Mittens is a Soviet short feature film about the friendship of the people of the rear and the front during the Great Patriotic War .
| Mittens The bravest | |
|---|---|
| Genre | drama, war film |
| Producer | Pavel Armand , Nathan Lyuboshits |
| Author script | Simon Polotsky , Matvey Tevelev |
| Operator | Vyacheslav Gordanov , Vladislav Sinitsyn |
| Composer | Pavel Armand |
| Film company | Lenfilm |
| Duration | 41 minutes |
| A country |  the USSR |
| Language | |
| Year | 1942 |
The film was shot by filmmakers of Leningrad in the spring of 1942 - the only feature film made during the Blockade . Lenfilm was evacuated to Alma-Ata in 1941. The next feature film was shot after the blockade was lifted - in 1944: “ Sea Battalion ”. [one]
Content
- 1 plot
- 2 Camera crew
- 3 Cast
- 4 Shooting
- 5 Ratings
- 6 Unrequited film about the film
- 7 Comments
- 8 Notes
- 9 Literature
Story
Winter of 1942. Leningrad Front . Parcels sent from the rear are delivered to the front line. In one of the parcels sent by the residents of Leningrad, there are warm mittens and a letter in which the girl asks to give her a present to the bravest soldier ... The unit decides who should get the mittens, and then the fighter Kostya Grachev returns from the reconnaissance to the dugout , with trophies, they give him mittens. In the next reconnaissance, the wounded Grachev bears on himself, though also a wounded soldier, Fedya Dorozhkin. Grachev gives mittens to Dorozhkin. Arriving to visit Grachev in the rear hospital, Dorozhkin meets nurse Galya there, who turns out to be the very girl who sent a gift to the front for the bravest one.
Camera crew
We immediately got to work. It was hard and sometimes even painful. We all had already the strongest vitamin deficiency , the joints were swollen and very painful ... we were weak and many of us had strong outbreaks of vitamin deficiency, and then the doctors put them to bed for several days. Perhaps only V.I. Chestnokov, N.A. Lyuboshits and I managed to stay on their feet all the time.
- directors: Pavel Armand , Nathan Lyuboshits
- Screenwriters: Semyon Polotsky , Matvey Tevelev
- Set Designer: Vladimir Pokrovsky
- Operators: V.V. Gordanov ; 2nd operator V.I. Sinitsyn
- make-up artist: A.I. Anjan
- editing director: R. M. Milman
- lighting foreman: Georgy Vasilievich Shapkin
- composers: Vera Armand, Pavel Armand
- sound engineer: Kirill Pozdnyshev
Cast
“I live like a hermit in a snail shell!” The role is tiny, but it doesn’t matter. Other - where will I play?
- In a real hospital in full view of the wounded, in a workshop manufacturing weapons ...
- I am honored to play mail in this small film!
Main roles:
- V.I. Chestnokov - Fedya Dorozhkin
- M.N. Pavlikov - Kostya Grachev
- E.V. Karetnikova - Galya
- B. A. Gorin-Goryainov - Nikiforovich
Professional actors played only the main roles, the remaining roles were performed by the sailors of the Ladoga Flotilla: [3] [4]
- Lieutenant V. Pustynnikov [K 1] - lieutenant of the Red Army
- Red Navy Grobovetsky - 1st Red Navy
- Red Navy Gemini - 2nd Red Navy
- Navy Dolgov - observer
- Red Navy Ryabov - German officer
It is noteworthy that neither in the "German" crowd, nor even in the role of a captured fascist, did anyone want to play - only by order of the commander of a part of the sailors was forced to go to such a "shame". [7]
Filming
The film was shot on the instructions of the Political Administration of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet.
The script was based on a note in the newspaper Leningradskaya Pravda about how girls from one factory sent warm clothes to the front, and one knitted mittens and embroidered on them: “To the most brave.” The first name of the film is “The Bravest”, but since at the same time a picture with the same name was already shot on the Big Earth (the novel “The Bravest” in the Battle movie collection No. 7 ), the name was changed to “Mittens”.
