced film of such screened. If in 'one year' - 'Liberation' Ozerov, there is an actual - i.e. easily confirmed - otsebyatina (as with the scene of the flooding of the Berlin metro), then in this case, if there is an artistic ' addition' - then only in episodes and characters ' typical' for the Second World War - in communication and combat operations directly in combat units. In addition, the presentation of the plot completely lacks pathos and jumps from level to level of the observation point, as is present in ' Feat of Odessa' Strelkova, in general, the plot transitions are smoother and more powerfully move the general suspense for the defense of Sevastopol than in many films, eliminating kitschy scenes of high-dramatism, artificially energizing the audience’s interest, leaving only the facts professionally played by the actors shot in historical locations, and this surprisingly works!
About the same incomplete 'truth' Here it is better incomplete than invented on the basis of ' general opinion' or maxims ' still know' and the time of release - the height of XB in which ' to reach the Manche in three days' was not a fiction of the GS and certainly not aggressive plans of the USSR, but a response to quite certain plans and actions of the current ' partners', then probable opponents. And here's what to do with ' the full truth' in the mind of fur. water hordes of various t-sheks on the way to the cherished strait or highly motivated paratrooper in the rear of the enemy at its strategic object, its short existence provides increasing speed of advance of troops of the internal Affairs. So this ' true' very dissonant with the task and for good reason, oh no wonder the kids played war after watching movies. Without pretending to be an all-explanatory truth, I remind the complainants about the silence ' the truth' about the post-war World War II times about the need to consider the problem in its complexity and contradiction, in particular, the correlation of artistic and national goals during the period, albeit cold, but war. Not completely agreeing, but finding this point of view explicable and logical.

Highly dynamic multi-story and character-rich film, with historical factual truth and lack of emotional pumping of any direction - from ' we can repeat ' to ' we all lied' Balanced by the impact on the viewer acting and filmed locations.

7 out of 10

Glory to Sevastopol! To our proud and beautiful city!

You stand in the ages, on the high hills, you are as in the old days unyielding. About the storm and war, tell me, Sevastopol bastions.

On April 20, 1941, instructions were already prepared in Germany for the future leaders of the Soviet territories, which the Nazis intended to seize. Hitler’s plans gave these territories German names. Thus, the Soviet republics of the Baltic States, Belarus were united in one region with the name "Ostland"; Novgorod, Pskov and Leningrad regions were to be united in one region called "Ingermanlandia"; the city of Simferopol was renamed "Ottenburg". According to the general plan "East" Crimea was to be renamed - in memory of the Crimean Goths of late antiquity - in the "Gothic region" ("Gotenland - "Earth is ready"), and Sevastopol - in the "Havan Theodoricha" ("Theodorichenhafen). Other historical parallels were also important to Hitler. In the Crimean War in 1854/55, Sevastopol for a long time resisted the siege of the British, French and Turks. Despite its capture, the city has since become a Russian “Hero City,” whose holiness begins at a time when the first Byzantine monks began a Christian mission in Kievan Rus. Hitler always stressed that he fully understood the role of the conquest of Sevastopol in the struggle for world supremacy.
Only three films were filmed about the heroic defense of Sevastopol during the Soviet period: Three Days After Immortality (1963), The Sea on Fire (1970) and I Follow My Course (1974). But only one of them gives a complete picture of the 250-day defense (October 30, 1941 – July 4, 1942). This is "The Sea on Fire" by Leon Saakov. The viewer has the right to a personal assessment of the picture, but he has the duty to evaluate this picture impartially. The history of Soviet cinema is a tight knot of contradictions between those who create a picture and those who release it on the big screen. The film “The Sea on Fire” was unlucky twice: on May 7, 1970, the first film from the epic “Liberation” “Fire Arc” was released on the screens of the country, and on November 5, 1971 – the fifth, final film of the pentalogy “The Last Storm”. Although the date of the creation of “Sea on Fire” is listed as 1970, it was released on screens only in February 1972. “Liberation” was watched by tens of millions of viewers, and there are no reliable figures about the audience of “The Sea on Fire”. That's one. Second, Leon Saakov, who managed to make several “slow” but truthful films about the war, did not play hide-and-seek with his conscience, putting everything that censorship could miss into his picture. The most “unheroic” in the picture is the evacuation of high command on aircraft, submarines and light boats. This is not in the picture, because it is not patriotic to abandon the army to its fate. It is for this reason that all feature films carefully circumvent this sensitive topic, filming either the victorious 1944 (" Third Strike (1948)) or individual episodes from the history of the Sevastopol defensive region. The director can be credited with what seems to look like a drawback – the abundance of characters and the “fragmentation” of the storyline. But could Saakov have done otherwise? Timekeeping is only 2 series, and you need to show an 8-month confrontation, in which hundreds of thousands of people took part! Sometimes the best part of the movie is the details. At first glance, small, but in fact, are real chronicles of the time: an episode in which women give silk underwear for the fuses of bombs, or an episode in which soldiers cook porridge on champagne, because “all the water is with the Germans.” Such details are expensive. In addition, Leon Saakov did not shoot a loud, pompous, bravura film, he shot an almost chamber drama in which the feat is not a feat at all, but everyday hard work. Some may think that the battle scenes are too simple. That's not true. They are simple because the Hollywood standard changes the taste of the viewer. From the volume and scale of the explosions, the true value of the film does not depend. It depends only on the actors who put their soul into their heroes. It depends on the director to compromise with himself for the end result. It depends on the operator who managed to capture the most expressive scenes. But it depends primarily on the viewer. To look at the picture is, at a minimum, to remember those to whom we owe everything.
Sincere gratitude to all those who remembered the film during its oblivion, who restored and digitized it, giving the opportunity to the younger generation to see how the Feat is born and never dies.