Stranitsy zhizni (1948) User Reviews

Women's Friendship In 30's-40's Building Of Soviet Union

[lchadbou-326-26592 · 6/10 · 1 July 2015]

Pages Of Life is of interest as a film by the great Russian director Boris Barnet even though it may be off-putting to some as a typical sounding example of Soviet propagandistic ideology from the Stalin era. Nina the heroine is one of many we see at the beginning coming from all corners of the growing new country in the early 1930s to help in its construction, specifically in Kharkov,She seems lost but Dusia, the older woman in charge of her work brigade, guides her.The brigade triumphs under Dusia's leadership but using an invention by the younger Nina. There are also two men in the story: an engineer Khomutov whose principle will later be used and a teacher Valerian.The story continues through stormy weather in the mid 1930s and into the early World War II years as Nina goes away from Kharkov, we see the Ural mountains from her train and hear of the big battle going on at Stalingrad. Nina has gotten married and is devastated by her husband's death during the war. She takes out her frustration on an older worker, when something goes wrong during the making of cement and she berates him on how the cement could have been used to help on the front. Then she learns the old man was upset himself, by the loss of his family in the war, and she consoles him and lets him get back to work. After brief scenes of marching and celebration in 1944-5 the two women go back to the ruins of Kharkov to rebuild. Nina recalls some lines of a poem about love we had seen her husband earlier recite from memory. There is an accident when something she recommends, based on Khomutov's thinking, causes a collapse, but during the scene in which they argue over what happened a younger worker explains it was not the fault of Nina or Khomutov. We see a young girl approaching with a suitcase, also appearing lost, which reminds Nina and Dusia of where they were 16 years before at the start of the story,but now their workplace is enormous and there are huge pictures of Stalin overlooking the hall. Nina gives a speech, in this somewhat hard to take final scene, about what she and her comrades have done to help the growth of Communism. While there is more dialogue in this movie (the version I saw from You Tube has Italian subtitles only) there is a visual fluidity if not as much interest as in earlier ones by this director. The main strength is the portrait of the bond between the two women, much as in his lovely By The Bluest Of Seas the setup is the bond between the two men.