How the Steel Was Tempered was a 1936 socialist realist war novel by Nikolai Ostrovsky. Originally, it was released as a serial novel but then composed into a novel. It centers around Pavel Korchagin who is a soldier fighting during the Russian Civil War. He lost his eye during battle, which is also true of the author so it is semi-autobiographical.
Something interesting about this novel is that there were several film and television adaptations. I watched the 1942 version of How the Steel Was Tempered and after watching Chapaev, I would like to see how it holds up as another Soviet film in the 30's/40's and also how the film compares to the novel.
I want to preface by saying that the film is in Russian and does not have subtitles so it is fairly hard to follow. With the context of the book, body language, and cinematics, it is a little bit easier to understand without language. The film was released in 1942 but the title was changed to Heroes Are Made. This is an interesting title change since it fits so well with the Soviet agenda of creating expectations for Soviet men and women. They want their citizens to strive to be heroes, which creates a desire for everyone to fight and die for your country. Chapayev is a good example of someone who literally died for his country and was proud. He didn't have much else in his life than war and bravery. The Soviet Union wants this. They want a bunch of war heroes and people to fight for their country, not necessarily individuals with individual thought and other achievements. Being a hero is a priority in the Soviet Union, definitely among other things.
Something interesting I noticed while watching the film was a Russian cultural antic. I noticed that several times throughout the film, two men would get into a fight with each other (which was usually pretty pathetic looking) and then they would immediately laugh afterwards. It is funny how often this happened as I counted at least four times. It seems like a Russian thing to do with their militaristic expectations and goals, that two people would casually fight each other and then laugh. I have never been in a fight in my life and I feel like it wouldn't be like this at all. Fighting is very casual to them so it makes sense that a fist fight wouldn't be a very big deal.
The war violence in the movie resembles 1930's Hollywood war scenes and is similar to Chapayev or Battleship Potemkin. The quality is definitely a bit lower but it is clearly a professional film with decent production value. It would hold up with other war films of its time and maybe even Chapayev if they were released at the same time. Cinematically, something interesting to note is that the film definitely takes advantage of close-ups on faces with very harsh lighting that makes their faces almost completely white. This is very common in old Hollywood movies also, which is interesting to note across different countries' cinema.
Lastly, I find it strange that in the film, Pavel does not lose an eye. This was a very prominent part in the book as it is a memorable and gory scene and it is something that is personal to the author. The fact that they didn't include it in the film is very odd yet it makes sense in context. In the USA, the Hays Code prevented many filmmakers from including anything sexual or violent in their films. This hindered creativity and expression which lead to a lot of innuendos and watered down films. I'm not sure of the same for Russian films, especially as Battleship Potemkin is very gory and violent for its time. Chapayev and Heroes Are Made have some war violence but there's nothing explicit. There probably was some sort of censorship put in place to avoid showing a man being shot in the eye. However, it could've been easily avoided by hearing something off-screen and seeing an eye patch. Why do you think this scene was omitted?
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