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| Images Courtesy of Mosfilm |
The Khruschev Thaw, as it were, represented a brief period
in the Soviet Union lasting from the mid-1950s to the 60s where censorship in
the country relaxed somewhat during Nikita Khruschev’s tenure following the
death of former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
A time of “de-Stalinization” which saw Khruschev visiting China,
Yugoslavia and even the United States, restrictions on the arts, culture and
consumption of foreign media was lifted with the emergence of national
television in the country. A number of
seismic sociopolitical changes radiated through the country until Khruschev was
succeeded by Leonid Brezhnev who swiftly rolled back the Khruschev Thaw and the
cultural liberalization that influenced Soviet art at the time returned to its
previously censorial self.
During this brief period of more open artistic freedom and
creative expression within Soviet Russia, a distinctive Georgian-born
Soviet-Russian cult filmmaker named Marlen Khutsiev emerged into the
then-transformative Soviet cinematic landscape with a trilogy of films that all
but captured on celluloid with empirical evidence of the effects of the
Khruschev Thaw on the general Russian public.
Spanning from 1956 with his debut feature Spring on Zarechnaya Street
to his 1965 postwar drama I Am Twenty before culminating in his 1967
romantic drama July Rain, these timelessly modern ruminations on
contemporary Soviet Russian life represent the eventual 1986 People’s Artist of
the USSR at his most incisive and keen on the revolutionary shifts in the
country’s sociopolitical currents.
But Khutsiev’s work is more than just exemplar of the
Khruschev Thaw in Russian cinema history.
As it stands, all three films represent the country’s cinema at perhaps
its most overtly Westernized period, incorporating music, decor, fashion and
cultural customs previously absent from their films without ever losing sight
of their indigenousness. All three tales
of disillusioned characters at crossroads in an ever-changing world usually
hopelessly falling in and/or out of love while highlighting Russia’s modernity,
the director’s trio of films depicting students, poets, demobilized soldiers or
teachers earned Khutsiev numerous accolades at distinguished film festivals
including but not limited to Venice and Berlin.
Moreover, Khutsiev’s work was championed by such cinematic artists as
Federico Fellini and Jean-Luc Godard for his unfettered docudrama realism on
film and his Antonioni-esque scenery of characters moving through distinctly
Soviet architecture.
Sadly however the poster child emblematic of the Khruschev
Thaw himself became a target of Khruschev’s ire who banned I Am Twenty outright
before censors cut several minutes from the film and the release of July
Rain symbolically marked the end of the Thaw altogether. While Khutsiev was never branded a dissident
by Soviet authorities, the director’s output stagnated for almost fourteen
years while he was busy teaching master classes before quietly resurfacing to
direct two more features. Though his
last film was in 1992 and the director retired altogether before his untimely
death in 2019, in recent years renewed interest in the oeuvre of the 1986
People’s Artist of the USSR came about with Mosfilm’s restoration and 4K video
upload of July Rain. Though
remaining mostly unknown in the United States outside of film festivals, the work
of Marlen Khutsiev stands as some of the finest examples of modern Soviet
cinema the country has ever known and is all but ripe for rediscovery by
adventurous filmgoers. With this, lets
dive into three indelible films by one of Russia’s most overlooked artistic
home-runners.
Spring on Zarechnaya Street (1956)
1950s Russia in a small industrial working village marks the
arrival of Tatyana Levchenko (Nina Ivanova) who takes up a position within the city
teaching the Russian language and literature to eighth grade students as well
as adults. During her tenure, a boisterous
and rambunctious troublemaker named Sasha Savchenko (Nikolai Rybnikov) who
works as a steel-maker, repeatedly disrupts and trolls the classroom while hitting
on his new teacher. Swiftly rebuffing
his advances and even rebuking the young man, Sasha is initially perplexed by
the rejection having been the local ladies’ man but soon grows self-conscious
of his own meager educational background and skills set and starts to resent
Tatyana. Moreover, he mistakes her
friendship with engineer Krushenkov (Gennadi Yukhtin) as romantic and he stops
going to her class when he concludes he’s fallen madly in love with the teacher,
a situation further complicated by his newfound inability to pass his certification
test due to stopping class attendance.
