Instant Favorite.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Not quite an exploitation piece, but not quite a solemn-and-sincere drama either, Five Branded Women is a fascinating early picture from Martin Ritt. Initially greeted with passable but hardly rave reviews, the film was somewhat ahead of its time and would probably play much better now than it did when released. The strong anti-war sentiments, the streak of feminism, and the film's persistent refusal to be yet another play-it-safe flagwaver, make it the sort of film which questions attitudes and prejudices rather than simply falling into line with them. It has some surprisingly powerful sequences during the course of its 100 minutes, it must be said.During WWII, in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia, five women are accused of consorting with the enemy after sleeping with womanising German officer Sgt. Keller (Steve Forrest). Four of them have actually succumbed sexually to the charms of the promiscuous Nazi soldier; the fifth is innocent as, beyond kissing him, she chose not to consummate any kind of relationship with him. Reviled by their own people for what they have done, the five women – Jovanka (Silvanna Mangano), Daniza (Vera Miles), Marja (Barbara Bel Geddes), Mira (Carla Gravina) and Ljuba (Jeanne Moreau) – are shaven bald and kicked out of town. They wander aimlessly through the countryside, bitter and angry at being treated so harshly simply for falling in love, and eventually decide to redeem themselves by joining up with the local partisans, led by the ruthlessly disciplined Velko (Van Heflin). It is an uneasy alliance at best, but gradually a mutual respect forms between the women and their comrades-in-arms.Five Branded Women is well-acted and well-written throughout. It fares especially well when highlighting the cruel ironies and senseless contradictions of war. Ljuba begins to enjoy the company of a German prisoner, but is reluctantly compelled to shoot him in the back when he tries to run away. Daniza is branded unjustly when she didn't even sleep with the Nazi – however, when she sleeps with one of her own men (subsequently falling asleep while on watch) she is sentenced to death for misconduct. Many films over the years have pointed out the idiocies and wastefulness of war, and Five Branded Women is another to add to that list – but it presents its points powerfully, economically and persuasively, thanks in no small part to the stark photography. It has a surprisingly high calibre cast for this sort of thing too, with the least well-known of the main actors (Mangano) being, curiously, the one entrusted with the meatiest role. She acquits herself very well, being neither outshined nor out-acted by her illustrious co-stars; her physically strong but emotionally stronger heroine acts as a real focal point for the whole story. Overall, Five Branded Women is a surprisingly tough, fresh and worthwhile war film, one that is particularly ripe for rediscovery.

5 Branded Women (1960)This is a pretty amazing film right from the start, and it doesn't let up. It's a horrifying war movie with five women the victims and sometimes heroes in it. It shows the brutality of guerrilla fighters against the German army, and it shows WWII in Yugoslavia, without an American or Russian in sight. It's even well made, filmed in wide screen black and white in 1960, and it stars several absolute marquee actresses.In many ways this is an unusual and necessary and brave movie, and the American director, Martin Ritt, had already proved his abilities with serious themes. So why does it have such a low reputation? Yes, it gets a little preachy sometimes, and it doesn't seem completely believable in a few instances of high drama. There is a good but merely good directing and editing, so the events are sometimes oddly lackluster, or maybe held at a distance and made slightly false.But some of these complaints are only moderately true. And even more, there are themes here that are completely counterbalancing and make it worth the viewing. I don't mean for action film war scenes, but for the interior of war, and for another side to the rotten, expansive Nazi decade. This does not romanticize the situation, and in fact there is no romance to hook the viewer at all (which is no flaw, but may explain a certain lack of success with audiences). That is, it's not actually a very warm or entertaining movie. If you take at all seriously what is happening to these women you'll be horrified, and for a Hays Code era movie (though an Italian Dino de Laurentiis production, which helped), it pushes the tender envelope just enough.To be sure, there is some really good acting here. The lead male is the unlikely leading male actor who I have grown to really like, Van Heflin. When he first appears he seems overblown, but as the movie continues he settles into his role as a weary, determined rebel leader in the mountains really well. (The one other man plays a German, Richard Baseheart, and he doesn't get enough to do, unfortunately, because his presence if important.)The five women have all been accused of "sleeping with the enemy," loosely called fraternizing. I won't even give away the start of the movie here because it comes as a shock, but it's fair to say the women are forced into a world of their own. They don't trust each other in particular, but they gradually come to need each other to survive. Among them are some huge talents: Jeanne Moreau (between her two most famous films, "Elevator to the Gallows" and "Jules and Jim") and Barbara Bel Geddes (famous as the second woman in "Vertigo" but more amazing in the great Ophuls film, "Caught"). But it's the less known Italian actress Silvana Mangano (married to the producer) who has the leading part and who gives the most involved and critical performance--she represents the trap of young women in the war the best, wanting love, hanging on the idealism, not understanding (or refusing to accept) the brutality that comes with war beyond the front lines. As the war moves from the town to camps in the hills (it was filmed in Italy and Austria) to run-ins with the enemy and back to town for a big finale, the drama is great. Maybe the overall theme was so huge and so laced with forbidden elements it was impossible, in 1960, to make a truly fair and wrenching movie. But Ritt has tried. If this isn't a lost masterpiece, it's still a really excellent WWII film and should be on short lists along with the usual films that also, on close watching, have their limitations. You could easily slam the content here for what it doesn't do, for the things Ritt doesn't say through the story. (The New York Times review from 1960 does exactly that, very nicely.) In fact, the story is begging to be remade, without limitations, and we'd get a harrowing and beautiful story that really bothers the viewer directly. Instead, so far, we have a movie whose ideas bother the viewer, which is something a little more indirect.

This relatively unknown gathers a very impressive cast of both European and American actors and actresses. Silvia Mangano gives a fine performance as the leader of the titled women. These women are casted away from a little town in Yugoslavia 1943 because they have slept with a Nazi Sargent (except innocent Vera Miles who didn't go beyond kissing but anyway is accused as the others), not before they are humiliated by their own people by cropping their hair.The girls bound together and they wander around the country until they resolve to join the partisans despite their initial resilience. The women will form relationships with the partisans and a captured German Captain (R. Basehart).But it's wartime and this is no Hollywood movie: there are no happy endings or black and white feelings or situations. The movie is gritty and somehow cruel. The movie has its flaws, the pacing could be better and some characters feel underdeveloped, but all things considered, this is a very good movie. It's not released on DVD, but you can find it over the Internet. It's well worth the search.

From the same director who brought us "Norma Rae" this classic World War II "resistance band fights guerilla warfare against Nazis in the snowywoods" has an interesting twist: they're all women and decked out in leather bomber jackets, crew cuts and machine guns.Jeanne Moreau, Barbara Bel Geddes, Silvana Mangano, and Vera Miles - all shaved, humiliated, and thrown out of their peasant villages for sleeping with the enemy - now have taken arms against that enemy, but the "real" resistance doesn't want them. So these women must fight the men who are against them AND the men who are supposedly on their side, as well as each other.Melodrama, to be sure, but different enough and with a fascinating sub-text, that it has become a "guilty" pleasure.