Lieutenant Kizhe (film)

A screen version of Yuri Tynyanov ’s story “ Second Lieutenant Kizhe ”, based on a joke about how, due to the mistake of the clerk , who wrote the words “lieutenant Kizhe” instead of the words “lieutenants”, the non-existent person - Lieutenant Kizhe, who, despite its non-existence, was listed in the documents as a real person who served, was punished, forgiven, rose to the rank of general and died of a serious illness.

Once the emperor Paul I was awakened by the cry ("Guard!") Of the adjutant, who was pinched by his beloved maid of honor. The search for the culprit begins. As a result of the error, an order appears to appoint Lieutenant Kizhe to the guard. Pavel reads the order, in which he sees the name of Lieutenant Kizhe, and asks to introduce him. Count Palen, knowing about the typo in the order and trying to save his relative from imperial anger, offers the adjutant to consider Lieutenant Kizhe alive and declares him guilty of a night cry.

The emperor orders to carve the lieutenant and send on foot to Siberia. Count Palen announces that the prisoner is a secret person and has no figure.

After some time, the emperor’s favorite, at the request of her companion, persuades him to pardon the perpetrator of the night incident. The emperor replaces anger with mercy and returns the lieutenant from exile; he is assigned the rank of colonel. By order of the emperor, a beautiful maid of honor (adjutant's mistress) is given out to marry Colonel Kizhe. A wedding ceremony is taking place. Count Palen explains to the perplexed participants in the ceremony that the emperor allowed the bridegroom not to be present, that the bridegroom is secret and has no figure. Newlywed accepts congratulations. The emperor favors 3,000 households with peasants and makes Kizhe a major general.

General Kizhe is brought from the emperor a chest with public money (10,000 rubles) for the needs of the state. The adjutant comes to congratulate the maid of honor on the marriage and spends the night in her bed.

In the future, Paul persistently wants to see General Kizhe. Getting out of this situation, Count Palen first says that General Kizhe is seriously ill, and then declares him dead. The funeral of General Kizhe begins. Paul recalls the official money and orders them to be returned. However, the adjutant who stole the money brings an empty chest with a fake note from General Kizhe, in which it is reported that he ate all the money.

The emperor is enraged by the dishonesty of his recent favorite and gives the order to demolish General Kizhe to the rank and file, and "for the discovery of the crime" the adjutant is given the rank of general. The adjutant stops the funeral procession, kisses the former general Kizhe and leaves. The emperor complains about how difficult it is to rule the state.

Music for the film, created by S. S. Prokofiev in 1933, gained fame in Russia and especially in the West. It sounds in concert programs in the form of an orchestra suite compiled by the composer in 1934 (Op. 60, according to the author's catalog of works ; Prokofiev did not include the full version of the music for the film). The suite consists of five parts:

• "The Birth of Kizhe"
• "Romance"
• "Kizhe's Wedding"
• "Troika"
• "The funeral of Kizhe"

In the same year, the composer worked out two songs from the film for voice and piano (Op. 60bis):

• "The blue darling groans"
• "Troika"

Bright, imaginative music of Prokofiev subsequently repeatedly attracted the attention of choreographers . Fragments from the suite were used by Woody Allen in the film " Love and Death ", Sting in the song "Russians", the company " STV " (sounds at the time of the demonstration of the company logo) and many others.

Soviet film critic Rostislav Yurenev wrote that "despite the undoubted success of the musical and artistic design of the film, he left a feeling of disappointment." In his opinion, “the director failed to create a single ensemble of representatives of various directions in acting ^[1] .“ M. Yanshin as the possessed Paul I, - considered the film critic, - was too soft, realistic, ridiculous, but not scary. ” The venerable film critic continued: "The old theater artist M. Rostovtsev replayed as a commandant of the fortress, even grimaced. Actress N. Shaternikova played Princess Gagarina simply, lyrically, and next to her, school student of the school of foxes Sofya Magarill represented the maid of honor in the puppet lifeless mechanic . Český style "The role of the adjutant, he estimated as follows:" Garin found a lot of funny parts, a lot of eccentric position ... But the brighter the acting, the more broken things composition, the annoying adjutant lieutenant drove Kizhe " ^[2] .