Initially penned by Khutsiev in full for Odessa Film Studio
before the project was rejected and had to be retooled by the co-author of his
thesis film Feliks Mironer, Spring on Zarechnaya Street proved to be a
starting point not only for Khutsiev but for his cast and crew as well. Introducing the new screen talents of
Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography graduates Yuri Belov, Nikolai Rybnikov
and Gennadi Yukhtin as well as the street casting choice of non-actress Nina
Ivanova as the titular teacher, the ensemble piece shot in 1.33:1 academy ratio
by two cinematographers Pyotr Todorovsky and Radomir Vasilevsky is a handsomely
composed piece that is as interested in the characters and story as it is in the
machinations of the terrain. While
ostensibly a quasi-forbidden love story, Khutsiev’s film functions as a
snapshot of then-contemporary Russia in the throes of the Khruschev Thaw.
Showing off much of Zaporozhye with factory scenes taking
place at the Zaporizhstal and Dneprospetsstal plants as well as the high-school
classrooms of Pavlo-Kichkas, the Dubovaya Roschcha park, the district military
enlistment office and even the Palace of Culture of the aluminum plant, Spring
on Zarechnaya Street functions as a dramatic romantic travelogue of sorts. For residents in the area, including Grigory
Pometun who assisted Nikolai Rybnikov in developing his character before
becoming a successful steel-maker himself, the film was a mirrored reflection of
the shifting social mores of the time where people used to routine suddenly felt
the world drop out from under them.
Though trained on the characters, Khutsiev and his cameramen take such
keen account of the surroundings including factory smokestacks adorning the
film’s opening credits that it feels almost like a tour with Khutsiev as our
guide.
Filmed in 1953 before being approved and released three
years later, Spring on Zarechnaya Street went on to become one of the
most popular Soviet Union film releases of 1956 and was only just barely
succeeded by the Italian film A Husband for Anna. A year later at the VI Festival of Youth and
Students in 1957 in Moscow, the film took home the bronze medal. Though some have contested the film complies
with the conventions of the romantic drama, Khutsiev’s camera and his formally
brilliant use of editing which allows for scenes of characters moving through
contemporary Russia marked the emergence of a major Soviet screen talent who
let his films breathe and radiate rather than simply moving onto the next
scene. A movie about the gulf between sophisticated
intelligentsia and brick-and-mortar working individuals and their coexistence, one
of the strengths of Khutsiev’s aesthete is how he leaves things open ended so
in a way we have to draw our own conclusions and place ourselves in the shoes
of the film’s protagonists. All in all,
one of the major bullet points of the Khruschev Thaw and a stunning debut from
one of Russia’s greatest directors.
I Am Twenty (1965)
Just a few years after the breakout success of Spring on Zarechnaya
Street and following the release of his 1958 postwar drama Two Fyodors,
Marlen Khutsiev began working on what would become not only the director’s most
famous film but also his most controversial film that attracted the unwanted
attention of Soviet authorities and marked the beginning of the end of the
Khruschev Thaw: the near-Neorealist docudrama production of Ilyich’s Gate or
Lenin’s Guard before eventually being referred to as simply I Am Twenty. Originally withheld theatrical release by Khruschev
who called out Khutsiev’s film for being “unacceptable” for “thinking that
young people ought to decide for themselves how to live, without asking their
elders for counsel and help”, the film was completed in 1962 before being heavily
cut and released in 1965.
