ALEXANDER FEDOROV Record holders of the banned Soviet cinema (1951-1991) in the mirror of film criticism and viewers' opinions Fedorov, A. Record holders of the banned Soviet cinema (1951- 1991) in the mirror of film criticism and viewers' opinions. Moscow: “Information for all”. 2021. 102 p. The monograph provides a wide panorama of the opinions of film critics and viewers about full-length feature Soviet films (1951-1991), which were banned for a long time (over five years) from being shown in cinemas and on television or stopped while filming. For higher education teachers, students, graduate students, researchers, film critics and historians, journalists, as well as a wide range of readers interested in the history of cinematography, the problems of cinema, film criticism and film sociology. COPYRIGHT © 2021 BY ALEXANDER FEDOROV [email protected] ALL RIGHT RESERVED. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 2 1 FEDOROV, ALEXANDER. 1954-. RECORD HOLDERS OF THE BANNED SOVIET CINEMA (1951-1991) IN THE MIRROR OF FILM CRITICISM AND VIEWERS' OPINIONS /ALEXANDER FEDOROV. INCLUDES BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES. 1. SOVIET MOVIES. 2. BANNED FILMS. 3. FILM STUDIES. 4. CINEMA. 5. USSR. 6. FILM CRITICISM. 7. SCREEN. 8. IDEOLOGY. 9. VIEWERS. 10. OPINIONS. 11. RUSSIA. 12. FILM HISTORY. 13. RUSSIAN CINEMA. 14. AUDIENCE. 15. JOURNALS. 2 Table of contents Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………………………….... 4 1. Record holders of the banned Soviet feature films (1951-1991), who have been on the "shelf" for over five years or stopped while filming………………………….. 9 2. Soviet full-length feature films (1951-1991), released only to the republican film distribution …………………………………………………………..69 Appendices ………………………………………………………………………………………………………..73 Stereotypes of the Soviet cinematographic image of the war and Valentin Vinogradov’s film "Eastern Corridor" (1966) ………………………………………74 Alexander Ivanov: “How I played a major role in the destroyed movie "The Moment of Truth" ("In August of 1944")".......………………………………………….. 81 Filmography ………………………………………………………………………………………………………86 About the author ………………………………………………………………………………………………..93 Refefence ……………………………………………………………….………………………………………… 97 3 Introduction The monograph provides a wide panorama of the opinions of film critics and viewers about full-length feature Soviet films (1951-1991), which were banned for a long time (over five years) from being shown in cinemas and on television or stopped while filming. The choice of just such a time interval (1951-1991) was due to the fact that in 1995 the book "Seized Movies" of Y. Margolit and V. Shmyrov was published, which gives a wide panorama of the banned and lost Soviet films of the 1920s – 1940s years (Margolit, Shmyrov, 1995). Certain parts of the text of the book "Record holders of the Forbidden Soviet Cinema (1951-1991) in the Mirror of Film Criticism and Viewers' Opinions" were preliminarily tested on Yandex platforms, the portals "Kinopressa.ru", "Kino-teater.ru" and Facebook (where the author often received good corrections and comments; in particular, I thank Sergey Kudryavtsev and Igor Arkadiev for constructive comments). Unfortunately, the number of viewers for the first year of demonstration is not available for all Soviet feature films. The number of millions of viewers in the first year of film distribution is given, according to a number of sources (Belenky, 2019; For Success!, 1967; 1968; Furikov, 1990; Kudryavtsev, 1998; What viewers are watching, 1987; 1988; 1989, Zemlyanukhin, Segida, 1996, etc.). Fragments of viewers' reviews on the portals Kino-teatr.ru, Kinopoisk, etc. are used to illustrate the views of the audience about certain films. This book includes only full-length feature films, since the banned Soviet short films (for example, "The Dinner Party" by Friedrich Ermler, "Entering the Sea" by Leonid Osyka, "Angel" by Andrey Smirnov, "Homeland of Electricity" by Larisa Shepitko), animation, documentaries – topic for a separate research... I also did not include in this publication the full-length feature films, which were initially released in wide cinema distribution, but then for various reasons (changes in the political and other conditions, bureaucratic voluntarism, emigration of directors or leading actors, etc.) were removed from the screens (“Silver dust" by A. Room,"49 days" , "Lebedev against Lebedev" by G. Gabai, etc.). Based on the criteria of a real exit on the Soviet screens of the 1950s – 1970s, it was necessary to refuse to include such films as "Man from Nowhere", "Thirty-three", "The Source", "The Last Swindler", "Short Meetings", "Boy and Girl” , “Adventures of a Dentist”, “Asya's Happiness” (“The Story of Asya Klyachina, Who Loved, But Did Not Marry”),“Pervorossians”, “Ave, vita!", "The way home", "We and our Mountains", "Hold on to the clouds" , "Ivanov boat" , "Long farewell" , "Love" , "Among gray stones" , "The Color of the Pomegranate", "Plea", "Autumn", "Mirror", "Stalker" and