The Battle of Neretva Reviews

The most expensive Yugoslavian production of its day ($12 million) and an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign-Language Film, THE BATTLE OF NERETVA is an international war epic that was originally to have run 240 minutes, was cut to 175 minutes for its (successful) Yugoslavian run, and emerged at 106 minutes on videocassette. Set in early 1943, as the Yugoslavian partisans are battling the onslaught of German and Italian troops, the film focuses on a group of local resistance fighters who struggle to cross the Neretva River and reach a mountain stronghold. Determined to destroy this resistance movement is German general Lohring (Curt Jurgens) and his aide, Col. Kranzer (Hardy Kruger). After intense battling and severe losses, the partisans make it to the Neretva, only to learn from demolitions expert Vlado (Yul Brynner) that Marshal Tito has ordered the Neretva Valley bridge blown up in order to halt an advancing Panzer division. The star-studded cast also includes Franco Nero as an Italian officer, Soviet actor-director Sergei Bondarchuk (WAR AND PEACE) as a partisan commander, and the epical Orson Welles as a senator of the royalist Chetniks who urges his countrymen to lay down their weapons and is then shot as a traitor.