Just watched this rather interesting docudrama. It tells the story, including interview footage with the man himself, of Leonid Berenshtein.
Rather ironically- given that his identity as a Jew, and hiding or revealing that identity, is a crucial elee we met of the film – the version I saw, on Amazon Prime, had the title changed to 1944: Hitler’s Secret Weapon.
I found a thing online under the name of the film’s director, here, and that’s how I came to realise the original and proper title is simply Berenshtein. The painful ironies of history multiply.
Looking around the interweb, it seems that this movie may also go by another name, The Last Partisan. That’s on account of the fact that Leonid himself passed away during the making of this project. Aged 98!
It’s a bit weird, when the movie jumps back and forth between the dramatisations and ‘the present’, as it was a couple of years ago. But overall it’s actually both effective and powerful. And it certainly doesn’t get in the way of this being a cracking good watch.
Another slightly odd thing, especially given the bastardised title of the version I watched, is that both Berenshtein and The Last Partisan are not only better titles, but more accurately reflect the core content.
The actual finding of the V-2 rocket research and development location, which the Prime title implies is the core of the film, ends up hardly featuring at all. And, indeed, they don’t actually find or liberate or destroy it; rather they deduce it’s location, triangulating it via its nigh on impenetrable Dede de cordon. And at the cost of numerous lives.
The bulk of the story is located in the Ukraine, which adds another level of historical irony, given how Berenshtein and his partisans were both Ukrainians and Russians. Whereas now we are seeing those two identities at war, in the same beleaguered lands.
It’s also interesting seeing how the film – an Israeli production – handles both Nazi atrocities, and the dehumanising aspects of war on people, including Berenshtein himself, on both sides.