This is what I wrote about it on 3/23/2005:

Ivan's Childhood (1962) on import dvd.
My second or third viewing of Andrei Tarkovsky's debut feature, also known as My Name is Ivan, is an adaptation of a WWII story by Vladimir Bogolomov. The project was offered to Tarkovsky when pre-production was already underway. He had little time to make any changes to the script he deemed necessary. The film won the Golden Lion at the Venice FF. Ivan's Childhood the only one of his features that is not a "head scratcher" in the sense that there's little open to interpretation, yet his visual style, his fractured concept of time, the primacy of the natural landscape and water imagery were already in evidence from the outset of his career. The film is concerned with a boy whose childhood was stolen by war, and the tensions experienced by the soldiers who become his surrogate family. Scenes at the war front are contrasted with idyllic pre-war scenes that may or may not be Ivan's dreams or memories. Toward the conclusion, Tarkovsky artfully incorporates newsreel footage from the days immediately after Germany's defeat, providing added historical context and a sense of closure that his subsequent six features don't provide so concretely.

**I anticipate that this thread is going to acquire a French emphasis during the fall as I'll be taking part in a Survey of French Cinema course. Main assignment is a 20-page essay. I already have four potential topics from which to choose. Dr. Rothman gave me a copy of the tentative syllabus and it seems to focus primarily on films from 1930 to the mid-1970s. I personally feel a need to address my inadequate exposure to French silents. Or attempt to address since so many key works of the era are hard to access.