Proverka na Dorogakh
USSR,
1986, 98 min
Shown in 1987
CREDITS
- dir
-
Alexei Gherman
- scr
-
Eduard Volodarsky
- cam
-
Yasha Sklansky
- cast
-
Rolan Bykov, Vladimir Zamansky, Anatoly Solonitzin
- source
-
Goskino
-
COMMENTS
a.k.a. Checkpoint. Alexei Gherman in person.
OTHER
Gherman’s first film, based on novels by his father, seems on the surface a fairly convincing WWII drama. Its central figure is a Soviet sergeant who, having collaborated with the fascist occupiers, undergoes several tests to prove his loyalty to the partisan cause. Yet the authorities put the film on the shelf for 15 years and made Lenfilm Studios pay compensation to the state for money “misspent” on the project. Part of the reason may simply have been the film’s theme—the traitor becoming a hero, evidently an uncomfortably bold variation on the narrative formulas of Soviet cinema. But possibly even more disturbing was the unmistakable sense the film conveys, even within its restrictive war-movie plot, of a director more interested in human dramas than in preaching. The long-awaited release of Trial on the Road in 1986 appears to have been intended as a harbinger of the thaw which has had such a seemingly salubrious effect on the Soviet film world during the past year.
—Peter Scarlet
FACTOID #81
Anjelica Huston was the first recipient of the Piper-Heidsieck Award in 1991. When Huston received the prize from the champagne maker, she joked, “Can I drink it?”
