Soviet Cinema Vault

The story behind The Ascent (1977), the only Soviet film to win the Golden Bear in Berlin. #SovietCinema #LarisaShepitko

BEHIND THE SCENES OF MIRROR (1974) Andrei Tarkovsky’s film starring Oleg Yankovsky and Margarita Terekhova. Rare photographs from the filming, capturing the actors in relaxed moments between takes. Photo source: MAMM / MDF, via Russia in Photos.

Just rewatched Antichrist (von Trier, 2009) right after Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1975) and I can’t unsee it. The girl in the bathroom scenes looks almost identical in both. Same stillness, same water, same feeling that time just stopped. Not a coincidence either: von Trier dedicated Antichrist to Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky does it gently, like a dream. Von Trier takes the same image and makes it way darker. Left: Antichrist. Right: Mirror. 34 years apart. Do you see it too?

OTHELLO (1956) Director: Sergei Yutkevich On March 3, 1956, Othello, a film adaptation of William Shakespeare’s tragedy, premiered in the Soviet Union. Directed by Sergei Yutkevich, the film went on to earn international recognition and was regarded as one of the finest screen adaptations of Shakespeare’s play. At the Cannes Film Festival, Yutkevich received the award for Best Director for his work on the film. The leading roles were played by Sergei Bondarchuk, Irina Skobtseva, and Andrei Popov. The film was a magnificent production, with elaborate sets, beautiful costumes, and a powerful musical score. Every detail was carefully considered, particularly the use of color. Red symbolized love, tragedy, and blood, while white represented innocence and purity — qualities associated with Desdemona. Much of the film was shot in Crimea and the Odessa region. Interestingly, the filming also brought Sergei Bondarchuk and Irina Skobtseva together romantically. There was tragedy unfolding on screen, but a complicated love story developing behind the scenes. At the time, both were married to other people. Nevertheless, in 1959 they became husband and wife and remained together for 35 years. Yutkevich had a very particular understanding of the tragedy’s climax. He believed that the most important moment in Othello was not Desdemona’s murder. The true turning point came when Othello discovered that the person he trusted most — his closest friend — had betrayed him. In the director’s interpretation, Shakespeare’s play is about much more than love, jealousy, and revenge. At its heart, it is about faith in another human being. Once Othello loses that faith, he is completely broken and ultimately takes his own life.

REMEMBER YOUR NAME (1975) Director: Sergei Kolosov “Remember, boy, your name is Gena! Your surname is Vorobyov! Your Motherland is the Soviet Union! Genochka, I will come back for you! Your name is Gena Vorobyov!” Everyone should watch this film at least once. Remember Your Name is a Soviet-Polish war drama directed by Sergei Kolosov and based on real events. It tells the tragic story of a mother and her young son, who were separated in Auschwitz, and their reunion many years later. The leading role was played by the outstanding Soviet actress Lyudmila Kasatkina, the director's wife. The role of Zinaida Vorobyova was one of the most difficult of her career. And it wasn't just because she lost 13 kilograms for the part. Years later, Lyudmila Kasatkina recalled: “Many viewers wrote to me after watching Remember Your Name. They said they couldn't hold back their tears whenever they watched it. Some even feared their hearts might not be able to withstand such emotion. Later, I read an article in which doctors shared the conclusions of their long-term observations about the effects of art on human health. A neurologist, a physician and a psychologist all came to the same conclusion: our health suffers from our own anxieties and troubles. But when a person feels compassion and experiences someone else's grief, they feel better the next day. It means their soul is still alive. It means they are capable of empathy.”

HOW TARKOVSKY MADE IVAN’S CHILDHOOD HOW TARKOVSKY MADE IVAN’S CHILDHOOD In 1962, Andrei Tarkovsky directed Ivan’s Childhood, based on a story by Vladimir Bogomolov. Tarkovsky said: “In this film, I wanted to explore how war affects a person. When someone is broken inside, their life can no longer develop normally.” “This is especially true of a child’s mind. I saw Ivan as a boy deeply damaged by the war, cut off from the normal life a child should have.” For this film, Tarkovsky once again worked with cinematographer Vadim Yusov. Filming took five months. The leading role went to 15-year-old Nikolai Burlyaev, who had already appeared in a student film, The Boy and the Pigeon. The film premiered in 1962 and brought Tarkovsky international recognition. That same year, he won the Golden Lion of St. Mark at the Venice International Film Festival.

On November 8, 1998, the French actor Jean Marais died. On July 7, 1963, he came to Moscow as the guest of honor at the opening of the Moscow International Film Festival. Marais was also a stuntman and an idol to millions of women. Many Soviet actresses wanted to meet the legendary Frenchman, including Elina Bystritskaya. In one interview she admitted that in her youth she really liked Marais’s looks and saw him as a true romantic hero. But she knew that falling in love with an actor was like reading Dumas novels. Years passed. The girl Elya from Kyiv met her idol in person and even offered him a cigarette. It was reportedly a Lucky Strike. Today, both Jean Marais and Elina Bystritskaya are gone, but this photograph remains.