R. Yurenev reproached the authors of the film for the fact that "ultimately the film left the story and lost it." In his opinion, “all of Garin’s eccentric finds, all the irony of Prokofiev’s music, all of Kaltsaty’s optical tricks, devoid of a clear ideological orientation, acquired a self-sufficient value”, and “the idea of ​​the inhumanity of the monarchical system was not fully conveyed” ^[2] .

However, in general, the film was positively evaluated by Soviet film criticism. In particular, in the encyclopedic dictionary “Cinema” (1986), it was noted that the satirical comedy “Lieutenant Kizhe” was of considerable interest ^[3] .

Art historian Mikhail Yampolsky examined in detail the artistic features of the film, noting the great contribution of Yuri Tynyanov to his creation and to the search for a new cinema language ^[4] . He wrote: “The example of Lieutenant Kizhe is in many ways unique, because it is here with theoretical purity that the task of generating corporeality, imagery from intertextual multilayering is posed and solved. We are talking about the almost physical genesis of the body from the relationships ” ^[5] .

M. Yampolsky wrote: “Although Kizhe's physically visible substitutes were preserved in the film (a chair with a cocked hat on it in an episode of a wedding, a toy soldier, etc.), their number is sharply reduced compared to the scenario. It was apparently about attempts to find a purely cinematic equivalent of “emptiness” ” ^[6] .

In particular, he singled out the episode of the maid of honor of the maid of honor after her wedding with Kizhe: “In the script, he is assigned only one frame, in the film this episode takes twenty-three frames, which indicates its importance” ^[7] . “This episode,” said the film critic, “in a more sophisticated form offers the same principle as the scene of arrival in the fortress. The space itself is completely motionless (the table at which the guests “chained” to the chairs sit), but disorientation, straying of the eyes, introduced into the “symmetric”, block a clear understanding of spatial relations, create a void of unsteadiness ” ^[8] .

M. Yampolsky also noted that the parody element in the film is expressed in the emphasized theatricality of many episodes, “direct signs of the theater are introduced in many episodes - the curtain and theatrical podium scene” ^[9] . He called another interesting element “an unusually intensive introduction of mirrors (real or implied) into the film structure” ^[10] .

Culturologist Igor Smirnov noted that the film “Lieutenant Kizhe” is “the most acute attack against the emerging tonal cinema art” ^[11] .

The clerical error, broadcast orally, is incarnated through sounding speech into a "fiction figure", as Andrei Bely would put it, into an imaginary face that exists as an object of communication between the characters, but not present in their midst.

- I. Smirnov, 2009

The film also polemicizes with the late avant-garde visualization of the invisible ^[12] . I. Smirnov wrote: “Of course, cinema before was inclined to visualize phantom and only conceivable. However, “Lieutenant Kizhe” occupies a special position in this series: the imaginary value never acquires its own face here, at least some visible identity, is recognized by indirect indicators ... ” ^[13] .

Polish musicologist Zofja Lissa cited the film as an example of “what an important role instrumentation plays in film music” ^[14] .

Here, mainly by means of instrumentation, all fictitiousness, the unreality of the central hero, is symbolized. The relentless fraction of the drums, the predominance of flute piccolos in a sharp, high register emphasize the grotesqueness of puppet officers at the royal court, doll-like ladies, etc. The lieutenant’s motif, instrumented according to the situation, permeates the entire film.

- Z. Lissa, 2012

• Emperor steps

• Yurenev R.N. Soviet comedy film. - M .: Nauka, 1964 .-- S. 211-213. - 540 s.
• Cinema: Encyclopedic Dictionary / Ch. ed. S. I. Yutkevich. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1986. - S. 41. - 637 p.
• Yampolsky M.B. The character as an "intertextual body" ("Lieutenant Kizhe" Tynyanova) // Memory of Tiresias. Intertextuality and cinema. - M .: RIC Culture, 1993 .-- S. 327-370. - 464 p.
• Smirnov I.P. Footage: historical semantics of the movie. - St. Petersburg: Publishing House "Petropolis", 2009. - S. 138-140. - 404 s.
• Lissa Z. Aesthetics of film music. - M .: Book on demand, 2012. - S. 335. - 445 p.

• " Lieutenant Kizhe " (Eng.) On the Internet Movie Database
• Suite “Lieutenant Kizhe”, op. 60 on YouTube