Central Studio of Children and Youth Films
named after M. GORKY
By commission of State Committee of the USSR Council of Ministers
on Television and Radio Broadcasting
SEVENTEEN MOMENTS OF SPRING
Part 10
Starring
Stirlitz - Vyacheslav TIKHONOV
Mueller - Leonid BRONEVOY
Kathe - Yekaterina GRADOVA
Helmut - Otto MELLIES (GDR)
Eismann - Leonid KURAVLYOV
Bittner - Yuri ZAYEV
Schutzmann - Victor GOLOVIN
Gunther - Sergey YUDIN Peter - Alexander KRYUKOV
1st orphanage nurse - Manefa SOBOLEVSKAYA
2nd orphanage nurse - Zinaida VORKUL
Expert - Vladislav KOVALKOV
Narrated by Yefim KOPELYAN
It's logical.
Logical. Have a seat.
Your position on Runge is invincible. You may consider me your ally.
Is the tail you sent
after the Swedish diplomat's black Mercedes connected with this case?
Did you sense you'd been tailed?
Do you have a keen sense of danger?
Any idiot in my place would have sensed that tail.
As far as danger is concerned,
what danger can threaten me at home?
If I had been across the border...
Do you have headaches?
- Due to too much worry? - Due to blood pressure.
I can recommend to you Yoga breathing exercises.
I don't believe in it. Though, show it to me.
I've been shown it once, but I don't believe in it.
It's very simple. Your left hand at the back of your head.
Just your fingers. The right hand along your skull.
Yes, and start simultaneous massaging, with your eyes closed.
I'll close my eyes and you'll whack me on the head, like you did Holtoff.
If you suggest I betray my country, I'll do it.
Gruppenfuhrer, you took a furtive glance at your watch.
It's 7 minutes slow.
I prefer to play openly. At least with my own people.
I've always regretted
that you're not on my staff.
I would've made you my deputy long ago.
- I would've never agreed. - Why not?
You're jealous,
like a loving and faithful wife.
That's the most awful kind ofjealousy, a tyrannical jealousy.
Well, I think you've got my point.
Though thatjealousy could have a different name:
Caring for one's comrades-in-arms.
But that's a question of technology, as they say, not of principle.
Why did you need to take me here?
Couldn't we talk in your office?
It's quieter here.
If everything ends as I want it to end,
we'll come back together and everybody will know
we were doing business in my department.
My chief will know that too?
Whose jealousy do you fear more, his or mine?
What do you think?
I like to see you being so straightforward.
I have no choice. And I like everything to be clear.
Clarity is one of the forms of complete fog.
I know you, you sly fox.
He says no one answers there.
All right.
How is it said in the Bible...
A time to gather stones, and a time to throw them.
You were a poor divinity student at school.
In the Book of Ecclesiastes it is said:
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones,
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain...
Were you studying the Bible with the pastor under your charge?
I like to reread not only the Bible.
To win over your enemy, you have to know his ideology, right?
If you study it during the fight, you'll doom yourself to defeat.
Here...
What a curious thing we got here.
A very curious thing.
We found these fingers
on the glass you filled with water,
to give it to that wretched, stupid and trustful Holtoff.
And these fingers...
we found...
Where? What do you think?
My fingers can be found in Holland,
in Madrid, Tokyo, Ankara...
And where else?
I can try to remember, but it'll take too much time
and we'll miss not only lunch, but dinner too.
Never mind.
Please sit down.
I'm willing to starve.
Your Yogi believe starving to be one of the most effective medicines,
and maintain that in the future the world will be treating
half of ailments not with sulfa drugs, but with starving.
Well, you remember now?
Our conversation doesn't make any sense.
If I'm arrested
and you officially inform me of that,
I'll be answering your questions as an arrested man.
If I'm not arrested, then I won't be answering your questions.
You won't... You won't.
Please, try to reproduce
with a stenographic accuracy, minute by minute if possible,
what you were doing in the hotline room,
following the telephone conversation in the hotline room,
access to which is strictly forbidden for everyone?
