“The Invincibles” is the first full-length feature film in the history of the Great Patriotic War [1] [2] , Lenfilm filmmakers began semi-documentary footage in the fall of 1941 in besieged Leningrad , and finished shooting and filming the film already in the evacuation .
"Invincible" (“Leningrad Autumn”, “Heroic Defense of Leningrad”, “Leningraders”) | |
---|---|
Genre | drama, war film, documentary |
Producer | Sergey Gerasimov Mikhail Kalatozov |
Author script | Mikhail Bleiman , together with the film directors |
Operator | Arkady Koltsaty , Mikhail Magid |
Composer | Benedict Pushkov |
Film company | Lenfilm (Leningrad) " TSOKS " (Alma-Ata) |
Duration | 94 min. or 87 min. |
A country | the USSR |
Year | 1942 |
IMDb | ID 0035118 |
About the inflexible strength of the spirit of the workers of the Leningrad plant named after SM Kirov during the siege of Leningrad. Despite the daily bombings, the incredible cold and lack of food, the engineer Rodionov is working hard to release a new tank. [3]
Content
Story
Autumn 1941. The ring of the Blockade closed around Leningrad, the front line coming to Izhorsk. Nastya Kovaleva, a young engineer of the Izhora plant with a crowd of refugees, goes to Leningrad, but in her shoulder bag she doesn’t take her favorite dresses, but her drawings — she goes to the Kirovsky plant , to the design engineer Rodionova who once offered her to work together. In the difficult days of the blockade, in the incredible cold and hunger, when the front line passes along the fence of the plant, it will work modestly in the design office. Nastya will not accomplish any special feat - she will work, she will have enough strength, she will wait for her relatives from the front, she will believe in victory ... but only with her imperceptible help Rodionov will be able to launch a new tank.
Cast
We are sitting in a bomb shelter under a large pavilion of Lenfilm and Mikhail Bleiman reads to us the scenario of the Invincibles. We are a small group of people in helmets who have gathered from air defense studio posts: Sergey Gerasimov, Mikhail Kalatozov, Tamara Makarova, Yakov Ancelovich and studio director Ivan Glotov. Reading is interrupted - the announcer says: "Lighters are reset, there are fires." There’s no time for reading — rather, into the courtyard! Two torches burn brightly on the roof - like pyrotechnic candles. These are fascist "lighters". Girls-friends throw them down - it remains only to quickly fall asleep sand. That's how the movie starts ...
Once we showed this film somewhere in the Urals, and at the moment when militiamen were passing on the screen, a woman suddenly screamed - she saw her husband among the militiamen. I was struck by her cry: “Volodya!” She ran to us, began to ask. And what could we say about the soldiers? Where did they fight and die? ..
- Boris Babochkin - Nikolai Petrovich Rodionov, design engineer of the Kirov factory
- Tamara Makarova - Nastya Kovaleva, an engineer from the Izhora plant
- Alexander Khvylya - Dmitry Pronin, battalion commissar
- Nikolay Cherkasov-Sergeev - Rodionov-father
- Peter Aleinikov - Grisha, driver, tankman
- Boris Blinov - Grisha Bondarets, voenmor
- Nikolay Dubinsky - Vlasov
- N. Mitrushenko - Seryozhka boy
- Emma Makarova (Tamara Makarova's niece) [6] - girl Annushka
- Vasily Zaychikov - secretary of the party committee
- Grigory Kirillov - Krasnosheev
- Viktor Klyucharyov - episode
- Mikhail Mukhin - Professor
- Valentina Telegin - squad
In the semi-documentary shootings: factory workers, soldiers and militias, residents of Leningrad.
The equipment and weapons in the film are not just real - but the current ones: the DShK anti-aircraft machine gun was shot when he was in combat service, waiting for the Luftwaffe planes to attack, the filmmakers were forbidden to move it from a combat position, and the armored train with towers from the T-34 tank was removed in an accelerated mode - the train went to the front. [3]
Of particular interest is the frame with the KV-1 tank - the cameramen trapped him when leaving the shop of the Kirov plant. Presumably, this is a tank with a factory number 5131 from the 2nd tank battalion of the 124th tank brigade - in battle on October 8, 1941, he was shot down and evacuated to the factory, and already on October 12 the repaired tank left the factory gates to the front. [3] [7]
History
The very idea of the film according to the director was born July 13, 1941. The scriptwriters wrote about what they saw around them. The script was completed in the fall - when the Blockade ring was already closed, the script was initially called “Leningrad Autumn”. Sergey Gerasimov in his memoirs wrote that unlike other films, where creating a script requires inspiration (“adjusting oneself in the proper way”), in this case the setting for creating a script had a different psychological quality: [8]
We were participants, not witnesses, watching the events through the window. Everything that happened “there” happened “here” and not “there.” We still argued about how to submit the material, how to engage in intrigue, and so on, but more often than not we rejected it. They threw away - and just walked, based on the events of their own day. We were constantly at the Kirov factory. The whole history of personal relationships was all born out of what we all met. People knew that there is one life - this is war, there can be no other life. So we led our heroes. We kind of searched and found answers to the questions that torment us in our script lines. This concerned immediate existence, the present circumstances of life ... each line became for us self-knowledge: what do we think and feel about everything around us? From here came a whole series of scenes.