On November 7, 1937, exactly 89 years ago, the film “Lenin in October” was shown at the Bolshoi Theatre. The team was editing it until the very last day. And at the same time, the director was twice detained because of a suitcase of secret documents 🎬 Filming began on August 17. Director Mikhail Romm finished the editing just in time for the premiere. They worked like a conveyor belt: each scene was edited, given sound, and sent to the lab right after it was shot. When the last scene was filmed, the movie was ready. A contest for a film about Lenin was announced in 1936, and Stalin personally supervised it. Alexei Kapler’s script sat unused for seven months, because famous writers were in no hurry. Romm was just over thirty, and he had made only one film before, “Thirteen.” Romm was given rare historical documents for his work, including a text by Trotsky. He had no apartment of his own, so he stayed with colleagues. Arrests were common in the film world. Twice Romm was detained as a guest of people who had been arrested, together with his suitcase of papers. Boris Shchukin first refused to play Lenin. Then he studied recordings of Lenin’s speeches and learned to copy his voice. The makeup team used darker wigs, because Lenin’s real light hair looked different on film from his familiar portraits. There is an interesting trick in the Central Committee meeting scene. There is no wide shot, so we never see the room. We only hear Lenin’s speech, while Vasily, the worker in the story, waits behind the door. Vasily is invented. His real model, Eino Rakhya, was a victim of repression, and it was forbidden to name him. The film was a huge success. Historians estimate that about 21 million people saw it in its first year. In 1938 it was released in France and the US. The famous storming of the Winter Palace was filmed as a staged scene, because no real footage existed. But the scene was shown so often that many people took it for a newsreel. The film was re-edited in 1956 and 1963, and Stalin was removed from it. It is a propaganda film from the time of the Great Terror. But it started the “Lenin” series in Soviet cinema. Have you seen it? Which version? 👇 📷 Photos: stills from “Lenin in October” (Mosfilm, 1937)

Lidia Fedoseyeva-Shukshina, the beloved Soviet and Russian actress, has died at the age of 88. Her family announced the news on November 7. She was the widow of Vasily Shukshin: actor, film director and writer. Pictured: a scene from Pechki-Lavochki (1972). The title, a folksy Russian phrase meaning roughly “this and that,” was Lidia Nikolayevna’s favorite expression. Vasily Shukshin gave his film that name. Rest in peace. 🕊

YURI KAYUROV HAS PASSED AWAY. IT WAS ONLY RECENTLY THAT WE WISHED HIM A HAPPY 99TH BIRTHDAY. A journalist once asked Yuri Ivanovich Kayurov about the 18 films in which he had played Lenin. The actor smiled and replied: “Actually, not 18, but 19.” The nineteenth film was shot in Mongolia. In it, Lenin met Sukhbaatar (does anyone remember who he was? — author's note). “This was the defining role of my artistic life and career. I was given the opportunity to create a monumental figure, both on screen and on the theatre stage. I had to devote a great deal to it: my strength, my attention, my love. Nothing can be done without love. So I had to come to love this man, and that is exactly what happened to me.” “It would have been very difficult to carry all those roles around with me. So I would finish playing a part, wash off the makeup, and the role would leave with it. All that remained of the characters was exhaustion.” “Yes, I suppose many serious flaws may have existed. But what am I supposed to think? ‘Why did I ever play him?’ Should I deny a part of myself? No, I would never do that. What this man left behind was the first socialist state in the world. A state is, after all, a serious achievement. I simply think it did not follow the path he had envisioned for it.” “My film fee was quite good: 25 rubles per shooting day. For playing Lenin, I was paid at a rate of 40 rubles a day. So I earned 4,000 rubles for the film, and that money allowed me to move my family from Saratov to Moscow.”

WHAT SOVIET ACTRESSES WORE TO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVALS. RARE PHOTOS FROM THE PAST From 1959 onwards, the Moscow International Film Festival was held every two years, following an order issued by Soviet Minister of Culture Ekaterina Furtseva. She was responsible not only for the festival's programme and organisation, but also wanted to make sure that Soviet actors, especially actresses, looked just as elegant as their foreign colleagues. Many actresses were allowed to have dresses made at the Central Committee's atelier. Some were helped to get hold of fabrics that were otherwise hard to find. But more often than not, Soviet actresses had to find their own ways of looking their best. Despite shortages and rather modest salaries, they managed to look truly stunning. Actress Zhanna Prokhorenko made this beautiful white coat herself. She finished the very last stitch late at night, just before leaving for San Francisco, where she and Vladimir Ivashov were going to present their film Ballad of a Soldier. Vladimir Ivashov and Zhanna Prokhorenko were abroad for the very first time. Their first stop was a shop. Just to have a look, just to try a few things on... Vladimir Ivashov liked a beautiful coat, but he couldn't afford it. The entire Soviet delegation had been given just $300 in travel money.