After I entered the hotline room,
the hotline-room men ought to be court- martialed for negligence and cowardice.
They left the key in the door and ran to the shelter like rats.
After I entered the hotline room,
I met with partaigenosse Bormann
and spent with him over two hours.
What we were talking about, I won't tell you, of course.
- You might not if... - No <>.
Don't go too far, Stirlitz.
I'm your senior, both by rank and by age.
- I beg your pardon. - That's better.
So, what were you talking about with Bormann?
With partaigenosse Bormann.
I can answer that question only in his presence.
Please understand me correctly.
If you had answered it without him, it would've spared you the necessity
of answering the third question.
I'm ready to answer your third question if it concerns me personally,
and not the interests of the Reich and the Fuhrer.
It concerns you personally.
These fingers here...
we found on the suitcase,
in which the Russian radio operator kept her transmitter.
This question will be the hardest for you to answer.
Why? It's quite easy for me to answer that particular question.
I inspected the radio operator's suitcase in Rolf's office.
Call him here, he'll confirm it.
He has already confirmed it.
Then what's the problem?
The problem is
that your fingers had been found
by a Gestapo district unit
before the suitcase got here.
Of all the suitcases in Berlin,
your fingerprints have been found on the one in which
the Russian <> kept her wireless.
How can you explain it?
To explain it...
is very difficult, actually.
If I were you, I wouldn't have believed any of my explanations.
I understand you, Gruppenfuhrer.
I understand you perfectly well.
I'd like very much to get from you a persuasive answer.
I give you my word, I really like you.
I believe you.
All right, then.
Rolf is coming here now, he'll bring the Russian <>,
and she will help us...
to determine where you could leave your traces on the transmitter case.
The Russian? The one I picked up at the hospital?
I got an excellent visual memory.
If I had met her before, I would've remembered her face.
She won't be able to help us.
She will help us.
And we'll be also helped...
by this.
That was his coded message
sent with Pleischner to Bern.
Try to remember, Stirlitz.
This is a real failure.
It is a fiasco.
And our people will not know. I proved an idiot.
Pleischner is either a coward, a provocateur, or a bungler.
Bastard, scum, jerk.
03.16.1945 (13 hours 45 minutes)
Mueller went to the scene of Rolf's murder with his best detectives.
Here, chief.
There's nothing.
- Nothing at all? - Nothing.
The Parabellum.
Mueller brought also two old men - Rafke and Hille,
with whom back in the '20s he was catching thieves,
Hitler's National-Socialists and drug addicts.
He took those men with him only on very rare occasions.
He hadn't transferred them to the Gestapo, for each detective there
relied on the help of experts, agents and Dictaphones.
And these old men made do with their heads and experience.
It looks like the murder you were puzzling out in Munich.
- On Egenstrasse? - Yes, in house 9.
Eight.
He knocked them down on the even-number side of the street.
You've got some memory.
Are you complaining of yours?
I'm taking iodine.
And I'm taking vodka.
- You're a general, you can afford it. - Give me matches.
And where can we get money for vodka?
Try taking bribes.
And end up at your thugs'.
No, I prefer taking iodine.
Go on, do it.
Frankly speaking,
I'd be happy
to exchange my vodka for your iodine.
Too much work?
So far, yes. But soon there'll be none.
Well? What?
What did you get, Gunther?
I got something.
I got something...
Listen...
What do you die your hair with?
Henna.
My hair is neither gray nor black, but sort of skewbald.
Elsa is dead.
And young chicks prefer young soldiers
to old detectives.
- The soldiers are on the front. - And invalids?
All right, enough of that.
Well, what is it?
An old woman across the street
saw a girl and a soldier an hour ago.
The girl was with a baby.
They seemed to be in a hurry.
What did the soldier wear?
What? A uniform.
Sure he wasn't in his underpants.
What kind of uniform?
Field uniform, that's the point.
All right, field uniform.
I thought your soldiers wore only black...