others, which, albeit the second or third screen (often in small circulation and for a short time), were still released in Soviet film distribution. The book also did not include such landmark films for Soviet cinema as "I am twenty years old" (1962, film distribution – 1965) and "Andrei Rublev" (1966, film distribution – 1971), "My friend Ivan Lapshin" (1982, film distribution – 1985 ), "Repentance" (1984, film distribution – 1987), released 3-5 years after their filming. The list of selected films – “shelf” record holders – was compiled on the assumption that they were not available to viewers for over five years (quite often this kind of prohibition lasted for two decades). In the course of writing this book, it turned out that sometimes the well-established information about the total prohibition of one or another Soviet film turned out to be false. So in many sources (Wikipedia, the portals "Kino-teater.ru", "Kinopoisk", etc.) it is still asserted that the drama of Kira Muratova "Long Farewell" (1971) did not appear on the 4 all-Union screen, since it was banned and lay on the "shelf" until 1987 perestroika. Similar information is contained even in such authoritative publications as “Our Cinema” (Kudryavtsev, 1998: 55), “Home Cinematheque. National cinema 1918-1996” (Zemlyanukhin, Segida, 1996: 127), "Cinema of Russia. Director's Encyclopedia" (Cinema of Russia..., 2010: 330). However, it is not. Here is what Natalya Ryazantseva, the author of the script for "Long Farewell", writes about this: “The picture came out in a small number of copies. Thanks to Gerasimov. And then she was suddenly removed from the screen in all cinemas by order. It did not last long ... There were more than five hundred copies” (Ryazantseva, 2008). However, "Long Farewell", apparently, was at the box office in 1971 not a day or two, but a much longer period, since as a result of a survey of readers of the magazine "Soviet Screen" this picture by Kira Muratova was recognized as the worst film of the year: 27.3 % of the viewers who saw him recognized him as bad, 7.3% – weak, 30.9% – mediocre, 21.8% – good and only 7.2% – excellent (Competition-71. Results, 1972: 19). Thus, "Long Farewell" was in the Soviet film distribution in 1971, and printed in not such a small circulation – over 500 copies (by the way, in the reference book "Home Cinematheque. National Cinema 1918-1996" it is noted that the circulation of this picture was 535 copies, but at the same time, as I have already indicated above, it is erroneously asserted that, despite this, the film was not released in the 1970s) (Zemlyanukhin, Segida, 1996: 127). But the circulation of 500-535 copies is quite comparable with the circulation figures of such famous films as "Tenderness" by E. Ishmukhamedov (508 copies and 9.3 million viewers in the first year of screening in cinemas), "Girl and Echo" by A. Zhebrunas (501 copy and 5.8 million viewers), “I come from childhood” by V. Turov (504 copies and 7.6 million viewers), “I am 20 years old” by M. Khutsiev (535 copies and 8.8 million viewers per episode) , "Blue Notebook" by L. Kulidzhanov (483 copies and 8.5 million viewers), "A plot for a short story" by S. Yutkevich (420 copies and 8.1 million viewers), "Steppe" by S. Bondarchuk (552 copies and 3.2 million viewers), “The Woodpecker Doesn't Have a Headache” by D. Asanova (544 copies and 6.6 million viewers), “Flights in Dreams and in Reality” by R. Balayan (502 copies and 6.4 million viewers), “The Fox Hunt” by V. Abdrashitov (499 copies and 5.9 million viewers), “Valentina” by G. Panfilov (496 copies and 5.4 million viewers), “The Voice” by I. Averbakh (533 copies and 2.3 million viewers). And this is much more circulation of such outstanding films as "July Rain" by M. Khutsiev (164 copies and 3 million viewers), "Long Happy Life" by G. Shpalikov (89 copies and 1.5 million viewers), "Adventures of a Dentist" by E. Klimov (78 copies and 0.5 million viewers), “Pervorossians” by E. Shifers and A. Ivanov (32 copies and 0.5 million viewers), “Andrei Rublev” by A. Tarkovsky (277 copies and 2.9 million viewers) ), "Ivan’s boat" by M. Osepian (197 copies and 1.0 million viewers at the box office in 1974), "There lived a Songbird" by O. Ioseliani (320 copies and 2.6 million viewers), "Pirosmani" by G. Shengelai (209 copies and 1.5 million viewers), "Plea" by T. Abuladze's (179 copies and 1.2 million viewers), "The Color of the Pomegranate" by S. Parajanov (143 copies and 1.1 million viewers), “Sing a song, poet...” by S. Urusevsky (265 copies and 2.2 million viewers), "Autumn" by A. Smirnov (261 copies, 9.8 million viewers), "Mirror" by A. Tarkovsky (84 copies and 2.2 million viewers),"Stalker" by A. Tarkovsky (193 copies and 4.3 million viewers), "Funny People!" by M. Schweitzer (215 copies and 1.6 million viewers), “Farewell” by E. Klimov (270 copies and 1.3 million viewers), “Parade of the Planets” by V. Abdrashitov (263 copies and 2.2 million viewers) , "My friend Ivan Lapshin" by A.