Review of The Battle of Neretva (1969) by Ola G — 17 Sep 2013

In January 1943 the German army, afraid of an allied invasion from the Balkan, launched a great offensive against yugoslavian partisans in Western Bosnia. The only way out for the partisan forces and thousands of refugees was the bridge over the river Neretva...

"Battle of Neretva" was the first of the huge state-sponsored World War II film productions. It had a staggering budget approved personally by Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito. Different sources put it anywhere between $4.5 million and $12 million. Global stars such as Sergei Bondarchuk, Yul Brynner, Franco Nero, Orson Welles, etc. flocked to communist Yugoslavia attracted by the huge sums of money being offered. Shot over 16 months with funds put up in largest part by over 58 self-managed companies in Yugoslavia, the movie featured a combined battalion of 10,000 actual Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) soldiers. Four villages and a fortress were especially constructed for the film, and subsequently destroyed. Countless Soviet-made T-34 tanks that were touched up to look like German Tiger I tanks met the same fate. Additionally, an actual railway bridge over Neretva River in Jablanica was destroyed. Director Bulaji's justification for taking down an actual bridge rather than getting the shots in studio was that a destroyed bridge would later become a tourist attraction. The bridge was thus blown up, but because none of the footage was usable due to the billowing smoke that made it impossible to see anything, it was decided that the bridge should be repaired and destroyed again. However, the problem with the excessive smoke occurred even when the bridge was blown up for the second time. Finally, the scenes of the bridge being blown up that eventually ended up in the film were shot using a small scale table-size replica at a sound stage in Prague. Throughout the movie's production, Yugoslav public was informed about the shooting progress through pieces in the country's media. And the movie took 16 months to shoot and complete. I have never heard about this big ensemble piece before, and when seeing the top names involved you would think this is a pretty interesting WWII movie. Which it is on one hand, but at the same time it´s extremely theatrical particularly in the acting, incoherent in many ways, the version I saw was dubbed in german and it just drags on for way too long without really getting anywhere. I assume the movie was originally shot in yugoslavian, but did Yul Brunner and co speaks english in the original print? Confusing.. I was banning the dubbing throughout the movie. Despite the massive budget, an intriguing part of the WWII history and gigantic battle scenes, "Battle Of Neretva" just couldn´t fully win me over.