I don't give a damn about what you thought.
What car did they get in?
A bus.
- A bus? - Yes. Number 17.
- Where did they go? - Over there, to downtown.
Scholz.
Quick, send details along the bus 17 line.
The <> and the guard.
What?
I don't know his name.
Find out what his name is!
That's first.
Second.
Please tell Bittner to get his file right away.
Where he's from, where his family is.
In short, get me all his service record, quick.
If you find out that he,
at least once, was at the place Stirlitz had visited, inform me immediately.
It's Mueller.
Alert the police on all subway lines about the woman with a child.
Give her description, tell them she's a thief or a murderer.
Let them arrest her.
If they make mistakes and grab more than enough, I'll pardon them.
The important thing is not to miss the one I'm waiting for.
Orphanage, Mozartstrasse 7.
Excuse me, I'd like to see my daughter.
The children are being fed now, and everybody is busy.
But I've come from the front just for a few hours.
I'm very sorry, but now all the children...
Is there anybody from the management?
Nobody. Everybody is either at the front or with the children.
I'm sorry again.
When can I see my daughter?
Come back in half an hour and we'll try to help you.
What?
It's bad. Only in half an hour.
We'll wait.
Nothing can happen, they don't know where we are.
Yes, but we should get out of the city as soon as possible.
I know how they can search.
Perhaps you'd better go?
And I'll catch up with you, if everything works out.
No, I'm not going anywhere, I'll wait for you.
This...
you got it at the front?
What?
This.
Yes.
At the front.
Why?
No, nothing.
Near Vitebsk. I was fighting there.
And where's...
the mother...
of your child?
She left.
What do you mean, left?
Just that simple.
When she found out I was in the hospital, seriously wounded,
she'd lost all interest in me.
She took the child to the orphanage and went away...
with an officer from the Luftwaffe.
Let's agree where we meet, and you'll go.
I'm not going anywhere.
I'll wait for you here.
Besides, I have nowhere to go in this city.
Yeah...
Mueller had been absent over an hour now.
Stirlitz felt Mueller got something going wrong.
Something has happened.
Yes, something went wrong.
Something didn't gel with them.
Something has happened.
In any case, I got a time-out.
I have to use this time-out.
So...
I have to give
a credible and exact explanation
of where,
when
and why
my fingerprints could be left on that case.
Where, when and why?
I have to recall that day in every detail,
I have to prove that I happened to be near Erwin's house by chance.
It was on the 21st.
In the morning, about 8 o'clock.
I went to Erwin for the answer from the Center.
I got stuck on Pariserplatz.
They were clearing the street after a bombing.
And I was stalled for 20 minutes.
Fine.
Go on.
I headed towards Dorotheestrasse.
I drove down Bayertestrasse,
turned left to go straight to Dorotheestrasse.
But the police didn't let me through,
because the alley was blocked by fire engines.
So I had to make a detour
via Koepinegstrasse, passing by the barracks.
So I made a detour
via Koepineg.
There I was stopped too.
I was actually stopped there, that guy who stopped me.
I must remember.
I must remember
what I thought about him then.
I tried not to think about Erwin and Kathe.
And suddenly I caught myself at thinking about that guy
as of consumptive.
Yes, he was coughing, that dry cough of his.
I don't remember the other guy.
But this one coughed all the time.
I remember it very well.
Yes.
Then I gave a hand to a woman.
I picked something up and helped her with a pram with some stuff in it.
She was holding a child.
Or let's put it another way.
What if that woman had a suitcase?
Stop.
Yes, the woman had a suitcase.
I helped a woman with her pram and carried her suitcase.
That's a possibility. In any case, I have a chance.
And I must use it.
That's it.
Look, friend.
Call the Gruppenfuhrer, tell him I remembered it.
Ask him to come down here right away.
All right, I'll report it to the Standartenfuhrer.
So, I was there because the police had turned me round.
I spoke to the policeman.
I remember his face and he should remember me.
I showed him my SD ID.
He was watching me when I rolled that pram, I sensed it.
