Vlčie diery

A powerful film that structurally doesn't hold together very well, which I think is also due to the inclusion of real historical footage. Plot-wise, it's somewhat drawn-out and disjointed, but when it comes to certain scenes, it will really give you chills. A good way to come to terms with the Second World War in Slovakia. (18.05.2015)

I already understood beforehand that the film suffers from every imaginable flaw from films from the end of the 1940s, starting with schematism, through the black and white characters, pathetic music, and ending with melodramatic moments. What is worse is that it has a silly screenplay, where the story heavily lags behind and the plot jumps forward by leaps and bounds, and that it would have such a small budget, and that the action scenes would turn into absolute farce thanks to toy tanks borrowed from a child's room of a prominent family. These things can simply not be excused. The film undoubtedly had a propaganda dimension, which I can tolerate (or can I really?) in a film such as Kachyňa's Smugglers of Death, but here the formal qualities of the film do not lead to anything like that. The film's higher review score is simply due to nostalgia and the awareness that it is a film with an anti-fascist and national-liberation theme. Overall impression: 25%. (11.01.2015)