The Archives

• 07.25.08
  Nonna Mordyukova remembered
  Movies (0)

  I haven't found any good obituaries in U.S. newspapers for Nonna Mordukova, who died earlier this month. The one in the Washington Post pointed out that she appeared in some government propaganda films: "Throughout a career that spanned half a century, Ms. Mordyukova appeared in dozens of films, including some textbook examples of Soviet propaganda." Well, everyone knows that there were a lot of Soviet propaganda films. But what was surprising to me when I started watching Russian movies was the parts that were subversive of Soviet propaganda, including three roles I can think of that ...
  
  
• 12.25.07
  Idi i smotri
  Movies (0)

  "Come and See" isn't what I would pick for a Christmas movie, but it's what we had at home from Netflix that still needed watching. I didn't expect much from it other than "war is horrible" and "the germans were evil" and that's pretty much what we get. In showing terrible brutality and suffering, it avoids dealing with the really scary aspects of war such as one gets from an exhibit like the one labelled "A Monstrous Mediocrity" over at Suicide of the West. However, one thing the movie shares with that exhibit is a Nazi soldier taking ...
  
  
• 12.18.07
  Komissar
  Movies (0)

  We watched Komissar several months ago; now I'm watching (and re-watching) the interviews on the "Bonus Material" DVD from Netflix. The most puzzling one was actress Nonna Mordukova being harshly critical of Aleksandr Askoldov for not making any more films. This, after learning on that same DVD how the Soviet cultural authorities had not only banned Askoldov's film, but destroyed it (except for the one copy that somehow got filed away), forbade him to make any more films, forbade him to assist in the making of any more, got him kicked out of the Communist Party, prosecuted him as a social parasite, ...
  
  

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