Lewis Milestone’s tale of the titular Ukrainian village’s fight against the Na­zis was designed as a morale booster and as first-rate propaganda. It opens with peasants singing and dancing their way to the fields and factories, with tractors parked as though for the Ziegfeld Follies. The first upbeat half-hour is deliberate­ly crafted to make the descent into hell during the last two-thirds of the film more impactful. After the German ar­my’s invasion, the villagers are forced to destroy what they love with their own hands: animals, farms, houses. They stand astride their saddles and swear al­legiance to the Soviet Army as if joining a posse. Ninotchkas pick up arms.
Lillian Hellman’s only original mo­tion picture script is full of aphorisms and the crowded cast, typical of Mile­stone, share the screen time equally as if the narrative construction itself was “so­cialist”. Crane shots (James Wong Howe’s work) and music (by Aaron Copland with lyrics by George Gershwin) both choreograph and round up elaborate sequences. Milestone uses music as uni­fying element, from the harmony of col­lective life, to the dissonance of invasion to silence – the three movements repeated with variations throughout the film.
This film was the industry’s contribu­tion to the U.S. government’s effort to foster empathy for its Soviet allies. But it was also Milestone’s personal response to a land and people he knew and cared about. Unsurprisingly, during the McCa­rthy era it became exhibit number one against the talents involved in making it. Perhaps surprisingly, it was re-released in 1957, despite the controversy, under the title Armored Attack. In this version, the film’s opening depiction of Soviet paradise was excised, to leave only the Nazi hell.
Though grossly inaccurate in its cul­tural and political details, the film – once described by Time as “a cinemilestone” – offers a rare glimpse into a Hollywood unwittingly endorsing the achievements of Marxist-Leninist society. It is rousing in a distorted way but features some of Milestone’s finest compositions. Today, it is almost unbelievable that this film was made at all.

Ehsan Khoshbakht