Therefore, he should confirm I was rolling the pram.
I'll say that I helped with the suitcase, too.
If he actually saw me rolling the pram,
he wouldn't be able to either confirm or deny with certainty about the case.
And that's what I need.
Has something extraordinary happened, Bittner?
Have we occupied Moscow?
Gruppenfuhrer, Stirlitz asked me to tell you he remembered everything.
Really?
- When? - Just now.
All right. Any other news?
Nothing important.
- Got anything on the guard? - Just some rubbish.
Such as?
Information on his wife, children, relatives.
That's not rubbish.
That's not rubbish at all,
my dear Bittner, especially in a case like this.
Did you send our men to his wife?
His wife left him 2 months ago.
What?
He was in hospital after a contusion, and she left him
for some merchant in Munich.
- For whom? - They say, a merchant in Munich.
And the children?
One child, 4 months old. She put it in an orphanage.
Where's the orphanage?
It has no name. It's in Pankow, Mozartstrasse 7.
Now the information about his mother.
There may be a big shooting, guys. Take your <>.
- Where's the orphanage in Pankow? - Mozartstrasse 8.
You always mix up even and odd numbers. House No.7.
Hurry up, Peter.
- How can I help you? - I'm Helmut Kalder.
It's about my daughter, Ursula. I was told to come again...
I know, but the girl is supposed to sleep now.
I'm leaving for the front today.
I'd like to take a walk with her. She'll sleep in my hands.
I'm afraid the doctor won't permit it.
But I'm leaving for the front.
You can't deprive me of a chance to see my daughter.
All right, I understand. I'll try to do something.
Wait a minute, please.
- You want to go outside? - What?
If you want to take a walk with the girl, we'll give you a pram.
- What for? - Not to hold her in your hands.
No, thank you. This way it'll be better.
You better go to our garden.
It's quiet there, and if the air-raid begins, you can go down to the shelter.
I'll just check the bus timetable and come to the house. Just a moment.
To the house? What house?
I mean the garden, of course.
Are you all right?
- Why? - You look pale.
No, no, it's nothing. Everything's all right.
Hey, you! Are you off your rocker, idiot?
Will you hold her, please?
I'll go to the bus stop. As soon as I see the bus, I'll come for you.
We'd better go together.
No, no.
We must get to the railway station and take a train by all means.
It's easy to get lost in a crowd of refugees here.
We mustjust get to Munich. My mother's there.
Oh God, where am I going? I can't go there.
Come on...
Come on, quiet.
Quiet, quiet.
Quiet.
Why quiet? Why?
Why do I say <>?
Nobody was crying.
Why do I say <>?
No, sir, it was
just 10 minutes ago.
I see...
And where's the girl?
Where's the girl?
I think they drove away in a car. A car stopped next to them.
Did she get in a car herself?
No.
She couldn't get in herself. She's just an infant.
I could understand that, Scholz!
Look around here well. I got to go.
The second car will be here any minute. They're on their way.
How could the girl get in the car?
- I didn't see it. - Did you?
Yes.
- What kind of a car? - A big car.
- A truck? - No, a green sedan.
- You don't remember the number? - I didn't pay attention.
I smell a rat here.
Search everything around. I smell a rat here.
- There're only ruins around. - Search the ruins!
Though actually...
everything's so stupid and unprofessional
that it's just impossible to work.
You can't figure out the logic of an unprofessional.
Maybe he's a shrewd unprofessional?
A shrewd unprofessional wouldn't have gone to the orphanage.
A shrewd unprofessional wouldn't have gone to the orphanage!
Damn it!
It's nothing doing.
We've combed 20 basements, with no result.
Come on, stop grumbling.
Listen, that guy...
Damn it, be careful!
That SS guy, was he taken down with one gun,
or they shot him from two hands?
I called the lab, the results aren't ready yet.
And they say the Gestapo does everything in a minute.
Liars.
Quiet.
Quiet, quiet.
Quiet.
What's this? A footprint or not?
