композитор : Сергей Рахманинов / Musique : Sergueï Rachmaninov
Production : Lenfilm, Фонд «Пример интонации» / Fondation "Primer intonatsii"; Правительства Санкт-Петербурга / Mairie de Saint Pétersbourg; при поддержке Министерства культуры Российской Федерации / avec le soutien du Ministère de la Culture de la Fédération de Russie
A Russian soldier loses his sight during the First World War and is deployed to listen out for enemy planes at the front. Drawing on scenes of an orchestra playing Rachmaninoff, the music sets the tempo in this debut film about a generation in upheaval.
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Inspired by rare color photographs from the trenches of World War I (as well as Kinemacolor, an early technique used to color film), the story of a teenage soldier is accompanied by contemporary sequences from a concert hall, where an orchestra is rehearsing two pieces by Rachmaninoff: Piano Concert No. 3, Op. 30 (1909); and Symphonic Dances, Op. 45 (1940). What connects the old to the modern is the thread of listening intently to history, just as Rachmaninov did, as an émigré artist caught up in revolution and two wars. But the dramatic sounds of the war symphony are also listened to by the eponymous “youth” (Vladimir Korolev), a 15-year-old who had only just enlisted when he lost his sight following a German mustard-gas attack. The army employs the blind peasant boy to listen to gigantic tubes that enable him to catch sounds heralding upcoming raids. The innocent, good-natured boy wanders among soldiers in combat and among the wounded: clumsy, forced to rely on only hearing and touch, he is like a leaden soldier molded by the trifling hands of History.