Last night, keeping in the spirit of Victory Day, Lera set up a war-movie for us to watch. The Dawns Here Are Quiet is a 1972 Soviet film, set in 1942, about a group of female anti-aircraft gunners. The war is presented in black-and-white, but through colorful dream sequences we get to know five of the women – Rita, Zhenya, Liza, Galka, and Sonya – more personally. Their stories illustrate the way that World War II interrupted the young lives of a generation. These women and their commanding officer go on a mission to stop two German soldiers who were spotted in a nearby forest. Only once they are there, they find that there are 16 Germans, making them hopelessly outnumbered. Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1972 Oscars, The Dawns Here Are Quiet is an emotional and suspenseful experience. It left us teary-eyed and ready to belt the popular Soviet war song “Katyusha.”
Olga Ostroumova as Zhenya
Still from dream/flashback sequence – Rita with her late husband and their baby Igor
During the film, Lera pointed out something interesting related to phonetics and language. The characters speak in a very “derevyеnsky” (rural) way, without the vowel reduction that we still occasionally struggle with in our Phonetics class. The best example of this is the pronunciation of the vowel “o” – when “o” is unstressed, it is pronounced as “ah.” The phrase “po-russki” (in Russian) is pronounced “pah-RUsski,” but the heroic women in The Dawns Here Are Quiet say “PO-RUsski.” It’s kind of comforting to know that even Russians make some of the same mistakes that we do.