Soviet era films

Well, bleep. Mosfilm removed it. Must have ran afoul of its international rights owner, Milestone.

Too bad.
 
Boogie nights has a pool scene heavily influenced by a shot in I am Cuba. Definitely watch on big screen if one gets a chance.” A man with a camera” is a fun read that details early Cuba filmmaking.
 
groveChuck said:
Wow! The stair scene long take from 3:56-5:18 is beautiful blocking and composition (location, too!). Then the stair climbing at 5:18 is incredible- multiple 360's as the crane ascends??? ...
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The film won the Golden Palm (Palm d'Or) at Cannes.

The famous departure scene starts at the 28 min mark or thereabout.

The bombed out building is at 35 min (the same building as in the stairs scene).

The piano playing to the air raid scene is 39:30 or so.,

Infantry recon scene 46 min.
 
"Brother" is, technically, not a Soviet but a Russian film made in 1997 about the criminal underworld of the 1990's. It stars the late Sergei Bodrov (died in an avalanche in 2002 at the age of 30), who was becoming one of the bigger stars of the era. There are subtitles off CC but they kind of suck. Dialog is fairly sparse anyway and the plot summary is quite clear on the film's Wikipedia page.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother_(1997_film)
 
"Master and Margarita" was a novel written (but not finished) by Mikhail Bulgakov. It's arguably one of the most important works of the 20th century. There have been several films based on it but I find the best version is this one, made by the Russian TV in 2006.

It's in Russian and "live translate" of the Russian audio is OK (click CC, then "translate into English). Since Bulgakov died in 1940, the copyright has already expired and the book can be found online.


Its English Wikipedia page (gives away the plot).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita_(miniseries)

And here's the book in English.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110606093139/http://lib.ru/BULGAKOW/master97_engl.txt

A few opening paragraphs (the translation mostly misses Bulgakov's prose, which was on the level of Chekhov's)
CHAPTER 1. Never Talk with Strangers



At the hour of the hot spring sunset two citizens appeared at the
Patriarch's Ponds. One of them, approximately forty years old, dressed in a
grey summer suit, was short, dark-haired, plump, bald, and carried his
respectable fedora hat in his hand. His neatly shaven face was adorned with
black horn-rimmed glasses of a supernatural size. The other, a
broad-shouldered young man with tousled reddish hair, his checkered cap
cocked back on his head, was wearing a cowboy shirt, wrinkled white trousers
and black sneakers.
The first was none other than Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, [2] editor
of a fat literary journal and chairman of the board of one of the major
Moscow literary associations, called Massolit [3] for short, and his young
companion was the poet Ivan Nikolayevich Ponyrev, who wrote under the
pseudonym of Homeless. [4]
Once in the shade of the barely greening lindens, the writers dashed
first thing to a brightly painted stand with the sign: `Beer and Soft
Drinks.'
Ah, yes, note must be made of the first oddity of this dreadful May
evening. There was not a single person to be seen, not only by the stand,
but also along the whole walk parallel to Malaya Bronnaya Street. At that
hour when it seemed no longer possible to breathe, when the sun, having
scorched Moscow, was collapsing in a dry haze somewhere beyond Sadovoye
Ring, no one came under the lindens, no one sat on a bench, the walk was
empty.
'Give us seltzer,' Berlioz asked.
'There is no seltzer,' the woman in the stand said, and for some reason
became offended.
'Is there beer?' Homeless inquired in a rasping voice.
`Beer'll be delivered towards evening,' the woman replied.
'Then what is there?' asked Berlioz.
'Apricot soda, only warm,' said the woman.
'Well, let's have it, let's have it! ...'
The soda produced an abundance of yellow foam, and the air began to
smell of a barber-shop. Having finished drinking, the writers immediately
started to hiccup, paid, and sat down on a bench face to the pond and back
to Bronnaya.
Here the second oddity occurred, touching Berlioz alone. He suddenly
stopped hiccupping, his heart gave a thump and dropped away somewhere for an
instant, then came back, but with a blunt needle lodged in it. Besides that,
Berlioz was gripped by fear, groundless, yet so strong that he wanted to
flee the Ponds at once without looking back.
Berlioz looked around in anguish, not understanding what had frightened
him. He paled, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, thought:
"What's the matter with me? This has never happened before. My heart's
acting up... I'm overworked... Maybe it's time to send it all to the devil
and go to Kislovodsk...'[5]
And here the sweltering air thickened before him, and a transparent
citizen of the strangest appearance wove himself out of it. A peaked
jockey's cap on his little head, a short checkered jacket also made of air.
... A citizen seven feet tall, but narrow in the shoulders,
unbelievably thin, and, kindly note, with a jeering physiognomy.
The life of Berlioz had taken such a course that he was unaccustomed to
extraordinary phenomena. Turning paler still, he goggled his eyes and
thought in consternation:
'This can't be! ...'
But, alas, it was, and the long, see-through citizen was swaying before
him to the left and to the right without touching the ground.
Here terror took such possession of Berlioz that he shut his eyes. When
he opened them again, he saw that it was all over, the phantasm had
dissolved, the checkered one had vanished, and with that the blunt needle
had popped out of his heart.
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"Liberation" was the late 1960's-early 1970's Soviet "franchise" about the second half of the "Great Patriotic War". This is the first film, about the Battle for the Kursk Salient.

The historical accuracy is not very high but it was shot in 70mm wide screen and it has English subtitles.


English Wikipedia page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_(film_series)
 
Has anyone seen Sampo (1959), AKA, The Day the Earth Froze? I'm kind of interested in seeing it, as I'm part Finnish, but I only speak english, and read rather slowly, and subsequently don't do well with subtitles.
 
