Ballad of a Soldier

Ballad of a Soldier is a 1950s Soviet film about a young Russian soldier during WWII trying to get home on leave. He gets leave after destroying two German tanks, more as a matter of fearful self-defense than bravery.

The director was a thrice injured WWII vet himself, providing honesty to the portrayal. As noted in the TCM intro, the film was made in a short period of liberalization after the death of Stalin. 

The film is beautiful to look at and involves a series of vignettes, including the soldier falling in love with a young woman. We are told upfront, even before we see the soldier, that he is going to die. This provides a bittersweet, if quite appropriately Russian, overlay to the whole thing.  

Near the beginning of his travels, he meets an injured more world-weary older soldier, who is on crutches. He says he is done fighting and is worried about being a burden on his wife. He decides not to send her a telegram saying he is not coming home after the telegraph clerk berates him. His wife turns out to be very happy to see him. Only as he walks away from the train do we see that one of his legs is amputated.   

[I might have missed some evidence of him missing a leg but that is how I saw the scene. We only see his missing leg in full at the end of the vignette. It adds power to the scene.] 

The film shows how a person can enjoy a foreign film. The film could easily have been an English language independent film. The subtitles in the beginning did seem too small but as the film went along, I didn't have trouble reading them.  

The young couple and the director had many additional films over the years. The young actress died in 2011.