Before working on the film, in February 1942, the members of the film crew who were most starved of hunger were put in a hospital for several days and given extra food, but nonetheless, in the hospital, production designer Semyon Lvovich Meynkin died of starvation , and the administrator died as a result of the bombing paintings by Noises and driver Matischuk.
The filming process took place in March-May 1942. " Lenfilm " was evacuated, and mainly work was carried out on the basis of the KBF in Ladoga. They left Leningrad on March 17, and returned on May 4.
Filming was carried out in the village of Osinovec on the shore of Lake Ladoga, it was decided to transfer the main work to Morye to the base of the first division of gunboats of the Ladoga Flotilla , commanded by captain of the second rank N. Yu. Ozarovsky (six months later, operator Vyacheslav Gordanov will meet again with Ozarovsky - becoming front-line cameraman, on October 22, 1942, he will take part in the battle of three gunboats against thirty German pontoons, they will be saved only by a raid by the aircraft, which sank almost all German vessels), the film crew was placed on and on board the gunboats Selimzha and Nora. As the cameraman of the film Vyacheslav Gordanov recalled:
Our first feelings were a little strange. We suddenly found ourselves in conditions that even six months before were the most ordinary for us, but which now seemed to us some extraordinary luxury. Electric light was on. It was very warm. Water came from the tap, and moreover, not only cold, but also hot! And it was hard to imagine that there was a huge city somewhere nearby, from which we had just arrived, where we had to haul water from afar, often from an ice hole on the Neva, to illuminate dwellings with homemade smokers, to heat tin stoves with furniture, etc. Table in the wardroom was covered with a snow-white tablecloth, on a large dish lay sliced bread, butter, sugar was in the sugar bowl. No servings, just like in peacetime. And very nice, warm-hearted people, sensitive and tactful, who carefully and sometimes even touchingly introduced us into this “normal” life and often shared their truncated ration with us. And now, when I look back, these two months spent on Ladoga seem very happy and bright to me, primarily because of the atmosphere of cordial warmth and friendship with which the personnel of these ships so generously surrounded us.
Filming was conducted in kind. For a number of scenes, a large hut was built under the pavilion and several small decorations were removed there. The scene with the main events of the film was shot a few kilometers from the base - on the shore of Lake Ladoga, near the current active bunker , standing at the end of the road above a high cliff.
Filming was already finished in Leningrad, where several pavilion shots were taken, which were very limited due to lack of electricity.
We shot the whole picture without seeing anything on the screen, because at that time in Leningrad there was not a single working film processing workshop. The Lenfilm was evacuated, and at the Lennauchfilm this workshop was being restored, so we had to wait until the beginning of June before we could see something. Here, of course, not without surprises, unpleasant, and sometimes pleasant, but the installation went well.
- film operator Vyacheslav Gordanov
Despite the war and the blockade, during the filming of the film, there was time for love: for example, the director of the film editing Rachel Milman, knowing that the film operator Vyacheslav Gordanov was not married, decided to be a “ matchmaker ” and arranged his meeting with his girlfriend and his future wife - the lawyer Musey Mukharinskaya. To do this, she gathered Musya, Lena Ryvina and Olya Bergholz for friends for a holiday, and called Gordanov. Everyone brought their rations, got somewhere a little alcohol: [8]
Sheer bachelorette party ... Everyone is fat from clothes in ten layers, and Vyacha is long, skinny ... I put him in ... Well, so that he was between me and Musya ... He went to see her off.
- Rachelle Milman
On September 1, 1942, after the end of the editing, the film was sent for delivery to Moscow, and it was immediately released to the screen. [9]
The film was successfully shown in units of the Leningrad Front, and music for it was often broadcast on the radio.
As of 1973, the film was stored in the USSR State Film Fund .
Ratings
The film "Mittens", it would seem, is no different from the many short films that appeared on the screen in the early years of the war. But there is one inscription in the credits that immediately changes the attitude towards the film and the people who created it: Leningrad. March - May 1942. This inscription is evidence of the civic feat of Leningrad filmmakers, who, in the first and most terrible winter of the blockade, prepared and directed a feature film.
