USSR
Shown in 1971
CREDITS
- dir
-
Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky
- scr
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Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky
- cam
-
Gueorgin Reberg, Evgueni Guslinkski
- cast
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Innokenti Smoktunovsky, Sergei Bondarchuk, Irina Kupchenko, Vladimir Zeldin, Irina Miroshnichenko, Irina Anishimov-Vulf
- prod co
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Mosfilm Studios
- source
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Mosfilm Studios
-
COMMENTS
Sergei Bondarchuk in person.
OTHER
The career of the ingenious young Soviet director, Konchalovsky, already acknowledged in this Festival over the years (The First Teacher, A Nest of Gentlefolk), continues to please and astonish the admirers of great cinema. The pitfalls of transposing the delicate atmosphere of Anton Checkhov's plays from stage to screen are overcome with exceptional success by Konchalovsky and, with perhaps Chekhov's most difficult work, Uncle Vanya, a “comedy” that moves to the cadences of tragedy. Although one might feel that this is a film for devotees of Chekhov, its merits present a welcome challenge to the uninitiated, because Konchalovsky had deliberately set out to treat the play with respect and also with a freshness of outlook experimenting with the possibilities of the cinematic medium—with light, color and sound used as magic wands. Russia of long ago, when the country gentry lived in pastoral comfort during summer days and the poor suffered in the numbing grip of Czarist indifference and pestilential poverty—this is the background of Uncle Vanya. Konchalovsky gives us these quick, brutal flashes of history and social background at once, with a montage of period photographs and, throughout the film, the camera becomes a calm, omniscient visitor to a country dacha, strolling though the house, eavesdropping or turning away at will to catch the drift of another conversation. The troupe of actors is splendid. Smoktunovsky's portrayal of Vanya captures the eccentricity and intimations of dwindling genius in one who has sacrificed his intelligence for someone else's career. In terms of character delineation and profound histrionic insight, his performance here is as astounding as his superb enactment of Hamlet. As Doctor Astrov, the great actor-director (War and Peace) Sergei Bondarchuk is brilliant, a tormented, emotional man, thwarted by an inability to love and live to the fullest in the amount of life left to him. These two artists ennoble Checkhov's words and their fellow players are equally inspired, humbled by the playwright's spell of immortality.
—Albert Johnson
FACTOID #177
In 2000 animator Faith Hubley was the recipient of the Persistence of Vision Award. One year later, her daughter Emily appeared at the Festival with her bandmates, Yo La Tengo, to perform a score accompanying the silent underwater films of Jean Painlevé.
