Thirteen years before unveiling his titan sized rock drama
epic film Assa onto Soviet silver screens in 1987, Russian film writer-director
Sergei Solovyov demonstrated early on he was one of forefathers of chronicling
distinctly Soviet youth culture trying to find its footing in the world with
his 1974 coming-of-age summer camp drama One Hundred Days After Childhood. A Sovscope 35mm panoramic widescreen
production co-written by Solovyov and screenwriter Aleksandr Aleksandrov and
released by Mosfilm the same year as Akira Kurosawa’s Sovscope 70mm Dersu Uzala,
the film represents perhaps the best film about adolescent romantic longings to
emerge prior to Karen Shakhnazarov’s Courier. Cementing its leading actress Tatyana Drubich
as a Soviet screen sex symbol who would reunite with director Solovyov again in
Assa, One Hundred Days After Childhood became Solovyov’s first
real critical hit which took home the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 25th
Berlin International Film Festival. While
not quite amassing the ferocious power of Assa, it still is nevertheless
a solid youth film about crazy stupid and distinctly Russian love.
For
all of the film’s elegant visual beauty rendered by The Red Tent cinematographer
Leonid Kalashnikov who does some wild camerawork and bending of the curvature
of the frame with his lens, for as ornately realized on film as this world is
we have the foolish dumb lovesick Mitya intruding upon its carefully
constructed perfection. Somehow or
another, composer Isaac Schwartz cranked out the elegantly orchestral scores
for both this and the aforementioned Dersu Uzala within the same year, a
testament to the composer’s ability to generate incredible music under duress.
The ensemble cast of young actors is generally good with His
Nickname is Beast actor Boris Tokarev as the dim witted foolish Mitya who
keeps trying to jump through flaming hula hoops to win the heart of Tatyana
Drubich’s unattainable beauty while newcomer Irina Malysheva is practically
waving her arms up and down in front of him.
Though a teenager, Tatyana Drubich even at this early young age clearly
understood body language and posture as scenes of her donning a bouquet of
flowers eating an apple reading a French novel or frolicking barefoot about the
dock near the riverside wave unintentional flirtation in the face of our idiot
hero. Obviously a very talented young
actress who would evolve into a veteran screen siren in the ensuing years, One
Hundred Days After Childhood all but canonizes her sultry confidence in the
movies.
--Andrew Kotwicki