- director of the film Sergey Gerasimov
On October 18, the director of Lenfilm issued an order to begin the production of the full-length motion picture “Heroic Defense of Leningrad”, then the rolling name became “Invincible”.
Filming took place in Leningrad while conditions allowed, occasionally, between bombing, and later under shelling, between the work of crew members on duty and extinguishing fascist “lighters”, but with the evacuation of Lenfilm studio in December to Tashkent. It was continued there - at the TsOKS film studio.
The authors paid special attention to the fact that the picture did not become “just like a new regular poster”, and was realistic, therefore the film did not begin to film the scenes of hostilities: [8]
But in the work it became clear to us that any kind of fake pathos of this picture was not shown at all. Now our homemade land mines, all pyrotechnics make me disgusted. Not because I am such a convinced pacifist and do not digest the wars on the screen, but because the real war, in fact, cannot be represented by pyrotechnic battles. True heroism, that fortitude which we observed in besieged Leningrad, could not, in our opinion, be transmitted by the effects of pyrotechnics.
- director of the film Sergey Gerasimov
The film was already assembled in Almaty in the fall of 1942, the premiere took place there, and it coincided that it was shown in Leningrad in the January days of the city’s triumph . [9]
Image feature of besieged Leningrad
In “The Invincibles” it was specifically stipulated that the film tells about the first months of the blockade, and the audience perceived our film as a film about the blockade in general. And, of course, in such circumstances, the life of Leningraders shown in the film looked lightened up, embellished, even false.
- Boris Babochkin
The film was criticized for its weak image of the gravity of the Blockade and the absence of battle scenes. However, such an image is explicable - Leningrad footage of the film was shot in the fall of 1941 - before the blockade winter of 1941–1942, before the famine, and about what Leningrad had to go through, the filmmakers did not even anticipate. But even what they saw, although they had originally planned, did not include them in the film: for example, in September 1941, on duty on the roof of the House of Cinema on Nevsky 72, they saw a bomb hit the next building, the hospital on Fontanka. [eight]
In other circumstances, perhaps, we would not be stingy with such details for the picture, and someone would call them strong frames, bright details and images.
In the besieged Leningrad, this did not suit us, it was not for us the essence of the work, not this, but something completely different, even the exact opposite.So I had to see, say, like a truck in winter along Nevsky Prospect, which was like a village street, literally covered with snow up to the second floor - and so the truck rushed through this tunnel pierced in the snow, on it lay the corpses collected on the streets of the city. Frozen corpses were laid in the body just like firewood. And there was no cynicism about it, then there was nothing special about that. And, like struts for firewood, two such corpses were set at the edges, vertically. A car rushed fast, and a girl's scythe fluttered from the cockpit - there the tall girl was put in, she seemed to be holding back the stacked bodies. This is an image that can, like a nightmare, be repeated throughout the rest of your life, you can see it in a dream, and start and cry out ... We haven’t seen all this when we shot “The Invincibles” - the work went on until the frost,but we also had a different aspect to the real Leningrad. We didn’t want to scare people, we had to do something alive (as we understood it) to give it something alive. The tragic faces of the Leningrad blockade were before everyone’s eyes, and we didn’t even want to emphasize this, we wanted to show something else, which was also nearby ...
- director of the film Sergey Gerasimov
The director explained that the film was shot for viewers who are fighting themselves, live in the Blockade, and know everything about the Blockade and the war without the film - and noted a different attitude to the picture in the rear and at the front: even in the evacuation in Almaty criticized for the lack of battle scenes and the excessive display of feelings in the love line, however, criticism in Leningrad was just the opposite: " " Do you not think, dear, that you were very impatient here? "and reproached that everything is very similar and human passions are similar, but at the end of firing, it’s not very life is "like ."
The central idea of the film, according to the director, is to give an idea of what the Blockade of Leningrad was: [8]
The most surprising thing was still different - the incredible restraint of the people. Yes, incredible. That is somewhere in the houses, pillows were nibbling, women who lost their children and husband were sobbing and beating on the floor. But on the street I have never seen anything like it. Our enemies and such a fact could be blamed for us: what can we expect from this insensitive, completely inert mass of the people. After all, they de subhuman ... There is a scene in the film, a figurative solution of which seems to me very true. This is a direct image of anger, which sometimes hit people, especially women who have lost their loved ones. I saw a woman who, like we later showed it in the film, screamed in anger and scary. We were just at the Kirov factory at this time. There the militia went to the front line, they had to go about a kilometer in order to join the battle directly. A woman shouted to them: “ Beat them, reptiles! Beat, destroy them, bastards! "- she had white lips. I will never forget this image, the image of reality itself. We included this in the picture as a direct figurative reflection, giving an idea of what the Leningrad blockade was.
