Audience Member
Yugoslav war film with great battle sequences but weak character development. The film shows the Yugoslav army trying to defend itself from the Axis powers and the Chechens. The most impressive part of the film is the cinematography and battle scenes. The acting is pretty good as well. However, the character development for some of the characters appear to be lacking. The three siblings do not have as much character development as I would have hoped for a film that's over two and a half hours long. The editing could have been much better; some scenes have distracting quick cuts in the middle of conversations. Also, the film seemed to forgot about the German forces as the German commander is present throughout and never makes another appearance and the German officer decides to stop attacking and take a more defensive position but outcome of the German side is not sufficiently explained. I thought that Welles was miscast in his role as the leader of the Chechens. Unlike Brenner, all I saw was Orson Welles each time he was onscreen which sometimes took me out of the film. The film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Picture but lost to Z. I haven't seen the other nominees so I can't say if it deserved to win or lose. Overall, the film is an engaging and intriguing war film with great battle scenes but mediocre editing and character development.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/11/23
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Audience Member
one of the best war movies
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/21/23
Full Review
lars p
OMG, sooo looong & so boring. Lots of screaming, lots of explosions in the background, very few decent battle scenes and NOTHING worth watching it for. The most expensive Yugoslav movie ever made. Well, maybe making movies is not their forte. I'm being nice, very nice: One star.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
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Audience Member
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.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/21/23
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Audience Member
hrpetina trea, stereotipa, povijesnih neto?nosti i naravno sve upakirano u jeftin crveni propagandni celofan bivseg YU reima..
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
02/24/23
Full Review
Audience Member
This Yugoslav film was probably the most shown Yugoslav film of all times, but for the most Westerners is still unknown! Produced by Anthony B. Unger, Henry T. Weinstein and Steve Previn, written by Stevan Bulajić and Veljko Bulajić, who was the director, it was starring Sergei Bondarchuk, Yul Brynner, Anthony Dawson, Franco Nero, Milena Dravić and Orson Welles. A real Second World War epic with outstanding cinematography of Tomislav Pinter. It is based on the true events of World War II. The Battle of the Neretva was due to a strategic plan for a combined Axis powers attack in 1943 against the Yugoslav Partisans. The plan was also known as the Fourth Enemy Offensive and occurred in the area of the Neretva river in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b2/Battle_of_Neretva_poster.jpg/220px-Battle_of_Neretva_poster.jpg[/img]
At the time, every Yugoslav (out of 20 something millions) had to see it, at least once, in his or her lifetime. I am not sure how many times I had an opportunity to watch it but it is definitely a two digit figure.
And I enjoyed every time 175 minutes of it. Having a budget of $71,015,000 in 1969 allowed the bridge on the Neretva river to be built and twice-destroyed during the shooting of the film. This was the most expensive motion picture made in the SFR Yugoslavia! It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the year after Sergei Bondarchuk (playing the role of Martin in Neretva) won the honour for War and Peace. This was a legendary movie at the time on many levels... just imagine who could have one of the original posters for the English version of the movie to be made by Pablo Picasso, which, according to Bulajić, the famous painter agreed to do without payment, only requesting a case of the best Yugoslav wines.
I suggest to watch it if you like war epics!
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/18/23
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