- Yakov Leonidovich Butovsky , film critic, candidate of art history, member of the editorial board of the journal " Cinema Notes ", 1973 [10]
An absolutely unprecedented fact was the staging of the feature, fiction, albeit short film “Mittens” - actually in front-line conditions in besieged Leningrad.
- Alexander Leonidovich Kazin , Head of the Film and Television Sector of the Russian Institute of Art History of the Russian Academy of Sciences , 2005 [11]
Unrequited movie about the film
About filming the film in front-line conditions and the life of Lenfilmites who remained in the besieged Leningrad, the director N. A. Lyuboshits wrote the autobiographical script “The Lame Soldier”, where he introduced several fictional characters and storylines, but in general the characters - participants in the filming - are real and recognizable in heroes of the script, so, he brought himself under the name of the Belarusian director Yanka Makayenko. This scenario was never realized; it was first published in the form of memoirs in the journal " Cinema Notes " No. 72 for 2005. [2]
Comments
- ↑ probably - Vadim Yuvenalevich Pustynnikov, born 1919, lieutenant, commander of the boat MO-175 included in the 2nd division of the Ladoga Flotilla. He died on October 9, 1942 near the island of Konevits on Ladoga during an attack on a German caravan of barges with superior enemy guards, a shell from a Siebel ferry fell into the navigational cabin of the boat. [5] [6]
Notes
- ↑ Essays on the history of Leningrad: The period of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 1941-1945. - Institute of History (USSR Academy of Sciences) - Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1967 - p. 630
- ↑ 1 2 Lyuboshits N. The lame soldier // Cinema notes. 2005. No 72.P. 256
- ↑ Cameraman Vyacheslav Gordanov - Art, Leningrad Branch, 1973—358 p. - page 355
- ↑ Artists of Leningrad during the blockade - Artist of the RSFSR, 1965 - 90 p. - p. 87
- ↑ Rusakov Z. G. Our sea was Ladoga: Sailors of the Ladoga military flotilla in the battle of Leningrad. - 2nd ed., Rev. and add. - L .: Lenizdat, 1989 .-- 173 p.
- ↑ Ladoga is dear. Memoirs of Veterans of the Red Banner Ladoga Flotilla / Compiled 3. G. Rusakov. - L .: Lenizdat, 1969 .-- 414 p.
- ↑ I. Lomakin - The Muses were not silent // “Week”, No. 1355, 1986
- ↑ Motion Picture Notes, Issues 89-90, 2008
- ↑ Yakov Butovsky - Rachelle // Cinematographic notes, Issues 89-90, All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Cinema, Goskino USSR, 2008 - p. 181
- ↑ Butovsky Y. L. - From romantic photography to poetic cinema // Cameraman Vyacheslav Gordanov. L. , 1973
- ↑ Alexander Leonidovich Kazin - The Age of St. Petersburg Cinema: Sat scientific tr - Russian Institute of the History of Arts (RIIII), 2007 - 266 p. - p. 223
Literature
- Cinema during the blockade. About work on the painting "Mittens" // Gordanov. Notes of the cameraman / Collection: Cameraman Vyacheslav Gordanov - Leningrad: Art, 1973.
- Petr Bagrov, Vera Kuznetsova - From the History of the Lenfilm. Monument to the unpublished collection // “Cinema Notes” No. 72 for 2005
- Lyuboshits, Nota - The Lame Soldier: Screenplay // "Cinema Notes" No. 72 for 2005 - 391 p. - pp. 240—273
- N. Lyuboshits - Front film // The Century of St. Petersburg Cinema: a collection of scientific papers - St. Petersburg: Russian Institute of Art History, 2007. - pp. 241—251
- Mittens // Soviet feature films: Sound films, 1930-1957 - All-Union State Film Fund - Moscow: Art, 1961 - pp. 296–297