Color of war: Televedel with Irina Petrovskaya

The Mature-Military Years The Second World War was black and white. We saw her, genuine, documented on faded from time to time, “blind” with a black and white film and even could not think that there was the same genuine war in color. The color for most of our spectators was associated with feature cinema about the war of the post -war era. Color Hitler and Stalin are “Fall of Berlin”, “Liberation”, “Blockade”, but not a chronicle, although for the sake of creating the effect of authenticity, chronicism, other directors and in the midst of the era of color cinema resorted to black and white film: Tatyana Liosoznova, for example, was a whole series “Spring-white moments” shot black and white, skillfully wrapped up. Personnel of real military chronicle in the fabric of an art narrative. But still, we saw and knew black and white.

That is why the premiere of the three -part documentary “The Color of the War” on Orth on the eve of Victory Day made a stunning impression. First thought: it cannot be! It cannot be, firstly, that so many unique cinema materials about the war have been preserved and, moreover, we are absolutely not familiar to us. It cannot be, secondly, that this is a real color and genuine personnel, and this is exactly what Vladimir Pozner, Zhanna Agalakova and Mikhail Ulyanov, who read the announcer text in the film "Color of the War," stated in numerous announcements. Despite confidence in the aforementioned persons, at first the suspicion was sharpened: a catch. Modern technologies. Computer little things, through which today you can paint any black and white picture.

Nevertheless, this is really a real color and genuine personnel, as evidenced by very small and very quickly running credits in English: the material is taken from many archives of different countries, as well as from private collections. The announcer sometimes contains links to authors: these are also professional German, English, American movie operators. These are amateur shootings - the mistresses of Hitler Eva Brown, the Hamburg fireman, who filmed the bombing of Hamburg by the British and the city covered by the sea of fire. But more convincing any titers and words are the emotional power of the document, its authenticity and reliability, not comparing with any highly artistic fiction. Color shooting in Normandy during the offensive of the Allied troops seemed out of habit by a quote from Spielbergovsky to "save the ordinary Ryan." When, a few days later, the same channel ORT showed Ryan himself, it became clear: this Spielberg “quoted” the chronicle, most likely accessible to him and for so many years not accessible to the Russian viewer.

The film "Color of the War", despite the uniqueness absolute for us, has already caused and, I believe, will still cause many disputes in Russia. Many people, especially the older age, especially those who fight seeing in him a distortion of the truth of the war. If you believe the film, they say, it turns out that they won the Second World allied troops: their anti -icapon operation, their offensive in Normandy is dedicated to much more airtime than the Battle of Stalingrad. About the battle of Moscow, the blockade of Leningrad and the Kursk arc - neither a frame nor half a word. What is it, if not a deliberate distortion of history, an attempt to rub the boost with the wrong hands?

Meanwhile, it seems to me, the film does not at all claim to be historical research, and even more so to the tug of “Westerners” to our blankets. This is a collection of unique color personnel, capturing the war at different points in the world, as well as illustrating, reinforcing their excerpts from the letters and diaries of those who lived and died in this war: Germans, British, Americans, French, Poles, Jews, Spaniards, Russians. By the way, the ORT group, which worked on the Russian version, made, in my opinion, a serious creative miscalculation. For some reason, she voiced these documentary evidence of people of different nationalities that sound in the American version in English, in Russian, but with an accent characteristic of a particular language: the German burns, the Frenchman Grasses, and the Japanese instead of “l” pronounces ”p” ppujannir of his DORG ... ”. This technique is not only at times seems comical, but it still introduces an element of cheap theatricality into the film and destroys the authenticity of all the material. By the way, the same group of ORT, preparing the Russian version, could probably correct the annoying mistake in the credits, replacing the year of Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union since 1939 (so in the American version) for 1941. But this is all so, by the way.

Let us return, however, to a conversation about historical truth. And the truth is that the personnel of the Great Patriotic War in color - one, two and expected. And those that are in the Western archives are present in the film: the rapid attack of the Germans on the Soviet Union and our retreat in the summer of 1941; unthinkable, thousandth columns of Soviet prisoners of war, crazy on dusty roads under the escort of the invaders; the bodies of the dead Russian soldiers; Harded and burned Soviet equipment; occupied Kyiv and burning Belarusian village; Destroyed Stalingrad and captured Germans. And the personnel of the Leningrad blockade, the Battle of Kursk, the capture of Berlin is not in color. Our movie operators who shot all these events, color film did not have (which, however, does not detract from the values of our black and white war), and foreigners did not go there. And even more so, the words would be fantastic: “The shots that you see were shot by the amateur camera of the Kyiv firefighter, the Moscow militia, the Soviet officer ...“ It’s not like the concept of “amateur camera” that we did not exist at that time - they photographed at the front from the sanction of a special department, letters from the front were paid only the most desperate and kept away from the extraneous View: The story of the combat officer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who fell into the camps for one careless phrase in a letter to his friend, is our specific “shade” to the color of the war.

And the name of the film "Color of War" ("Color of War") is ambiguous in its own way. This is not just a war in color - it is a flavor, taste, smell, the whole variety of shades and nuances, of which the life of man and humanity consists, especially when it comes to the greatest tragedy in his history. Putting the boundaries of a one -dimensional, “black -and -white” view of the war for us (“we are”, “ours are not ours”), the film with the convincing and piercing reliability of the document convinces: nothing in the world justifies the deaths of people. Nothing destroys a person like a war, regardless of whether he is an invader or a liberator. And the Germans, recognized in diaries and letters that do not consider Russian prisoners of war for people, are not much different from the Americans who, for the same reason, easily destroyed the Japanese on Okinawa. Just like the children of Hiroshima, who suffered from the explosion of the American nuclear bomb, have the right to life no less than the small prisoner of Buchenwald, who was freed by the same Americans, whose tear, rolling around the exhausted children's face, suddenly illuminated by a timid smile, the military - anti -war! - a document of history.

That war was world. General. Like victory. One for all. They didn’t stand at the price. About this a film.