There's not enough dust. If it were in summer...
If it were in summer, if we had a Doberman pinscher,
if the Doberman had a glove of the woman who escaped from the SS,
if he had picked up the scent...
And what's this? A cigarette stub?
It's old, just like rock.
Feel it.
In our business one should first feel it.
Thank God that Gunther was unmarried.
If they told my Maria that I was dead cold,
lying down on the morgue's floor...
Take one.
There were two exits there, both are blocked up.
- With what? - With bricks.
Was there a lot of dust?
Only broken stones there, like here. How can be any dust on them?
So, no traces?
What traces can there be on broken stone?
Let's look some more.
Wait, I'll light up.
Damn, the matches are damp.
Damn it!
- I got a lighter. - Thanks.
Mine got the flint worn down.
A piece got stuck under the wheel, I can't pick it out.
You should give it to the repairman.
I couldn't find one. In all Berlin not a single repair-shop.
All the skilled workers are at the front. Thanks, pal, you've helped me out.
We should look all over before dark,
so that our conscience didn't pick us.
Oh, God...
Will they ever leave?
03.16.1945 (17 hours 10 minutes)
Something happened? I began to feel nervous.
And you were right. I felt nervous, too.
I remembered it.
What did you remember?
Why the Russian's suitcase may have my fingerprints.
Where's she, by the way?
I thought you were going to arrange
for a date, a confrontation between us.
She's in the hospital, they'll bring her soon.
What's wrong with her?
Nothing wrong.
To make her talk, Rolf overdid it with the child.
All right, we still have time.
Why still? We just have time.
We still have time.
If you're really interested in that muddle with the suitcase,
I remember it now.
It cost me a few new gray hairs,
but the truth will always triumph, I'm convinced of that.
What a happy coincidence in our convictions. Shoot your facts.
For this you'll have to call here all the policemen
who stood guard at the cordoned zone on Bayertestrasse.
I stopped there
and they didn't let me through even after I showed them my SD ID.
Then I made a detour
through Koepinegstrasse,
passing by the barracks which, as you know, had been turned the day before
yesterday into a pile of ruins.
Around it.
There I was stopped too, and I found myself in a traffic jam.
I went to see what happened,
and the policemen - one was a young,
apparently seriously ill boy, a consumptive, I think,
and his mate, whom I don't remember well, his face was covered with soot, -
they wouldn't let me go to the phone in order to call here
and warn that I was being late.
I showed them my ID and went to the telephone.
I remember a woman standing there...
with children, and I...
helped her to carry a pram out of the ruins.
Then I carried over some things and some suitcases.
In any case, in the last half-year
I haven't touched any other suitcase.
Question the policemen from the cordon,
who saw me helping to carry those things,
and check it against your facts.
If anything of my proof happens to be a lie,
then give me a gun with one bullet, I don't see any other way out,
for there's nothing else I can prove my alibi with.
Well, let's try to do it.
It's quite logical.
First we'll listen to our Germans, then we'll talk with your Russian.
With our Russian.
Do you really believe
that I'm the Russian resident?
Look, Mister Mueller,
I've been in the intelligence for years.
If I were the Russian resident, it's very unlikely
that I would've messed with a wireless.
With all my experience of working in the SD.
All right, all right.
Don't pick on my words.
Did they give you something to eat? Why don't we have a bite?
High time.
- I asked them to bring something. - Thank you.
Have you called up those men?
I have.
You don't look well.
I'm surprised I'm still alive.
What were you so slyly hinting at with that <>?
That we still have time?
Come on, shoot.
Only after the confrontation, there's no point in it now.
If they don't confirm my words, there'll be no point in talking about <>.
Help yourself.
In this jail, especially in this basement,
I wouldn't mind sleeping for a day or two.
You can't hear bombings here.
- You'll have that opportunity yet. - Thank you.
Seriously,
I like the way you're holding out.
I talked here with some of our men.
They got flustered.
- Want a drink? - No, thanks.
Do you never drink?
I'm afraid you're aware of my love for cognac.
