Poem about the sea

Returning after a long separation to places dear to his heart, General Fedorchenko ( Boris Livanov ) recalls how many years ago he left his native village. The mother and the collective farm chairman persuaded him to stay, but the others gave him a young man. In the same way, despite the exhortations of loved ones, his former classmates rushed to study and work in large cities.

The road home goes through Novaya Kakhovka - a young city living the upcoming launch of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station. Arriving in the village, Fedorchenko learns that the construction of a hydroelectric station left the collective farm without workers: almost all the graduates of the local school went to a large construction site. The next discovery for the general is the news that at the same time people who had not been here for several decades began to gather in the village. Among them - a famous architect, polar explorer, pilot, writer, deputy minister, six colonels. Years later, they did not immediately recognize each other; everyone is excited about the meeting.

This congress of fellow countrymen is not accidental. Having gathered all the arrivals in the square, the collective farm chairman Savva Zarudny ( Boris Andreev ) announces that the village, which has a long and rich history, is living out its last days. Once in the flood zone, it will go to the bottom with the launch of the station. Bleached huts, cherry orchards, a club, a school, graves of grandfathers and great-grandfathers will disappear. In their place the sea will appear. So that people could see their native huts for the last time, Zarudny wrote dozens of letters and summoned those who had once left him to the village.

Alexander Dovzhenko began working on his last scenario, being already seriously ill. In a letter addressed to the prose writer Yuri Smolich (October 1956), the director thanked the comrade for his remarks and admitted that he lacked the strength to seriously rework individual episodes ^[2] :

At that time, an entry appeared in Dovzhenko’s diary: “It’s hard for me to live. For years, I’m watching me being buried alive in the ground ... ”The script was completed, but the director did not have time to start working on the film: he died on the eve of the first shooting day ^[3] .

After the death of her husband, Julia Solntseva decided to make a "Poem about the Sea", despite the fact that her independent directorial experience was not too great ^[4] . It was not possible to immediately obtain the right to stage; Solntsev, according to the memoirs of the editor of " Mosfilm " Ella Korsunskaya, "was chased from office to office for a long time" ^[5] .

The efforts of Solntseva to preserve her husband’s creative heritage were differently related to the cinematic community. Some saw in them an attempt to become “Dovzhenko today” ^[4] , others were grateful for “truly titanic work” ^[6] .

The release of “Poems about the Sea” was a serious test not only for Yulia Solntseva, but also for the editorial board of the magazine “ Cinema Art ”. The first reviews published on the pages of the publication were positive: poets Alexei Surkov and Nikolai Tikhonov , directors Sergey Gerasimov , Leo Arnshtam and Grigory Alexandrov , writers Leonid Sobolev and Dmitry Zorin , screenwriter Yevgeny Andrikanis ^[7] warmly responded to the film. Authors of publications noted the "epoch-making" of the picture, its lyrical orientation and innovative approach. The review of the film critic Yakov Varshavsky , which not only recognized the virtues of “Poems ...”, but also fixed certain shortcomings, was special; Thus, the transition from realistic scenes to animated scenes seemed unconvincing to the author, and the image of the construction director ( Mikhail Tsarev ) distorted his “resonant abstractness” ^[7] .

The problems in the magazine began after the writer Viktor Nekrasov sent the editor Lyudmila Pogozheva an article in which he contrasted The Poem of the Sea with another picture - The Two Fedors by Marlene Khutsiev . The author's sympathies were on the side of the film of Khutsiev; moreover, Nekrasov recklessly called Dovzhenko’s tape ^{[7] the} “Poem on the Sea”.

"The Art of Cinema" published a review of Nekrasov ^[9] , creating an occasion for reader's polemic. However, the discussion did not take place: immediately after the publication of the article, Pogozhev was invited to the ideological department of the CPSU Central Committee ; Party functionaries told the editor that the publication was "almost anti-Soviet, slandering not only the builders of the man-made sea, but also the entire Soviet people" ^[7] . Subsequently, the film expert Oleg Kovalov called the article by Nekrasov the “software manifesto” of the editorial board ^[8] .

The debate about what the Poem on the Sea would have looked like if Dovzhenko brought his project to the end had been going on for a long time. Film critic Mikhail Sulkin is convinced that the director would hardly have released “such a cold, pompous sight” ^[7] . Cinema expert Armen Medvedev , on the contrary, believes that the film has become “a kind of catalog of what our cinema subsequently developed” ^[10] . Director Andrei Konchalovsky , calling the script by Dovzhenko “ingenious,” noted that he “anticipated many of the discoveries of“ 8 1/2 “ Fellini ” ^[11] .

• Julia Solntseva - Director
• Alexander Dovzhenko - screenwriter
• Gavriil Egiazarov - operator
• Gavriil Popov - composer
• Alexander Borisov, Ivan Plastinkin - artists
• V. Lagutin - sound engineer
• E. Migunov, V. Nikitin - animation artists
• Grigory Maryamov - editor

• Lenin Prize (1959) - Alexander Dovzhenko (posthumous)
• All-Union Film Festival (1959):
  • special honorary diploma (Julia Solntseva)
  • first prize to the scriptwriter (Alexander Dovzhenko)
  • first prize for a male role (Boris Andreev)
• London Film Festival (1962) - Honorary Diploma (Julia Solntseva)

• Page in the Encyclopedia of domestic cinema
• The Sea Poem on the Internet Movie Database