Paradoxes of fate of director Dovzhenko: Because of what "Homer of World Cinema" was on a short leash with Stalin

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Nowadays, you probably won't meet a person who would watch movies. Alexandra Dovzhenko, but almost everyone knows the famous name of the great director. He was not only a hostage of a tragic creative fate, a romantic who succumbed to the sweet speeches of power and was trampled by it, power, he was a man who tried to fit into the cruel false reality of his era. Italian filmmakers called him the "Homer of World Cinema", in Ukraine - wrapped in the halo of a holy martyr, he was compared to Shevchenko. Well, the official authorities of the USSR forbade him to live or even bury him in his native land. These and many other paradoxical facts in the life of the genius of world cinema - further in our review.

He was a recognized and unrecognized genius at the same time, and his biography is so confused and altered that it is no longer possible to understand where the truth is and where the fiction is. It is undeniable that Dovzhenko is a world famous Ukrainian brand that has gone down in the history of world cinema. However, for many it still remains a mystery how a native of a poor Ukrainian village “forced” the whole world to watch his films and call the Kiev Film Studio by his name? Curiously, his "Ukrainian trilogy", especially the last part - "Earth", is studied in all film schools in the world, reckoning among the few brilliant and eternal films.

Somehow renowned filmmaker, writer, screenwriter of the Soviet era - Alexander Dovzhenko wrote: "Look back less often - the sun never rises from behind", and this was probably the great wisdom of a genius … Therefore, in order to understand at least a little the life and creative twists and turns of Alexander Petrovich, you need to dig deeper, stirring up the biography of the famous director.

Childhood

There are always many secrets and dramatic events around the famous and glorified, probably they are the ones who form a special personality, tempering the character, developing a worldview and giving inspiration for creativity. So, Dovzhenko, literally from the first day of his life, already asked a riddle to historians. He himself celebrated his birthday on September 11, however, in the metric records, his real date of birth is September 10, 1894.

Dovzhenko was born in a large rural family on the farm Vyunishche in the Sosnitsky district of the Chernigov province. The most impressive childhood memory of the future director was a funeral. The fact is that out of 14 children born in the family, only two managed to survive - Alexander Petrovich himself and his sister Polina. And the fact that four of the director's brothers died on the same day due to an unknown illness is shocking. His childhood was spent under maternal tears. Later he writes about his mother:

Adolescence and youth

Although Alexander's parents were illiterate, they wished for a better life for their only son. Therefore, in order to give the heir an education, the father sold one of the seven acres of his land. Dovzhenko studied at the Sosnitskaya elementary school, and then at the elementary school. Studying was easy for the boy, and he was an excellent student. In 1911, a graduate of the school entered the Glukhov Teachers' Institute, and not because he dreamed of becoming a teacher, but because only in such an institution a young man from a poor family had the right to receive education.

After graduating from the institute in 1914, Dovzhenko was sent to the Zhytomyr primary school, where, due to the lack of teachers, he was forced to teach natural history and gymnastics, geography and physics, history and drawing.

Finding yourself in a seething revolutionary time

During the years of teaching, young Dovzhenko became an activist of the Ukrainian national liberation movement. Therefore, the events of 1917, which overthrew the autocracy, were greeted by him with joy, with the belief that now

The young man decides to move to Kiev in order to continue his education. The Kiev period of Dovzhenko's life is literally full of paradoxes. In the fall of 1917, he became a student at the Kiev Commercial Institute, having nothing to do with economics. Therefore, he was a bad student, but a good organizer. Being actively involved in social and political activities, he becomes the chairman of the community of the institute.

White spots in the biography of a filmmaker

The most mysterious time in Dovzhenko's life is the end of 1917, the beginning of 1923. During this period, biographical information is very contradictory and came down to us in fits and starts, according to contemporaries. Dovzhenko himself said little about this. During the civil war, he fought as a volunteer in the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic, and according to some sources, in the detachment of the Black Haidamaks, he participated in the assault on the Kiev Arsenal plant. When the Bolsheviks came to power, the troops of the UPR were forced to retreat beyond Zhitomir. And Dovzhenko returned to Kiev and continued his studies. Only now, along with his studies at the Faculty of Economics, he becomes a student of the newly formed Ukrainian Academy of Arts. And as a result, Dovzhenko was not able to graduate from either the first or the second university.