Don't consider yourself a figure equal to Churchill.
He's the only person I know of to prefer Russian cognac to all others.
Well, as you wish.
But I'll have one. It's true I feel lousy today.
Hail Hitler!
Do you know any of these three men?
No.
Have you ever met any of these men?
No, I think I've never met them.
Perhaps you met them by chance during the bombings,
when you were cordoning the destroyed buildings?
Many people in uniform came.
Just to look at the ruins.
No. I can't remember clearly.
Well, thank you.
Hail!
This way they can identify only the Reichsfuhrer.
Your uniform confuses them.
What uniform?
Your uniform of a general.
Am I supposed to sit here naked?
Then at least remind them of the place.
Otherwise they'd never remember. They stand in the streets for 10 hours.
And all people look the same to them.
All right.
Help them, Eismann.
Do you remember him?
No, I haven't seen him. I'll remember the one I've seen.
For the investigative experiment of identification
no other Gestapo men could be invited now,
not to cast a shadow of suspicion on Stirlitz.
So Mueller charged
with conducting the confrontations, or identification, those three men
who were in the know of what was going on:
Stirlitz, Eismann and Bittner.
Thus,
he found himself in a quite unusual role.
The second policeman that stood in a cordon by the barracks
hadn't identified anyone either.
And only the seventh policeman to come in was that sickly Schutzmann,
supposedly a consumptive.
Hail Hitler!
Do you know any of these men?
No, I don't think so.
Were you in a cordon on Koepinegstrasse?
Yes.
Yes, this gentleman showed me his pass.
And I let him through to the site of a fire.
Did he ask you to let him through?
No.
He just showed his pass.
He was driving in a car.
I wasn't letting anyone through, only him.
Why?
If he didn't have the right...
There's an order to let the SD and Gestapo people go everywhere.
Yes, he had the right.
Don't think he's the enemy.
We all work together.
Was he looking for the young mother on the site?
No, that young mother had been taken away the previous night.
And he was there in the morning.
So he was looking for the unfortunate woman's things?
- Did you help him? - No.
I remember he carried a pram for some woman.
A child's pram.
No, I didn't help, but I was beside.
- Did she stand next to the suitcases? - The pram?
No, the woman.
I don't remember that.
I think there were suitcases there.
But I don't remember it well about the suitcases.
I remember the pram, because some stuff fell out of it.
This gentleman picked them up and carried to the curb across the street.
- Why? - They'd be safer there.
There were fire-engines on our side,
and the firemen's hoses might ruin the pram.
And the child would have nowhere to sleep.
But this way, the woman put the pram in the shelter, and he slept there.
Thank you, you've been of great help.
You may go.
Hail Hitler!
They all can go.
- The older one can confirm it, too. - That's enough.
Why didn't you invite those who were in the first cordon?
Because everything's been cleared up.
Bittner, have you got all the confirmation?
Yes, Gruppenfuhrer, the testimony of Helwig, who on that day
sent duty details and was in contact with the street traffic service,
is already here.
Everyone can go.
But you, Stirlitz,
please stay...
just for a minute.
Don't ever think of seconds haughtily.
The time will come you'll know this self-evidence:
Like whistling bullets by your head they flee,
Those moment, those moments, those moments.
The moments are pressed into long years.
The moments are pressed into an eon.
And sometimes I cannot even guess:
Where's the first moment, where's the last one?
Each moment has a reason of its own,
lts own bells, its own notability,
Distributing to some shameful renown,
To some only infamy, to others - immortality.
Of tiny moments even the rain is made.
The water pours from heaven in a torrent,
And it may take a half-life just to wait
For it to come, your one and only moment.
It comes like a gulp of water in the prime
Of a scorching summer, comes like an atonement.
But don't forget your duty at any time,
From the very first to the very last moment.
Don't ever think of seconds haughtily.
The time will come you'll know this self-evidence:
Like whistling bullets by your head they flee,
Those moments, those moments, those moments.
Those moments...
End of Part 10