My first thought was that this is the Yugoslavian edition of...well, basically any western WWII movies. But this would not be 100% true, plus every war story is unique, and we must respect that. So I'm reviewing Bitka na Neretvi as if it wasn't influenced by other WWII titles (which again: isn't the reality either). So it's the partisans (communist rebels) facing off against the Germans and their allies. As a background information, we must know the fights against the civil population on the Balkans really got nasty in the war. If someone from the locals threw a hand grenade killing a soldier, multiple civilians got massacred by the Nazis. It means the Yugoslavs had a good reason for wanting to glorify their heroes. It must have been very annoying to see all the western movies being released about various world war deeds, but they didn't have their own (though they had numerous stories about total war to tell). All these feelings manifested in this movie, a superproduction of the time. They contracted a handful of worldwide stars for the main roles, and they did well! Sergey Bondarchuk felt so natural in every sketch as "father" of the soldiers. Then there is Hardy Krüger, the German general - the most German man they could find on the piece of Earth (actual Nazis unfortunately died or were too old by the time of filming). Brynner, Dawson, Welles also were magnificent: I'm sure money wasn't the sole reason motivating them to take part in the creation of this movie. However, the Yugoslavian actors...some of them were fine, but the more minor the role got, the stupider they looked on the screen. At some crowd scenes you can clearly notice something is wrong...the people just wander around like in a zombie movie. Unless it's a crowd scene with horses - those are breathtaking without a doubt. Speaking of horses, I'm not sure this would qualify for the "no animals were harmed in the making" stamp - lots of brutal battle scenes and fantastic control of the animals, not to mention the bridge - I really appreciated that, can't see action like that in today's films. Costumes and sets are fine, as far as I can tell they looked authentic. I don't know if they had luck with the snow and weather during filming, but even with the mediocre cinematography the locations seem rather beautiful. One thing: the woman protagonist's makeup and hair. I don't want to disclose too much info, to avoid spoilers, but it was a big negative for me - it's like she stepped out of some kind of '60s shampoo advert, not a WWII production. Again: something that shows the Yugoslavs inexperience with feature films. The main line in the storytelling is rather straightforward and easy to follow, but the side stories sometimes get a bit shaky. I'm not sure it was a good decision to try and feature all off these aspects in this short playtime. Still, in the end I stood up satisfied: this is a war movie to watch for any war movie enthusiast and probably the best one about the Balkan battlefield.
Review of The Battle of Neretva
