Goodbye America!

The action begins in 1945. The young American journalist Anna Badford, who comes from a farming family from Pennsylvania , is sent to work in the USSR at the US Embassy . She gets to Moscow just in the days of the celebration of the victory of the USSR in World War II . On Red Square, during the festivities, Anna meets Professor Gromov, who invites her home. Embassy officials require Badford to use the meeting to gather intelligence .

A year passes. A new peace time begins. A new ambassador, intelligence general Greves, has been appointed to the embassy. His very first order states that from now on all the embassy staff should be engaged in intelligence and anti-Soviet activities . His words:

Peace is a short time allotted to us in connection with preparations for a new war, which should establish an American way of life throughout the world.

From the first day, Anna does not like the methods of work of her colleagues. The information she collected as a result of the trip about Armenia and Ukraine is being changed and twisted. In an atmosphere of lies and suspicion, she finds only one like-minded person - Armand Howard, head of the information department of the embassy. An honest and incorruptible Howard, unwilling to embellish reality for the sake of propaganda interests, is recalled from Moscow to Washington . At the same moment, Badford is informed about the death of her mother, and she and Armand return home. Howard summoned to court, but acquitted. Immediately after the acquittal in the bar, he was shot by unknown persons.

Badford is called back to Moscow and instructed to write a book based on pre-fabricated material about non-freedom in the USSR and that Howard was killed by the Communists. Badford does not return to the embassy and becomes a deserter. In the embassy, ​​due to its disappearance, a real panic begins.

This ends the footage. In the future, according to the script, Anna Badford becomes a citizen of the USSR and writes a completely different book exposing the activities of American diplomats. In the Soviet Union, she finds a new homeland where she can calmly work and create. The finale was to have something in common with the picture “Circus” - Anna, in a column of demonstrators, solemnly enters Red Square on the days of a big holiday ^[1] .

• Lilia Gritsenko - Anna Badford
• Nikolay Gritsenko - Armand Howard, Head of the Information Department of the American Embassy
• Alexander Polinsky - Marrow, Embassy Counselor
• Grigory Kirillov - Walter Scott, American Ambassador in Moscow
• Vyacheslav Gostinsky - Francis Darlington
• Nikita Kondratiev - Johnny Graves, Secretary of the Embassy
• Yuri Lyubimov - Blake, correspondent
• Janis Osis - Charles Winchell, Doctor of Embassy
• Lyudmila Shagalova - Cecilia Wong, embassy stenographer
• Grigory Shpigel - journalist
• Alexander Smirnov - Hill, correspondent
• Gottlieb Roninson - episode
• Peter Krylov - episode (uncredited)

In the late 1940s, the number of films made in the Soviet Union (which was small after the war) was even lower . In 1951, only 9 paintings were shot in the USSR. The largest Soviet film studio "Mosfilm" in 1951 released only one film. The repertoire of film studios was dominated by neutral biopics : Przhevalsky , Belinsky , Zhukovsky . Such a basis for the scenario was relatively safe from the point of view of ideology ^[2] . Dovzhenko ’s previous film “Michurin” was also a biographical picture shot in the spirit of socialist realism . In the process of working on it, the director was pointed out to many ideological shortcomings. The picture was repeatedly redone and remade and took a lot of effort from its author ^{[3] [4]} .

In 1949, a book was published in Moscow by Anabella Bukar , a former employee of the State Department who fled from the USA ^[5] and asked for political asylum in the USSR. Bukar received an apartment in Moscow, married the singer of the operetta theater Lapshin. Byukar published her memoirs in the form of the book The Truth About American Diplomats. The book was published in the USSR ^[6] , and the story received great publicity ^[7] . Dovzhenko was instructed to film these events ^[8] . It is believed that Stalin personally instructed him ^[9] . The picture was supposed to be shot in color film, which was the prerogative of the selected directors at that time ^[10] .

The book of Bukar provided some material for the script of the feature film, and Dovzhenko actually had to create a new work ^[11] . With Anabella Bukar, who was strictly against the film adaptation of her book, Dovzhenko did not meet ^[3] . He prepared eight versions of the literary and four - the director's script, until he settled on the result that satisfied him. In the diary, Dovzhenko wrote that the preparation of the script was very difficult:

I am writing a script. It works harder than ever. If I am lucky enough to write this script properly, I may refuse to put it. I must be treated for a long time, if I can still be treated.

Original text (in Ukrainian)

I am writing a script. So pratsuvati is important, like nikoli. If I had the good fortune to write a script like this. I can come to my senses. I fly Likuvatisya Dovgo, but it is possible more than Likuvatisya.

- ^[3] (July 17, 1949 from the diary)

In February 1950, speaking to a commission that accepted the script, Dovzhenko said that he wanted to shoot a picture about the Americans: the "antipodes" of Soviet reality ^[1] . An actor’s ensemble was involved in the filming, led by brother and sister Nikolai and Lilia Gritsenko . Leading actor of the picture Vyacheslav Gostinsky (better known as an actor of episodes) Dovzhenko said that after the release of the film for rent, he wakes up famous. The police also tried Policeitomako , Ushakova , Popov , but the materials with them did not get into the well-known edition of the film ^[12] .

By the beginning of 1951, more than half of the material was filmed according to the scenario - 6 parts and 2 parts of samples ^{[12] [13]} . The scenes connected with the Americans and the scenes at the embassy were almost completely ready. The bar in the American embassy was removed in the famous Moscow cocktail lounge on Gorky Street ^[14] . For full-scale filming, Dovzhenko went to Ukraine. However, scenes related to Soviet reality, Anna’s trips to the USSR either were not captured or not preserved (only a few frames and samples remained) ^[15] .

