Soviet cinema developed its very specific genre, later known to international critics as "Ostern" or "Red Western". In essence, these films were action-adventure stories set in remote or exotic areas of the Soviet Union during the Civil War that followed the October Revolution. Although the golden age for the genre began decades after the Second World War, the film that could be characterised as the first example was produced much earlier.
It was The Thirteen, a 1937 film directed by Mikhail Romm, also known as the first Soviet film to be officially remade by Hollywood. The Thirteen is actually considered to be a remake itself. It was devised as a Soviet version of The Lost Patrol, a 1934 film by Hollywood director John Ford, itself based on the eponymous 1929 British silent film with a plot about British soldiers in Mesopotamia during the First World War.
Romm's version is set in Soviet Central Asia in the 1920s, during the civil war that followed the October Revolution. A group of ten Red Army soldiers who are to be demobilised are travelling from a border post towards a railway station, led by their commander Zhuravlyov (played by Ivan Novoseltsev) and accompanied by his wife Maria (played by Yelena Kuzmina) and an elderly geologist Postnikov (played by Alexander Chistyakov). They travel through the desert and, following a sandstorm, are forced to find water supplies at an ancient well. A large band of Basmachi, anti-Soviet Muslim rebels led by Shirmat Khan, are also in desperate need of water and want to take the well. Lieutenant Colonel Skuradov (played by Andrei Fajt), a White Russian officer working for Shirmat Khan, offers to spare Zhuravlyov and his men if they give up the well without a fight. Zhuravlyov, despite his men being ridiculously outnumbered, decides to make a stand and sends one of his men on a desperate mission to seek help, hoping that they could delay Shirmat Khan long enough to be caught by the superior forces of the Red Army.
Shot partly on desert locations in Turkmenistan, The Thirteen tries to compensate for some of its technical limitations (including sound being slightly rough around the edges) by focusing on a relatively simple and straightforward story. Romm, who was, like his co-writer Iosif Prut, a Red Army veteran, used some of his experiences to, in the best tradition of action films, establish various characters in ways that would make their ultimate fate interesting for the audience. Romm takes a somewhat realistic approach, and the story gets increasingly grim, with the defenders of the well, despite how likeable they might be, dying one by one while fending off enemy assaults. That includes even the sole female character, played by Yelena Kuzmina, an actress who would later marry Romm after the production.
As an action-oriented film, The Thirteen is mostly free from the usual Soviet propaganda, except at the very end, which celebrates the sacrifices of individuals for the sake of the collective. An ensemble cast mostly doesn't allow a single member to stand out, with a possible exception of Ivan Kuznetsov as the last surviving soldier. As such, the film caught the attention of Hollywood, and during the Second World War, an American remake, set in the North African Theatre, was produced under the title Sahara starring Humphrey Bogart (itself remade in 1995 in Australia with Jim Belushi in the main role).
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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