In a 1948 paper on the films of the Great Patriotic War, the then director of the Committee of Cinematographic Affairs, Bol’šakov, praised Mužestvo [Courage], a canonical story about the young volunteer in the trenches and Barnet’s first short of the war period. In contrast, he was very harsh about Bescennaja golova and totally ignored the director’s following two films: no reference to Slavnyj malyj, while  Odnaždy noč’ju was only mentioned in the appendix. Boevye kinosborniki [War Film Collections] continued to be released for a whole year until feature film production began again in the previously evacuated zones. They were the forebears of how Soviet cinema would evolve during the period, and their initial triumphant tone soon gave way to darker nuances. A decisive work in this direction was Tonja by Abram Room (never released), in which the young female lead kills herself when she falls into the hands of the Germans, and in Bescennaja Golova, set in occupied Poland, the solidarity with the partisan on the run is told through a drama of extreme choice. An emotionally intense film devoid of war rhetoric and sentimentality, it proves Barnet’s consistency in his approach to the dramatic genre, a test he passed with flying colors ten years before with Okraina. After the first screening, it was removed from distribution.