It was planned to start a scene in which the main character was to return to Moscow from America. On one of the days of March 1951, in the pavilion where the filming was taking place, unexpectedly for the creative group, the paintings turned off the light ^[3] . Dovzhenko was summoned to the office of the director of Mosfilm Sergey Kuznetsov ^[1] . Without giving the director and the creative group pictures any explanation for the stop, it was ordered to calculate the film crew and stop production ^[16] . The international situation has changed, the process of creating blocs and alliances has begun, the USSR was preparing a number of initiatives covering Western countries, and the Politburo immediately stopped the production and release of sixteen films at once, including “Goodbye America!” Dovzhenko. ^[17]

“The Discovery of Antarctica” (scenes 1950) and “Farewell, America!” Remained the working title of the picture, the last work of Dovzhenko ^[16] . After that, until his death, he did not take anything off, concentrating on literary work and preparing scripts ^[18] . According to many film historians, the suspension of the filming of the film morally broke the director and adversely affected his health ^[3] . In 1956, Dovzhenko died of a heart attack. The main character of the film, Anabella Bukar, remained with her new family in Moscow and worked on the radio. She lived to be 83 years old and died in 1998 ^[19] .

Good luck was that the picture was not destroyed, which was common practice for such unfinished work ^[13] . For eight years, the films were in the Mosfilm archive, and since September 1958 they were transferred to the White Pillars State Film Fund ^[12] .

In 1995, on the initiative of Vladimir Dmitriev, First Deputy General Director of the State Film Fund of the Russian Federation, a decision was made to restore the picture. At first, restorers wanted to restore the technical archive copy only for safety. Then, nevertheless, the decision was made to create a fragmentary work, if possible, as integral as possible, accompanied by a specialist commentary between the parts. As Dmitriev recalled, this decision had opponents, primarily because the picture was unfinished, unusual for Dovzhenko’s style and openly politically engaged. Annabelle Bucur herself also spoke out against the premiere, who was still alive at that moment and phoned Dmitriev ^{[13] [16]} on this occasion.

At this point, the negative of the picture was lost, it was restored from positive. The soundtrack has been preserved almost completely, only in one fragment was it duplicated by modern actors. “Goodbye America!”, With a comment by Rostislav Yurenev , was first shown at the Cinema Center on January 12, 1996, then in the Panorama program at the IFF in Berlin , where the world premiere took place ^{[12] [20]} . The restored version of the picture lasting about 70 minutes (including comments) fell into a special edition of 10 DVDs prepared by the national center of Alexander Dovzhenko in 2006 ^[12] .

The classic of Soviet cinema, Alexander Dovzhenko, took up a topic completely alien to him ^[21] . The singer of the beauty of the earth and nature, the author, who used sublime and expressive symbolism on the screen, began to shoot a political film ^[22] . Attempts to follow ideological guidelines and censorship requirements, repeated alterations of the script yielded nothing and only broke the director ^{[21] [23]} .

Characteristic of Soviet cinema of that era was the idea of ​​the United States and Americans as an ideological adversary. The film was a social order caused by the demands of the times, the beginning of the arms race and the Cold War. At that time, a number of such paintings were shot, such as “Silver Dust” , “Meeting on the Elbe” , “Conspiracy of the Doomed” and others ^[5] . The story described in the script can be called stereotypical ^[11] . “Farewell America!” Became a kind of antipode of Hollywood anti-communist cinema, for example, such a film as “ Ninochka ” ^[24] .

Different reasons were expressed regarding the reasons for the cessation of production of the picture. There is a version that the propaganda beginning of the event has lost its meaning. Yuri Lyubimov , whose worldview and actions the biography of Anabella Bukar had a huge impact, even before the Decree on the deprivation of his citizenship and forced emigration from the USSR, in his taped memoirs of the 1960s. told that, allegedly, Stalin, looking at the list of films in the production of 1951, remarked: “If she [Bukar] changed her homeland, she can change the new one”, and deleted the film from the plans ^[25] . Cinema expert Oleg Kovalev commented that the director “went too far”, showing the absurd image of American militant imperialism .

In reality, due to the fact that the Soviet government was preparing a number of international economic initiatives, such as the International Economic Conference in Moscow (1952) , economic meetings in Manila (Philippines) and China, and tried to enlist and confirm the participation of a wide range of Western countries, some the most ideologically confrontational campaigns, such as the fight against cosmopolitanism , were curtailed. The Politburo simultaneously stopped the production of sixteen films, including two Dovzhenko films ^[17] . Since autumn 1949, German, Austrian, French, Italian trophy films (part of the legal reparations received by the USSR as compensation from the Axis countries) , and American and English films bought and donated to the USSR were mass-released. It is for these reasons that the production of the film “Farewell to America” was curtailed, and the science fiction film of Silver “ Silver Dust ”, in which the dark side of America was shown, was not allowed for wide distribution. ^[26] .

Grigory Kozintsev , acquainted with the working materials, found his positive sides in the picture:

I saw materials from Dovzhenko’s painting about America. It was the work of a genius. [...] He did an incredible thing - he made people speak English in Russian. He said on the set: "I want to hear the obscene rhythm of capital."

- ^[27]

• Goodbye America! (film A. Dovzhenko) (Russian) // The Art of Cinema . - 1996. - No. 9 . - S. 72-97 .
• Annabella Bucur. The Truth About American Diplomats . - M .: Edition of the Literary Newspaper, 1949. - S. 132. - 303 p.

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