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 ...
  
  
• 08.31.07
  Nonna Mordyukova
  Movies (0)

  Maybe I didn't give Brilliantovaya ruka quite enough credit. I only gave it a Netflix rating of 3, but there is an interesting part played by Nonna Modryukova. It took me a while to remember where I had seen her before. She was the Komissar in the movie Komissar, and did a great job in that film. Some googling informed me that she had also been in the film Vokzal dlya Dvoikh. Of course. Now I remember. She was the "Uncle" who gave that subversive little talk about the virtues of private ...
  
  

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