"The Crew of a Combat Vehicle". Soviet Film 1983 (12+)
The summer of 1943. In one of the fierce battles, a T-34 tank is hit. The tank commander Sasha Menshov is seriously wounded. After being treated in a hospital he had to fight at the front again. On the eve of the big battle an order was given not to fight, to save powers. However, daring raids by a Nazi tank that set fire to Menshov's car led him to the decision to destroy the German ace. In a duel with Menshov's battle crew, the enemy vehicle is destroyed. This victory was a prologue to the famous defeat of Hitler's armies in the tank battle near Prokhorovka. Genre: drama, war.
Country: USSR.
Directed by: Vitaly Vasilevsky.
Music: Viktor Petrovich Vlasov.
Duration: 67 min. Starring:
Vladimir Vikhrov - Petty Officer Sanya Menshov, tank commander
Oleg Kulikovich - Kolya Lukyansky, mechanic-driver.
Sergey Makovetsky as Grisha Chumak, a loader.
Mikhail Semyonov as Semyon Bragin.
Leonid Yanovsky as Captain Ivushkin, commander.
Tatiana Kuznetsova - Senior Lieutenant Lena Volgina, military nurse
Fyodor Sukhov - German tank driver
Boris Saburov as the granddad widower in whose hut the tank hid.
Other actors are listed as performing cameo roles
Sergey Lyakhnitsky as a veteran soldier (credits)
Yu. Voronkina
Boris Zaidenberg as Colonel
Antonina Konchakova as a nurse
Vladimir Marenkov as Yegorich, a guest at the birthday party.
Vladimir Volkov - Pavlov
Vladimir Vikhrov (Senior) - General
Margarita Krinitsina as Aunt Pasha, a nurse
Mikhail Kalinkin
Vladimir Naumtsev
Evgeny Pashin
Vladimir Minyaylo (not in the credits).
The prototype of the main character in the film is the screenwriter, Hero of the Soviet Union A. Milyukov, a participant in the events described. The final shots of the film (the veteran's speech to the participants in "Zarnitsa") were shot at the Odessa memorial to the 411th coastal battery.
The last name of the main character (Menshov) is an absolute allusion to the last name of the film's screenwriter, Alexander Milyukov, to whose biography this battle episode refers.