Cinema: New Wave in Russia?

Ballad of a Soldier (Mosfilm; Kingsley-Frankel). A Russian soldier scuttles like a desperate bug across an open field. Like a big grey toad, a German tank relentlessly pursues him. Bullets frisk about his heels. He dodges, drops his gun, falls, runs on, gasps, reels with exhaustion. The screen reels, tilts crazily, tilts further . . . Suddenly the image is upside down, the world is upside down. Yet still across a sky of mud the soldier flees, and still the tank pursues him.

With this brilliant cinemetaphor of war's madness, Director Grigori Chukhrai begins...