- director of the film Sergey Gerasimov
Value in the national cinema
The film is the first feature film about the Great Patriotic War, and despite the flaws, which, given the shooting conditions, are “explainable and probably natural,” how the “discoverer” of the topic influenced the genre's origin [2] , initiating the tradition of Russian films about follow the war
a strong spiritual tradition inherited from the art of the time of thundery years. The moral credo that was affirmed and consecrated then - “if only the truth is not to the detriment” ( A. Tvardovsky ) has become cherished in cinema. Starting with the “Invincibles” and “ Submarine T-9 ”, the generic sign in the very combination of the artistic and the documentary manifested itself, when the latter was like a measure of truth and truth of the first.
- Neva magazine, organ of the Union of Writers of the USSR , 1984
However, the film historian G.D. Kremlev pointed out that the film shares the title of the first war film with the film “The Secretary of the District Committee ” Ivan Pyryev, the premiere of which officially took place two months earlier, while indicating that the film “The Secretary of the District Committee” was more artistic completed. [ten]
Criticism
It was repeatedly noted by critics that the film is valuable not by the plot, and not by documentary shots, but by the psychologically accurate and truthful depiction of the Blockade, events, and people's characters: [11]
The introductory inscription explained: “The picture reflects the thoughts and feelings of the people of Leningrad in the autumn months of 1941.” The war and production imperiously dictated all the plot connections. The directors complicated them by choosing a psychological goal: they decided to show how civilians become soldiers. Artists worried about the breakdown in the mind of man, the transition from one emotional environment to another. Very few were asked in those years with a similar goal.
- film expert, film critic and film historian Mark Efimovich Zak , 2004 [12]
The film turned out to be closer to a more relaxed and analytical perception of our contemporaries. Then, critics noticed that it was with this film that many topics were actively developed in postwar war films, at least a theme declared by Rodionov: war inflicts intractable injuries not only on bodies, but also on people's souls.
- Film expert V. A. Kuznetsov , Journal of Cinema Studies , 2005 [11]
Film director V. Kuznetsova saw the reason for the “half-success” of the film in that the film was released when the Blockade was already broken and the audience wanted to see a film about the steadfast and courageous overcoming of the harsh winter months of the blockade, but according to its plot “ The Invincibles” Still, the Leningrad Fall remained. ” [eleven]
As a document of time, film critic Yu. M. Khayutin put the film above the Stalin-winning film “ She Protects the Motherland ” of 1943: “The film“ The Invincibles ”was more consistent in its documentaryism. Determined in besieged Leningrad, mostly in kind, he recreated the image of a city that entered the battle. ” [13]
It was noted that the leading role of Boris Babochkin - known in the film " Chapaev " - was natural, and the actor was able to create "the image of Rodionov - a strong, courageous man, a talented engineer who developed the design of a powerful new tank, revealed the unshakable resilience of the Soviet people" [14] , the value of his game was equal to the role of tanks:
There was one peculiarity in B. Babochkin-Rodionov’s behavior: he had to raise his voice in order to reach his interlocutor through fatigue and sometimes fear. This acting paint meant in the film as much as the chronicle shooting of the exit of tanks from the factory gates.
- film expert, film critic and film historian Mark Efimovich Zak , 2004 [12]
Notes
- ↑ IG Bolshakov - Soviet cinema during the Great Patriotic War - Goskinoizdat, 1948-147 p. - p. 55
- ↑ 1 2 Lev Alexandrovich Parfenov - Sergey Gerasimov - M .: Iskusstvo, 1975-278 p. - p.
- ↑ 1 2 3 Ilya Shchegolev - Film weapons: from the set - on the battlefield // Rossiyskaya gazeta, May 2, 2014
- ↑ Arkady Koltsaty - “The Invincibles” are being filmed // Soviet Screen Magazine, 1967
- ↑ cited by: Fedor Razzakov - So that people remember
- ↑ L Yagunkova - Sergei Gerasimov and Tamara Makarova: to the 100th anniversary of the birth of Sergei Apollinarievich Gerasimov - Moscow: Eksmo, 2006–285 p. - p. 128
- ↑ Tanks KV-1 from the movie “The Invincibles” , LiveJournal “Book about KV”, January 17, 2015
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 Sergey Apollinarievich Gerasimov - Educating a film director - Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1978–430 p.
- ↑ Gennady Sobolev - Leningrad in the struggle for survival in the blockade. Book Two: June 1942 - January 1943
- ↑ German Dmitrievich Kremlev - Mikhail Kalatozov - Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1964–241 p. - p. 93
- ↑ 1 2 3 Peter Bagrov , Vera Kuznetsova - “Lenfilm” in 1941 // “Kinovedicheskiye zapiski”, No. 72, 2005
- ↑ 1 2 Mark Efimovich Zak - Cinema as Art, or Real Cinema - Mainland, 2004 - 438 p.
- ↑ Yuri Mironovich Khanyutin - A Warning from the Past - Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1968–283 p. - p. 68
- ↑ In the theater and cinema - All-Russian Theater Society "Art", 1968-388 p. - p. 368
Sources
- Arkady Koltsaty - “The Invincibles” are being filmed // Soviet Screen Magazine, 1967
- № 1742. Invincible // Soviet films: Sound films, 1930-1957 / All-Union State Film Foundation, Moscow - M .: Art, 1961 - p. 304