A
slice-of-life promenade through then-contemporary Moscow involving three young-demobilized
soldiers who share a friendship and kinship in that their fathers were killed
in the war, the film turns this trio loose in modern Russia which becomes
something of a more incisive continuation of the fixations the director began
rolling out with Spring on Zarechnaya Street. Simply watching these youths (cast by
non-actors as well as directors including cameos from Andrei Tarkovsky and
Andrei Konchalovsky) in their element as they traverse through dance parties
set to rock and roll music, the film is an apolitical snapshot of burgeoning
ennui within everyday life in 1960s Soviet Russia.
Sergei (Valentin Popov) just got back to Moscow from a tour
of military duty where he reunites with his friends after landing a local job
at the factory his dad worked at.
Hanging out with his buddies Nikolai (Nikolay Gubenko) and Slava
(Stanislav Lyubshin), he pursues a relationship with a young woman and things
seem content for Sergei. That is until a
vague, implacable sensation of existential crisis begins to soak in the bones
of the three men who seem to enjoy themselves but grow increasingly dissatisfied
with the cards they’ve been dealt. Meanwhile
problems on the new job begin cropping up and the once upbeat and exuberant
Sergei finds his friendships slipping away as he himself becomes disillusioned
with the world he’s living in despite the impeccable craftsmanship and skill
with which director Marlen Khutsiev and his female camerawoman Margarita
Pilikhina who render Moscow with stunning beauty.
Tinged with elements of the French New Wave with respect to
its jagged editing rhythm, lack of a conventional plot, overlapping dialogue,
street casting and the number of scenes where the camera wanders off to gaze
over Soviet architecture and iconography, I Am Twenty takes the promise
of Spring on Zarechnaya Street and strips it down even further to its
pure essence. While that film had a
conventional narrative structure involving a black-and-white story of romance
that captured the vibe of the Khruschev Thaw in microcosm, I Am Twenty is
even less formally grounded and at times veers on abstraction. Presenting the city and its residents as
ordinary citizens trying to live out their lives almost like a documentary,
sometimes resorting to handheld cinematography that invariably forecasted the
arresting visuals of Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba, the film becomes
something of an experience that draws you further into the mindset of what the
Khruschev Thaw opened up for Russia than perhaps any other film up to that
point.
Though sadly widely attacked in its day before being heavily
censored until 1989 when the original full version reappeared, I Am Twenty nevertheless
went on to become Marlen Khutsiev’s most famous film if not his signature masterpiece. Fans of Andrei Tarkovsky will be delighted at
the director’s appearance onscreen as a partying youth who takes a slap to the
face while western filmgoers new to Soviet cinema will be enamored with how
distinctly mod the film seems. From the
rock-and-roll soundtrack to the conversations to the presentation of modern
Moscow, I Am Twenty in the years since has amassed numerous accolades
and is critically regarded as perhaps one of the greatest Soviet Russian films
of the decade and further cemented Marlen Khutsiev as a keen observer of the
idiosyncrasies and minutiae that became synonymous with the Khruschev Thaw
whether the man who started that cultural revolution liked it or not.
July Rain (1967)
After the fallout of I Am Twenty which drove the writer-director
into near artistic silence, Marlen Khutsiev went to work for Soviet film giant
Mosfilm in what would become his first Sovscope 35mm widescreen production
while invariably twisting the screws of sociopolitical change a little further
than before right at the tail end of the Khruschev Thaw with his sublime and
ethereal romantic drama July Rain.
As with I Am Twenty, the city of Moscow itself becomes a central
character in the story involving a young modern couple that separates when the woman
in the relationship finds herself at odds with the man, the film furthers the
director’s regard for modernity and in particular Western ideals seeping into
Soviet Russia while openly welcome such seismic sociopolitical changes. If I Am Twenty depicts Russia’s youth
as lost in ennui, then July Rain depicts that same youth as finding their
way.