BELOVED SOVIET ACTORS All four shared the same first name — Oleg. Oleg Borisov Oleg Dal Oleg Basilashvili Oleg Yankovsky #BelovedSovietStars

“Ivan’s Childhood.” Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. 1962. His first feature film. Based on a story by Vladimir Bogomolov. The war through the eyes of a boy scout. Ivan has no childhood left. It only comes back to him in dreams. In the frame is a birch grove. Captain Kholin and the nurse Masha. Kholin was played by Valentin Zubkov. Masha was played by Valentina Malyavina. She was 20 then. She was a first-year student at the Moscow Art Theatre School. The scene was shot in a grove outside Moscow, and it was not an easy shot. The film won the Golden Lion in Venice in 1962. For Tarkovsky it was the start of a world name.

“Once There Was a Singing Blackbird.” Directed by Otar Iosseliani. 1970. Gia plays the timpani in the orchestra of the opera house in Tbilisi. The instrument is rarely heard. So Gia has plenty of free time. Dates. Friends. Long dinners. He is always rushing and always late. But at the right moment he makes it in time to strike the drums. It was shot almost like a documentary. This is real Tbilisi at the turn of the 60s and 70s. The film reached Soviet screens in 1972. The lead role was played by Gela Kandelaki. Critics still argue about it. Some say the director condemns his hero for wasting his life on trifles. Others see it differently. His talent was friendship and the gift of making people feel a celebration. The last shot. A clock mechanism. Time keeps going. Watch this film.

THE LOVERS (1969). Directed by Elyor Ishmukhamedov. Some film scenes stay with us forever. One of them is the unforgettable sequence of watermelons floating down a mountain river. The film tells a story of young people, love, friendship and hopes for the future. Set in sunny Tashkent in the 1960s, it captures a time when life seemed full of possibilities and the world lay open ahead. But one of the film's most memorable scenes has a remarkable story behind it. The idea came to the director years before filming. One day, Elyor Ishmukhamedov went on a trip to the mountains with his father in an old Pobeda car. They bought around twenty watermelons and placed them in a mountain stream to cool while they stopped for lunch. Suddenly, a heavy rainstorm broke out. The water level rose, and the watermelons were swept away by the current. Ishmukhamedov jumped into the river after them. He later recalled the experience as a moment of extraordinary excitement, full of thunder, rain, sunshine, a rainbow and rushing water. Years later, that real-life adventure became one of the most beautiful scenes in Soviet cinema. The sequence was filmed in the mountains. Rodion Nakhapetov played Timur, but a stunt double was involved in the dangerous waterfall scene. According to actor Shukhrat Irgashev, a dummy was thrown into the waterfall instead of Nakhapetov. The actor himself was later pulled out of the fast-flowing Chirchik River with a net. Just look at those watermelons drifting down the mountain river. There is so much youth, freedom, sunshine and pure joy of life in this scene. It feels as if youth itself is carried along by the current. For me, this is one of the most wonderful scenes in the history of Soviet cinema.

🎬 On this day in 1934. Chapaev premiered. 92 years ago tonight, Leningrad’s Titan cinema screened one of the most legendary films in Soviet history. It was directed by the Vasilyev “brothers”, Georgi and Sergei, who weren’t actually related, just namesakes. They based it on Dmitry Furmanov’s novel about Civil War commander Vasily Chapaev, whom Furmanov fought alongside. Some details worth knowing: ▪️ The directors used Furmanov’s diaries and the memoirs of his wife, Anna. ▪️ Anka the machine-gunner is named after her. ▪️ They also spent a lot of time in military archives and the Museum of the Red Army, and both had fought in the Civil War themselves. Audiences were gripped from the very first screening. The film became a cultural phenomenon that people watched, quoted and retold for decades. Have you seen it?

🎵 Now playing: a song from a Soviet classic In Pyotr Todorovsky’s City Romance (1970), a lonely X-ray doctor meets a young kindergarten teacher, and two very different worlds try to find each other. The song many viewers remember from the film is Mireille Mathieu’s “Pardonne-moi ce caprice d’enfant” (“Forgive Me This Childish Whim”), a French summer hit of 1970 written by Patricia Carli. Mathieu was adored in the USSR, and this song became tied to the film in people’s memories. Its tenderness and its plea for forgiveness suit a fragile, uncertain love story. Some songs don’t just accompany a film. They become its heartbeat. 🎬

FOUR BEAUTIFUL AND TALENTED SOVIET ACTRESSES — ALL NAMED NATALIA! ❤️ 1. Natalia Varley 2. Natalia Kustinskaya 3. Natalia Fateeva 4. Natalia Seleznyova