Clarification of Question by
shrieks-ga
on
02 Aug 2002 02:31 PDT
It was a colour film, most probably made in East Germany, but other
Eastern European countries including Russia are also possibilities.
The plot was about a 5 year old girl called Lena or Lina in Russia
during the Second World War; she gets seperated from her resistance
leader father and is helped to escape from the Nazis by a slightly
older peasant boy whose own father is shot dead. Most of the film is
about the flight of these two children across the Russian countryside.
The girl is eventually reunited with her father at the end of the
film.
The peasant boy and his father live in a cabin near a forest. Very
early on, there is a scene where the boy uses a rifle to shoot upwards
to get a bird for lunch.
When the Nazis close in soon afterwards, the father asks the boy to
help Lena (or Lina) escape, while he holds off the Germans with the
same rifle. When he is eventually killed, the rifle is shown falling
from his hands and symbolically sliding across the mud.
Later in the film, there is a very important sequence. Lena and the
boy are hiding in a village where some of the locals help them. Among
them is another girl about Lena's age. The Germans occupy the village
searching for Lena (to get her father through her), but Lena and the
boy are hidden by the villagers. The frustrated Nazis decide to round
up every child in the village, and Lena is captured as well. The
Germans however, are not sure what she looks like and in a famous
scene, place all 5 or 6 year old girls in the village square and ask
all girls named Lena to come forward. Our Lena hesitates, but is
spotted by the Nazis and brought forward. The German commander shows
her a photo with her father, mother and herself in it and offers to
give her a doll if she identifies the people in the picture. Lena then
says "This is daddy, this is mummy and this is Lena" and so is caught.
Later still, the peasant boy is seperated from Lena and himself
captured. But while being led off with others for forced labour, he
manages to escape by hiding under a bridge and gets away.
Towards the end of the film, he finds Lena again and they both find
Lena's father, who is wounded and on a stretcher.
