Evening star., 1945-03-07

Rainbow" clearly has accomplished
that purpose.
X X X X
The author of THE Rainbow
awarded Comrade Stalin's prize for
the force of her writing, has given
her tale a powerful eloquence by
keeping 1t completely simple. She
looks into the Russian nature and
finds it capable of an appalling en-
durance, magnificent strength re-
f1ected in its absorption of German
cruelty until the Germans them
selves are driven to a kind of frenzy
in their inability to break their VIC
Tins.
Miss Wasilewska singles out few
OF the many characters in her novel
to carry the burden of her story.
They are principally the guerrilla
wife, a woman of magnificent spirit;
the craven, bestial German captain;
the village beauty who sells her ia
vors to the Kommandant in return
for the fuel and food which her
fellow country people do so proudly
and defiantly without.
Also prominent in the remorseleSs
flow OF the narrative are the wife
and children of guerrilla officer,
the village patriarch who knows
that the soil is the source of unfail-
ing strength which shall yet beat
the Germans, and the school teacher
sister Of the beautiful Quisling who
herself is willing to withstand any
German torture to keep secret the
plan to redeem the villages free
dom.
The terms of "The Rainbow" are
invariably grim. Its main theme is
the torture of the pregnant peasant
woman who has come in from the
guerrilla hideout to have her baby.
Hers Is a constant conflict with the
German captain determined to force
her to reveal the whereabouts of the
band she has just left. They are the
symbols of what Miss Wasilewska
has to say, the German officer a
f1end of unbridled ingenuity in de-
vising cruelties, the peasant woman
of that inviolable strength whose re-
fusal to break drives the oppressor
to frenzy.
German brutality never has been
more ruthleSsly pictured 1t is
shown in such manifestations as
forcing the Scantily clad peasant to
live out her confinement in a stable,
OF driving her on long marches over
the snowy, frozen earth, of having
leer1ng German soldiers stand by
laughing as she Is delivered of her
baby and finally the wanton murder
OF the infant. The latter may repre-
sent the most infamous of the con-
queror's tortures, but Artkino has
pictured others. 1t shows the in
vaders in such guiseS as murderers
OF a 10-year-old boy who undertakes
to supply crude food to the torment
ed woman, in their terrifying of in
nocent infants and in the slow tor
ture OF group of carefully selected
hostages.
Some Of these are the familiar de-
vices of revelation of German char
acterlstics as conquerors, but they
have been photographed from angles
that have the look of freshness
about them.
Their drama is heightened, too,
by some superb acting on the part
OF the skilled Russian cast.
Motion picture audiences rarely
are rewarded with performances
that approach in power that of
Elena Tiapkina as the Amazonian
peasant who refuses to succumb to
the German torture, of Natalia Ali
sova as the cringing, beautiful vii
lage girl who gives herself to the
enemy; or OF Vera Ivasheva as the
proud school teacher whose defiance
helps to break the invader, who pre-
sumed to master the unconquerable
Ukrainians.