And now he was in the mood for a frontier western film, but set in the eastern territories, and made as a propaganda piece, not for American manifest destiny and libertarianism, but for Soviet manifest destiny and socialism. Stalin, it would seem, chose to look at it as a good piece of propaganda, since he reportedly liked the movie – and since Dovzhenko was allowed to continue filming his cloaked pro-Ukrainian films, including Shchors (1939), about the Ukrainian Bolshevik hero Nikolai Shchors, who fought against the Ukrainian government in the 1919 revolutionary war. The pacifist epic Arsenal questioned Stalin’s violent methods in Ukraine, and Earth was – at least superficially – a love song to the collectivisation of agriculture. The film in question was the rather influential The Andromeda Nebula, where Stolyarov played the heroic character of Dar Veter – sometimes credited for inspiring George Lucas to name his Star Wars (1977) villain Darth Vader. When confronted with the betrayal, Vasili calmly follows Stepan through the deep forest until they reach a beautiful opening.
If Stalin was in a bad mood, the culture minister would always screen him a western. Not much sci-fi in this vaguely futuristic tale, but a treat for lovers of poetic cinematography. It is like a fantasy, a utopian dream, that people fight over, that the protagonist kills his best friend over, that nations and people kill each other for. Two get away, but Stepan manages to find one eventually – and he is a pitiful sight. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Cinematography: Eduard Tisse, Mikhail Gindin, Nikolai Smirnov. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account.
Like in his previous films, the composition of the shots are simply sublime, and many frames look like artful still photos. Stalin loved film – he was crazy about film. In a marvellous montage we then follow the young Chukchi as he travels by foot and skis through the magnificent Siberian forests, singing a hypnotic Chukchi song, until he finally reaches the spot of Aerograd, only to meet with a military parade and Stepan making a noble speech about the wonderful city that will be built there for the glory of the Soviet people and a bright future. "Aerograd" is the name of a new Soviet outpost on Pacific coast near the mouth of Amur river.
Aerograd is a new town with a strategically located airfield of vital interest to the government. And most of all he loved westerns – especially those by John Ford starring John Wayne.
It is an adventure story set in the Soviet Far East in the future. Aerograd. Other well-known films were Ivan (1932); Aerograd (also known as Frontier, 1935), dealing with the establishment of an airfield in a remote Siberian outpost; Shchors (1939), the story of a Ukrainian revolutionary commander, which won Dovzhenko the first of two Stalin prizes (1941, 1949); and Michurin (1946; Life in Blossom). In search of the last Japanese spy, Stepan to his utter disappointment discovers that he has been harboured by his oldest and best friend, the old fur farmer Vasili (Stepan Shkurat). Dovzhenko was by this time regarded as ”the poet of the screen”, and his Ukraine trilogy consisting of Zvenigora and Arsenal (1928), as well as Earth (1930), had made him famous outside the Soviet Union as an artist on par with masters like Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin and Dziga Vertov. Of the many subtle sci-fi films I’ve reviewed on this blog, Aerograd is without doubt the one that’s come the closest to getting the axe. Change ).
The film was even released in the US under the title Frontier. Combined with the bizarre proclaiming style of the film, another point of interest regarding cloaked criticism of Stalinism is the idea of Aerograd itself. – It is just a suggestion, and of course you are free to do whatever you want, I don’t wish to pressure you. A lively and informative new podcast for kids that the whole family will enjoy! Not only did the government take control of the film industry, just like in Nazi Germany. The thing is, like so many other of the great filmmakers, authors and artists during the Soviet era, Dovzhenko wasn’t a Stalinist. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account.
But on the other hand, Vasili’s death is played out with such a sadness that you can’t help but feel frustrated over the pure radicalism of Stepan’s political conviction – is any political cause really worth killing your brother over? Elena Maximova, one of the Old Believers, would also turn up in a sci-fi, but unlike the propagandistic and moody The Andromeda Nebula, her film Eta Veselyaya Planeta (This Merry Planet, 1973) was a musical comedy aimed at children, about aliens visiting Earth for New Year’s celebration. Josef Stalin, on the other hand, considered himself not only the greatest film critic ever born, but also the greatest movie maker ever born.