Young modern intellectual Lena (Evgeniya Uralova) and her
hunky beau Volodya (Aleksandr Belyavsky) are happily engaged to be married and
spend most of their time writing, mingling with other disillusioned youngens at
group parties and enjoying picnics at lakefront shores. But somewhere along the way, however, Lena
experiences her own existential crisis and decides Volodya isn’t quite who he
seems and she breaks off the engagement and leaves him. Soon after she begins her personal journey
searching for her own identity amid other artistes and intellectuals equally
fraught with uncertainty about their futures.
During a fateful rainstorm opening the film, she meets a young man named
Zhenya (Ilya Bylinkin) whom she begins an acquaintanceship with that furthers the
dissolution of her engagement to Volodya.
A film that all but shows off modern Russia with even
greater clarity and variety than perhaps the Soviet Kinopanorama that helped
make Cinerama’s Russian Adventure, one of the first things viewers
notice is the soundtrack which opens on Georges Bizet’s Carmen as
Khutsiev and his cinematographer German Lavrov showcase the architecture and
power infrastructure of Moscow. Later
still, the very overtly French song La Vie En Rose sung famously by
Louis Armstrong in English appears over a montage of wealthy socialites being
valeted and greeted entrance to what appears to be an expensive
restaurant. Completely embracing the
full breadth of what the Khruschev Thaw had to offer, at times Khutsiev’s
camera follows the actors walking around and then starts to veer away towards
power lines and building rooftops before panning back down to the cast. If this isn’t enough to make this perhaps the
Frenchiest Soviet film ever, characters at one point break into the dance that signified
Jean-Luc Godard’s Band of Outsiders.
The ensemble cast is solid with Evgeniya Uralova and
Aleksandr Belyavsky making this modern couple appropriately sociologically
advanced characters representing the future of contemporary Russia and Ilya
Bylinkin as Zhenya helps provide something of a loose friendship with the film’s
heroine. Mostly though, Moscow is the
main character with more than a few passages that don’t move the plot forward
but helps soak in the flavor of the city in the viewer. Even more of an overtly Westernized Soviet
film than I Am Twenty with greater emphasis on the lack of a
conventional narrative plot, instead focusing on characters finding themselves
in an ever-changing world, watching July Rain is a bit like taking a
vacation with friends in a nice scenic spot.
If you’ve never been to the city of Moscow, July Rain is as close
to it a modern cinematic viewer is likely to get.
As with I Am Twenty, Soviet authorities had their
guns drawn for Khutsiev and the film’s theatrical release was extremely limited
with only half the population getting to see it in cinemas. Moreover, the critical establishment let
loose on Khutsiev, blasting his “weak dramaturgy” and “pretentious directing”
and the director’s output stagnated for over a decade. Considered by many to be exemplar of the tail
end of the Khruschev Thaw that never got the attention it deserved in its day, July
Rain while blasted eventually did come around with filmgoers and is now
regarded as one of the quintessential Soviet Russian films of the late 1960s
and debatably one of the director’s finest offerings. With its graceful camera movement, its documentary
glimpses of modernity, and a farewell to the era that helped define it, July
Rain is impeccably beautiful if not the director’s prettiest film in his
illustrious career.
Though met initially with critical and authoritative hostilities,
it is safe to say judging from this loose trilogy of films chronicling the
Khruschev Thaw that the 1986 People’s Artist of Russia winner more than
absolutely deserved the long-delayed accolades he eventually would earn.
One of the country’s greatest filmmakers whose legacy remains
overshadowed by Andrei Tarkovsky, Elem Klimov, Andrei Konchalovsky, Aleksandr
Ptushko or Aleksandr Rou, the oeuvre of Marlen Khutsiev is indelible to any
worldly cinephile’s consciousness and represents the Soviet Union perhaps at
its most modern and most plainly Westernized on film. Moreover, Khutsiev serves as both storyteller
and tour guide taking domestic and foreign viewers on a journey through Russia
at a time when the culture of the country was on fertile artistic grounds and
the populace opened their eyes and ears wide to the open world all around them.
--Andrew Kotwicki
