Film Description: This film depicts the story of two friends – both officers and both in love with the same woman – from their involvement in the Russian civil war to WWII. It shows the bonds of love, friendship, and duty surviving amid the horror of war. It affirms the importance of the Soviet army and the notions of public duty and loyalty to a larger collective good.
Scene 1: In this scene the two friends reconnect after losing track of each other during the WWII. The one friend does not know that the other’s son and daughter-in-law were both killed during the war.
Translation from Russian:
Ivan: “How are you? How is Luba? Igor must be a colonel by now?
Alexei: “Igor was killed”
Ivan: “I am sorry, I did not know.”
Alexei: “There is such a profession, to protect one’s homeland.”
Scene 2: This is a song that comes at the end of the film. It shows various characters fighting in the WWII, as well as showing the deaths of both Ivan’s son and his daughter-in-law while fighting the Nazis. The text of the song is from a poem by Evgeny Agranovich entitled “Eternal Flame.”
Translation from Russian:
From the heroes of bygone days
Sometimes there are no names left.
Those who have taken mortal combat
They became just earth, grass …
Only their formidable valor
Settled in the hearts of the living.
This eternal fire, bequeathed to us by one,
We hold in our chests.
Look at my fighters –
The whole world remembers them in person!
That battalion froze in the ranks –
Again, old friends find out.
Though they are not twenty-five,
They had to travel the hard path.
They are those who rose as if alone,
Those who took Berlin!
There is no such family in Russia
Where they do not remember their hero.
And the eyes of young soldiers
look out from the faded photographs…
This view is like that the highest judgement.
For the guys that are growing up now,
And to the boys can neither lie nor deceive,
There is no way to turn.