Two of the problem-plagued limited output of Aleksei Guerman have played at Lincoln Center before, in New Directors/New Films in 1987 and, following Cannes, the 1998 New York Film Festival. In “War and Remembrance” the first-ever full North American retrospective of his work, its Film Society offers all five completed features (one a co-direction), plus a sixth that he produced and co-wrote with his wife and habitual collaborator Svetlana Karmalita. He is working on another, but to date his masterpiece is Trial on the Road/Proverka na dorogakh, a 1971 effort that so demythicized the heroism of war and solid peasant support that Soviet authorities banned it for fifteen years.

Although the ND/NF My Friend Ivan Lipshin (actually made in 1984) has color sections, the director otherwise insists on black and white—with “shooting in color just won’t do,” he declined to complete a Leone film when the Italian died -- and it is easy to see why. In TR, for instance, framing and tracking are enhanced by outstanding chiaroscuro: Stalingrad still uncertain, in the winter 1942 repulsion of Nazi onslaught, human figures are stark against bare birch trunks and snow, while near whiteout masks advancing black-coated invaders who materialize out of the mist like wraiths. Angular lean faces recall those in Dorothea Lange photographs -- two partisans are given exclusive rations for three days just to fatten their faces to resemble the round-cheeked Germans they are to impersonate.

The privation and ravages of conflict turn the rural farmers against both sides, and a partisan is killed when he forgets caution to run after his spooked cow Rosie. Peasant hostility is evident but ancillary to the combatants themselves at this turning point in the war. Heroism there is, though it is quiet; men do their duty, sometimes die, without gung-ho bravado, and the only parade of exultant troops and vehicles is in dryly ironic end-frames. Realistic fear appears, as well, as in the condemned eighteen-year-old who escapes to the enemy and will reappear later, but neither is cowardice shown.

Rather, Sergeant Aleksander “Sasha” Ivanovich Lazarev (Vladimir Zamanskiy, chosen for his uncelebrated face) had been captured by the Wehrmacht and forced to fight for them. The story of this laconic peacetime taxi driver was based on real events written up by the Guerman’s highly connected author-reporter-screenwriter father Yuri. While on leave, he “defects” again, back to the Russians, allowing himself to be “captured” by inept young Ptukha.

SPOILER ALERT

Marched back to the semi-irregulars’ camp, the prisoner is protected from reprisal by thoughtful NCO Ivan Yegorovich Lokotkov (Rolan Bykov), interested in plumbing the other’s conscience and unconvinced as to which side really commands his allegiance. Others suspect the “traitor” and would have him shot -- censors were bothered by this hint of Stalin-era mistreatment of POWs. Among the doubters are Viktor Mikhailovich Solomin (Oleg Borisov), the only one with a girlfriend on the spot (Anda Zajtse, as interpreter Inga), and Major Bolshakov (Yuri Dubrovin).

Indeed, when Viktor is killed on a three-man mission that debunks heroic shootouts, the officer accuses Lazarev of the killing and has him arrested again, leading to the phlegmatic sergeant’s suicide attempt foiled only by the inferior quality of his German army belt.

Philosophic Lokotov bathes his sore feet and gives the turncoat another chance to prove his loyalty. The assignment involves Inga and the two fattened-up irregulars humorously coached in the enemy’s language. Disguised as Nazis, they and Lazarev are to return to the latter’s former German base and hijack a food provision train. The do-or-die assignment is imagined in one long set-piece that rivals most any in cinema and is made even more effective by the undercutting final march through a small city.

In a new 35mm print made expressly for the current series, Guerman’s camera deployment and use of story and juxtaposition are striking, and it is a loss that his small oeuvre is little known, in fact barely seen, here. Low-keyed, visually impressive and real, Trial on the Road might be termed a philosophic consideration of the motives and acts of ordinary people in more than extraordinary circumstances.

(Released by International Film Exchange; not rated by MPAA.)