Counter-Attack (1945)

Perfect cast and a good story

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

An engrossing WW2 film set somewhere on the Russian Front with Paul Muni as a member of a Russian assault team who is trapped in a collapsed building with seven German soldiers, one of whom is an officer. Along with him is Margarithe Chapman as a Russian partisan. His character is in the lead part of a big Russian counter-attack that is to be launched across a river on a bridge that's being built eighteen inches under the surface of the water. The setting in the collapsed building with the German soldiers whom he has captured and is trying to extract information from is beautifully done with tension and humor amidst fading light, all captured by cinematographer James Wong Howe, one of the greats of B&W photography (and color, too if you've seen Picnic). Maybe Muni was a tad bit better in I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang, but he's awfully good here as a crafty Russian fighting sleep deprivation and fading light. The Germans are great as well, each getting enough lines to establish himself. Margarithe Chapman's part as Muni's comrade captures the idea of equality in the ranks among men and women. She's tough but tender.

I was 7 years old when I saw this movie in 1945. the war swirled around me and this was a movie about success against an enemy of America. At 7, you have no political insights as to what is going on. It's the "good guys vs. the bad guys", the "cowboys vs. the indians" from a little kids perspective, and I was for the good guys, which in this case were the Russians. I guess it was OK to root for the Russians as long as we had a common enemy. This was my first exposure to propaganda movies, but not my last. When Paul Muni and Larry parks were identified as "Commie supporters" after the war was over, they paid a price for what they believed in. With the Communist conspiracy lurking, this hysteria impacted and destroyed a lot of people, a sad day for our country. Obviously, this movie made an impact on me, as it still is one of my favorites, all politics aside. From a historical perspective, it showed, that the Russians weren't always our enemies, a fact we would rather not acknowledge today. I guess it will always hold true, that "the enemy of my enemy, is my friend".

***SPOILERS*** A bit drawn out and looking a lot more like a play, which the story originally was, then a movie Counter-Attack looks like it was filmed in almost total darkness. With just one or two scenes outside the factory basement, where most of the film takes place, where there was any sunlight at all. Leading an attack on German units across the river a team of Russian commandos are shot to pieces with only two of the group Alexie Kulkov and Lisa Elenko surviving. Trapped underground in a German occupied Russian factory the two Russians, who are the only ones with firearms, find themselves together with seven also trapped German soldier's! That leads to a standoff between the two combatants each trying to get information out of each other. With the hope if they survive or are rescued by their own men it would help in the battle shaping up outside between their two armies.It what later turns out to be a battle of wills the Russian private Kulkov and German officer Von Sturmer who play a deadly game of cat and mouse. Feeling out each others strengths and weaknesses as the fighting goes on outside. With both of them, Kulkov & Von Sturmer, having no idea who's side is not only winning but is in control of the devastated factory where both of them, with their fellow comrades, are trapped in.Not the usual war film that you would have expected with most of the fighting not taking place on screen or among the cast members. Instead concentrating on how fear of the unknown in who's outside, the Germans or Russians, to either save execute or imprison them as well. Lack of sleep also drives the men, and one woman, to the point of madness far more then exploding bombs artillery shells and bullets coming from the other side of the battle-line.What surprised me most about the movie is how it portrayed the German, who were the bad guys in the film, in putting them almost on an equal footing with the Russians, the films good guys, on moral issues. Like being more then ready to gun down each other if members of the opposing side is the first to come to their rescue. Because of the slow pace and darkness it's hard to follow what exactly is happening. There's a confusing scene with Lisa during an attempt by the captured Germans to overpower her. There's also Kulkov when the what little light there was in the cellar, from a flashlight, went out we find her badly injured and even dying from a knife wound. Yet later she seemed to have completely recovered without as as much as a scratch on her only to see her much later on at the very end of the movie being carried out on a stretcher! Again being on the brink of death from her knife wound by the Red Army troops and medics who broke into the cellar to rescue her and Kulkov!The movie was also a little hard to swallow in that one of the Germans soldiers Pvt. Stillman trapped with both Kulkov and Lisa was crazy enough to go over to their side. thinking that it would save his skin. This in the spring of 1942 when the Germans were well on their way, or so it looked at the time, of winning the war against the USSR. Also in regard of the Red Army's brutal treatment, the USSR in fact didn't sign the 1929 Geneva accords in the human treatment of POW's, of German prisoners it made you wounder why Pvt. Sillman would voluntarily give himself up in the first place! It made no sense, unless he just lost his mind, and was driven to become a traitor to his country and fellow German soldier's. With his family back home facing a stay in a German concentration camp and him being shot by the Gestapo or being sent to Siberia by the NKVD if either one got there, the cellar, first!

Recently saw this movie on TCM. Very powerful. It concerns a Russian soldier (Paul Muni) and a female resistance agent (well played by Marguerite Chapman, who I'm not familiar with) trapped in a bombed factory (?) with seven Germans. The director has some better known films, including "Four Feathers." Muni is well known. The others appear to be character actors.It becomes a battle of wills, most of the action taking place in a condensed space -- the small area they are trapped in. But, meanwhile, we also get some excellent shots of the happenings outside in the battlefield and thereabouts. These add a nice touch to the movie, realistically so as well (a sort of newsreel feel in some cases).The movie has a 1945 publication date but is played basically straight. It is always interesting as well when Russians are the good guys.