Change Your Image
igorlobunko
Reviews
Semnadtsat mgnoveniy vesny (1973)
Dealing with a 'black swan'
The series are great in many ways. The black-and-white shooting adds much realism in it. There are real war chronicles used in it for this reason too. Nazi officers are just like real people (but you should consider that they survived the system for so long up to 1945, so they have to be extremely clever and discrete), which is not usual nor for the Soviet, not for the Western cinema of the Cold War period.
What I really want to emphasize is the psycological.and 'mind' part of the series. Soviet spy is doing preety well as Stirlitz (though he wants home desperately, as we see in the opening 'forest' scene). But the real action starts when a 'black swan' comes - in a form of the bombing which killes his middle man Erwin and almost killes Erwin's wife, Kathe. It is so interesting to see how one man deals the consequences of the unexpected event. Although he manages to catch some 'whites swans' (as a suitcase in the SS building), we see how Stirlitz constantly fighting with the consequences of that very event. Thankfully to the original novel author Yulian Semenov, we have a great hooking plot here, which is rarely seen in the contemprorary py movies.
I highly recommend to wath it. Even though it has a.slow pace in the beginning, you'd have a satisfying payback later.