Brave People

Brave People
Poster for release in Czechoslovakia as Muži v sedle ("Men in the saddle")
Directed by	Konstantin Yudin
Written by	Mikhail Volpin Nikolai Erdman
Starring	Sergei Gurzo Alexei Gribov Tamara Chernova Oleg Solyus Rostislav Plyatt
Music by	Antonio Spadavecchia
Cinematography	Igor Geleyn
Release dates	1950
Running time	95 minutes
Country	USSR
Language	Russian

Brave People (Russian: Смелые люди), initially announced on release abroad by Mosfilm as The Horsemen,^[1] is a 1950 Soviet film, directed by Konstantin Yudin. The film starred Sergei Gurzo and Alexei Gribov, and was Yudin's first thriller film, as he had previously worked predominantly on comedies.^[2]

The film was positively received and was the number one film in the Soviet Union during the year of its release.^[3][4]

The film is set in the Great Patriotic War,^[5] but the plot, an adventure about a boy and his racehorse set in the Caucasus, is strikingly different from the grim realism of other war films of the era.^[6]

References

1. Soviet Russia Today - 17-18 p39 1949 Coming soon . . . A GREAT FILM FROM THE USSR. The Horsemen. A new screen epic, in brilliant colour, directed by Konstantin Yudin Watch for the opening date at the Stan/ey Theater ...
2. Soviet Film, Volumes 212-223. Sovexportfilm. 1975. p. 126.
3. Youngblood, Denise (2007). Russian War Films: On the Cinema Front, 1914-2005. University Press of Kansas. pp. 103–106. ISBN 0700614893.
4. New World Review, Volume 19. N.W.R. Publications. 1951. p. 39.
5. Tony Shaw British Cinema and the Cold War: The State, Propaganda and Consensus 2006 p83 "Those Soviet films distributed in Britain during this period therefore tended to offer their audiences few revelations about life in the East. Literary classics, such as Gogol's The Inspecting General (Vladimir Petrov, 1953), and Great Patriotic War adventures, such as Brave People (Konstantin Yudin, 1950), predominated instead."
6. Frank Biess, Robert G. Moeller Histories of the aftermath: the legacies of the Second World War 2010 p137 Footnote 11 "The sole exception, Konstantin Yudin's Brave People (Smelye liudi, 1950), an adventure about a boy and his racehorse set in the Caucasus, is strikingly different from the other war films of the ..At the film's end, life has returned to a “normality” that few Soviet citizens experienced. A well-dressed crowd fills the stands at the race; the scene could easily pass for Derby Day, whether in the US or the UK."

External links

• Brave People at the Internet Movie Database