Cast
- Vladimir Ivashov as Private Alyosha Skvortsov
- Zhanna Prokhorenko as Shura
- Antonina Maksimova as the mother
- Nikolai Kryuchkov as the general
- Yevgeni Urbansky as Vasya
- Elza Lezhdey as Vasya's wife
- Aleksandr Kuznetsov as Gavrilkin
- Yevgeni Teterin as The lieutenant
- V. Markova as Liza (Pavlov's wife)
- Marina Kremnyova as Zoya (neighbor girl)
- Vladimir Pokrovsky as Pavlov's invalid father
- Georgi Yumatov as Sergeant giving bars of soap
- Gennadi Yukhtin as Private Seryozha Pavlov
- Valentina Telegina as Old woman truck driver
- Lev Borisov as Joking soldier on train
The two lead actors, Ivashov and Prokhorenko, were both only nineteen years old and did not have much acting experience. Grigori Chukhrai commented of his casting choice:
We took a big risk. It was risky to give the main roles to quite inexperienced actors. Not many would have done so in those times, but we ventured and did not regret afterwards. Volodya and Zhanna gave the most precious colouring to the film, that is, the spontaneity and charm of youth.
Both would go on to long careers in cinema.
Read more about this topic: Ballad Of A Soldier
Famous quotes containing the word cast:
“Such is the remorseless progression of human society, shedding lives and souls as it goes on its way. It is an ocean into which men sink who have been cast out by the law and consigned, with help most cruelly withheld, to moral death. The sea is the pitiless social darkness into which the penal system casts those it has condemned, an unfathomable waste of misery. The human soul, lost in those depths, may become a corpse. Who shall revive it?”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“He is truly a man who will not permit himself to be unduly elated when fortune’s breeze is favorable, or cast down when it is adverse.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)
“All great movements are popular movements. They are the volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotions, stirred into activity by the ruthless Goddess of Distress or by the torch of the spoken word cast into the midst of the people.”
—Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)