Along with Lev Kuleshov, (The Death Ray, 1924, review), Dziga Vertov (Man with a Movie Camera, 1929) and Sergei Eisenstein (Battleship Potemkin, 1925), he was considered as one of the pioneers of the Soviet montage theory, and often laboured with quick, hypnotic editing, bold camera moves and unusual angles. Well, most certainly. Not much sci-fi in this vaguely futuristic tale, but a treat for lovers of poetic cinematography.
– Here, he says, and stops, reassembling his clothes, preparing to die with dignity. Dovzhenko directing the film Ivan in 1932. Frothing and spitting he pulls out a notebook and starts laying forth all the numbers of beasts, minerals, gold and wood that is contained in the area. So blatant is the unquestioning praise for the flawless stature and moral of the Soviet partisans, and the utterly demeaning portrait of the Japanese, that knowing Dovzhenko’s past, the film almost seems like a satire of propaganda films.
Small and wily, with bulging eyes and spectacles, sweating and panting he starts tearing at his clothes when he is cornered, like a wild animal, informing Stepan that he does not care if he is killed, since he has planted dynamite in a mine. Aerograd (Russian: Аэроград, also referred to as Air City or Frontier) is a 1935 Soviet adventure film by Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko, a coproduction between Mosfilm and VUFKU.It is an adventure story set in the Soviet Far East in the future. Historians have found Stalin’s handwritten notes where he has himself written cute little lyrics about how a happy melody cheers the soul for some of these films.
But Aerograd was everything but his usual fare, for many reasons. With a script like this, any director trying to make a modern – even by the standards of the day – film would have failed disastrously. The lines spoken are Shakespearean, poetical proclamations, sometimes spoken directly to the camera, which lends the film its overtly propagandistic tone. But still the film did make the cut, since it can very well be interpreted as a futuristic take on the frontier myth, all leading up to the construction of a new utopian city on the western shores of the Pacific Ocean. Some tracking shots of people moving speechlessly through the woods go on for an eternity. But so critical was he of the process (if not the idea), that his father got thrown out of a farm collective after its opening night.
Dovzhenko’s wife Yuliya Solntseva is best known to friends of Soviet sci-fi as the titular Queen of Mars in the 1924 film Aelita.
The director of photography on Aerograd was none less than Eduard Tisse, perhaps the most celebrated cinematographer in Soviet history. Stepan declares: But Stalin took complete personal control of the movies in the thirties.
( Log Out / Aerograd was not a film of his choice, and the Siberian setting saw Dovzhenko out of his comfort zone. Also, if you don’t speak Russian and can’t find a subtitled version, the watching may be fairly dull, as there are a lot of talking heads and long monologues. Born to Ukrainian peasants, Dovzhenko graduated from teachers college and became a political cartoonist for a Ukrainian newspaper. Aerograd on mubi.com. Song lyrics: Viktor Gusev. The film was commissioned Josef Stalin. Emotional intensity and mystical symbolism often took precedence over narrative structure in his films, many of which concerned the Russian Civil War (1918–20) and the
Witness my sorrow. Aleksandr Dovzhenko’s films include Earth, Arsenal, Zvenigora, The End of St. Petersburg…
Russia is a federal multiparty republic with a bicameral legislative body; its head of state is the president, and the head of government is the prime minister. The Old Believers are here portrayed as enemies of the Soviet Union, conspiring with the evil Japanese to prevent the building of Aerograd.
But dissent brews within the community, which also consists of a group of ”Old Believers”.
Learn how your comment data is processed. Sound: Nikolai Timartsev. After Dovzhenko’s death in 1956, she completed many of his films from screenplays and notes.
Propaganda, you say? USSR, 1935.
∗∗∗∗∗∗∗∗∗∗ (5/10) A daunting, but visually stunning, piece of bolshevik propaganda, Alexandr Dovzhenko's 1935 film Aerograd is basically an operatic Soviet version of a John Wayne frontier film.
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