Story of a Real Man
About Story of a Real Man
Late in March 1942, in the Black Forest of the Demyansk pocket, fighter pilot Alexei Meresyev is shot down and crashes in the trees. A bear sniffs him; he shoots it with a pistol from his flying jacket and blacks out. About 50 kilometers from the nearest Red Army line, he crawls for 18 days until partisans find him. Surgeons amputate both feet. Regiment commissar Vorobyov, dying in the same ward, talks about Nikolai Ostrovsky and about a World War I pilot, Lieutenant Karpovich, who kept flying after losing a foot. Meresyev trains on prostheses, dances the barynya for the medical board, and is passed back to a fighter school. In a later battle he shoots down two Focke-Wulf Fw 190s flown by pilots of the Richthofen division, covers a younger comrade, and reaches the field on the last of his fuel.
Cast & crew
More about Story of a Real Man
Aleksandr Stolper directed. Boris Polevoy and Mariya Smirnova wrote the script from Polevoy's book about the pilot Alexei Maresyev; on screen the name is Meresyev. Nikolay Sliozberg produced. Iosif Shpinel designed the sets, and Anna Kulganek edited. Winter exteriors were shot near Zvenigorod, where Pavel Kadochnikov met Maresyev. Maresyev stood on a chair and tapped his prostheses, and that demonstration was used for the medical-board scene.
Themes
Background
The crash is placed at the end of March 1942, in fighting around the Demyansk pocket.
Making
The score was played by the orchestra of the USSR Ministry of Cinematography under Grigory Gamburg.
Look
Mark Magidson was the cinematographer. The winter forest exteriors were filmed near Zvenigorod.
Music
Nikolay Kryukov wrote the score.
Notes
- The spoken languages are Russian and German.
- Nikolai Okhlopkov plays commissar Vorobyov. Aleksei Dikiy plays Vasily Vasilyevich. Vasili Merkuryev plays Stepan Ivanovich.
- Lyudmila Tselikovskaya plays the nurse Zinochka. Tamara Makarova plays Klavdiya Mikhailovna. Lev Sverdlin plays Naumov.
- Lyubov Sokolova's first film role is the collective farmer Varvara. Sergei Bondarchuk plays Gvozdev. Boris Babochkin plays the regiment commander.
- English Wikipedia times the film at 96 minutes. Russian Wikipedia and the Wikidata duration are 91 minutes.
Awards
- Stalin Prize, second degree (1949), shared by director Aleksandr Stolper, cinematographer Mark Magidson, and actors Pavel Kadochnikov, Vasili Merkuryev, and Nikolai Okhlopkov
Scenes
- Meresyev shoots the bear from the snow and loses consciousness.
- He crawls for 18 days until partisans carry him out.
- He dances the barynya in front of the medical commission.
- He downs two Fw 190s and lands with almost no fuel left.
Influenced by
- Boris Polevoy's book The Story of a Real Man
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (1948. Повесть о настоящем человеке.webm)
