The Forty-First

In the desert, Maryutka, a female sniper in the Red Army, and her battalion ambush a Kazakh caravan, hoping to appropriate the camels for easier travelling. In the caravan is an important White Army officer, Govorukha, who has a confidential message he needs to deliver to an important General. The leader of the Red battalion assigns Maryutka to keep watch over him while they travel back to HQ so he can be interrogated. They bond when he helps her with a war poem. They are stranded during a storm and due to their Adam and Eve existence they fall in love. He is more learned and ideal, she's more rustic and realist but soon their views on the war creep back in, leading to a tragic ending.

The cinematography is simple/unfussy in the best sense (by Sergei Urusevsky, who also filmed The Cranes are Flying), filmed on real locations, with some actors (?) who look like real nomadic people. There is also a silent film of the same from the 20s as well as a book, so this story must be very popular in Russia. Some of the music also reminds me of works by Tchaikovsky.