Posting up a storm.

"17 moments of spring", released in 1973, has become a staple - however falsified - of the Soviet history. Its fame has reached such gigantic proportion, every line of the miniseries has been memorized, with its characters subject to countless parodies and bawdy humor.

This has a professional English translation via the subtitles.

And I ain't going to give away the plot.

 
"Shaibu, shaibu" (literally, "Puck, puck", but is generally a fan chant supporting the team in soccer as well) was a 21 minute long animated film made in 1964. It was extremely popular among the kids. And adults.

No dialogue either. No English language Wikipedia page at all.

 
DLD said:
So, since this is a new year - happy New Year, everyone - it's time to bring out the most popular romcom in the history of the USSR. "The Irony of fate or have a nice steam" was made in 1975 and premiered on January, 1st, 1976.

The events in the film involve the New Year as well, as they take place on December 31/January 1 and are (kind of) based on a real precedent - a drunk guest at a New Year party in Moscow was deposited on a train - some say it was accidental, some say it was a prank - and woke up the following morning somewhere near Kiev. Since the movie became hugely popular upon its release, it was repeatedly broadcast on the Soviet and then Russian TV for the last 45 years every New Years day. Those who have seen it all these times, remember every line. Film's actors hate it for the typecasting. Others hate it for other reasons. I linked it to a Soviet Immigrant Facebook group and got 22 likes (which is a relatively high number). I got also a few likes on my own page. And a few "I hate it" comments from a female friend.

Anyhow, this is the film (with official English subtitles) on Mosfilm's YouTube channel.


Its English Wikipedia page (it gives away the plot).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irony_of_Fate

PS. I first found it online on the New Year's eve 2007/2008, sent the links to my American friends who liked it a whole lot. Others thought that it lags in spots.
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Andrey Myagkov, the male lead of the film, passed away today at 82. Prior to the "Irony of fate", he mostly played in theater and in drama. But, the writer/director Eldar Ryazanov saw him once play a drunk on stage and thought he was the best "drunk" he ever saw. Invited for an audition, Myagkov again aced the part. Ryazanov then had to get the casting approval at some film council. The head of the council said, "We like everyone, except your male lead. I can't believe the guy showed up at the audition drunk". Ryazanov's reply, "He got you".

The film, upon its release on the Soviet TV on January, 1st, 1976, became the most popular romcom in the Soviet history and was shown much like the holiday themed "It's a Wonderful life" or a "Christmas Story" in the US, every New Year. Many got sick of it. Myagkov said that, as a non-drinker, he was quite irritated when people approached him out of nowhere with bottles and other invitations. The following year, he again won the title of the most popular actor for another Ryazanov romcom but then the Soviet system couldn't provide him with enough good roles.
 
The blissful political incorrectness of Soviet comedies, by R. J. Markowski, The Critic, 7 March 2021. "Churchill famously called Russia 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma'. Watching these films and others like them, you feel some of the riddle solved. In their private lives --- what the Soviets relished, laughed over, played at, longed for and drew the deepest satisfaction from --- they were that most unimaginable thing of all. They were just like us."
 
combatentropy said:
The blissful political incorrectness of Soviet comedies, by R. J. Markowski, The Critic, 7 March 2021. "Churchill famously called Russia 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma'. Watching these films and others like them, you feel some of the riddle solved. In their private lives --- what the Soviets relished, laughed over, played at, longed for and drew the deepest satisfaction from --- they were that most unimaginable thing of all. They were just like us."
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Thanks for finding it. I posted links to all the films mentioned in the article - cream of the crop, as it were - but I'd strongly disagree with the article. The "political incorrectness" of the era had to be approved by the Ministry of Culture, although top actors/directors had their own connections to play up. Danelia's co-wrote the "Gentlemen of Fortune" (1972), which was banned at first. Then it was given to Brezhnev as a comedy he'd never seen. Brezhnev apparently laughed and laughed and then allowed everyone else to do likewise. It became the #1 film of 1972 with 72 million tickets sold. And, yes, it starred Leonov in a lead role and he was absolutely brilliant.


In the film, Leonov is playing a jolly kindergarten director, who's talked into going undercover in prison as his look-alike, who just happens to be a "made man" Docent, in order to find a stolen gold helmet belonging to the Aleksander of Macedonia. He's taught all the prison slang but can't remember any of it initially. Then he goes into a full theatrical mode much the same way he does when putting on a children play.

PS. Of course, the Soviets were humans and the Americans are humans. But there are still huge cultural and ideological gaps to overcome.
 
combatentropy said:
…
… "--- they were that most unimaginable thing of all. They were just like us."
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That's true all along history, even to this very day.
For instance, aren't Israelis and Palestinians, or Israelis and Arabs the same human beings at their core, wanting and enjoying the same things?
The same goes to North and South Koreans, Westerners and Chinese and so on.
 
DLD said:
…
PS. Of course, the Soviets were humans and the Americans are humans. But there are still huge cultural and ideological gaps to overcome.
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Of course there are cultural and ideological gaps, even to this very day, between people of various nations.
Yet, at their core, all human beings are the very same.
Or anyone thinks it isn't so?
If anyone thinks it isn't so, I'll share my experience on this week … :)
 
The "Gentlemen of Fortune" (a term used to describe criminals rather than soldiers) was one of my favorite Soviet films growing up. Here, someone made a poster from both parts Leonov played in the film - the kindergarten principal Troshkin and the really bad guy Docent. Can you tell which is which?

gentlemen-of-fortune-599c609df29a8.jpg
 
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