At the beginning of 1920, Alexander Petrovich, having joined the ranks of the Communist Party of the Bolsheviks, holds various positions: secretary of the Kiev provincial department of public education, commissar of the Theater. Taras Shevchenko, head of the art department in Kiev. But a year later, fearing a "purge" in the ranks of the party, Dovzhenko, with the assistance of friends, was sent to diplomatic work - to Poland, where he headed the mission for the repatriation and exchange of prisoners of war. And in 1922 he was transferred to the post of secretary of the consular department of the USSR Trade Mission to Germany.

Expulsion from the party

An interesting fact is that Dovzhenko was a member of the party for only a couple of years, and after being expelled, he died non-partisan, which was out of the ordinary by the standards of Soviet times.

The director was expelled from the ranks of the party in 1923, without going through another purge, when all party members had to confirm their membership. The documents for confirmation, sent by him by mail from Berlin, were lost somewhere in the offices of party workers. Much later, in 1925, they were found, but despite this, the local party bureaucrat demanded that Dovzhenko submit a new application with a request to be admitted to the party. And he, who fundamentally disagreed with this unfair demand, never wrote a statement. Therefore, until the end of his life, Alexander Petrovich remained non-party, although at one time he was very worried about the loss of his party card.

Dovzhenko - cartoonist

Curiously, Dovzhenko's creative nature manifested itself initially in the visual arts. Living abroad, the future director became interested in graphics and caricature. He even studied for about a year at the private art school of the professor-expressionist Willie Haeckel, where he mastered the palette of pictorial expressionism.

In the summer of 1923, he was recalled from Germany, and after returning to Ukraine, Dovzhenko settled in Kharkov, the then capital of Ukraine. There he immediately finds himself among Ukrainian literary figures and begins to work as an illustrator under the pseudonym "Sashko" in the editorial office of the newspaper "Izvestia VUTSIK", appearing periodically in other publications. By the way, over time as a cartoonist, he became a fairly well-known artist.

Dovzhenko cinematographer

It should be noted that the official history of Soviet cinema began in the summer of 1919, when the Council of People's Commissars adopted a decree on the nationalization of cinema in Soviet Russia. And since the young Dovzhenko always strived for something new and progressive, he began to rotate in cinematic circles. Soon, seriously carried away by the new art, and completely moved to Odessa. It was there in 1925, having neither experience nor education in a new field, he began to work at the Odessa Film Factory as an intern on the "Red Army" propaganda film. And later he declared himself as a genius writer who discovered such a new genre as a film story.

He literally "falls ill" with cinema and, having completely switched to cinema, tries himself in directing. Dovzhenko planned to devote himself exclusively to the genre of comic and comedy films in the future. But not everything turned out as it was thought.

The road to the top of glory

In 1926, Alexander shot his first short film - "The Berry of Love", and a little later he loudly declared himself a full-length film - "Zvenigora", where in an unusual manner he combined lyrics, and revolution, and folk motives. It was followed by - "Arsenal" and "Earth", created according to the canons of silent cinema.

In those years, the film "Earth" (1930) became the pinnacle of the director's career. It was sold out on big screens in Holland, Belgium, Greece, Argentina, Mexico, Canada, USA. Filmmakers included Dovzhenko's film in the top hundred of the best film works, and after the Brussels international referendum, it was added to the list of 12 best films in the world history of the film industry at that time.

She was studied and continues to be studied at film faculties at universities around the world, as an example of poetic cinema. However, only the Ukrainian audience understands that there is absolutely no lyrics in this film, but there is a harsh and terrible truth of life.

The film, shot in 1930, was one of the first at the Kiev Film Factory (later the A. Dovzhenko Film Studio). Its plot is dedicated to the topic of collectivization, which is incredibly difficult for Ukrainians, which, of course, has become a disaster for the villagers. Their dream of ownership of land was destroyed, their way of life was shattered by the realities of Soviet land decrees.

And we must pay tribute to the young director - he conveyed the whole gamut of feelings experienced by people who have lost their most precious thing - earth, on the screen in a black-and-white silent film so piercingly and accurately that the picture was removed from the box office in the USSR nine days after the premiere. Of course, before the release of the film on the wide screen, censorship made an incredible number of edits, but this did not help either. The film literally blew up the audience, such a burning topic was raised in it. It was after such an incredible success with the public and a resounding failure among critics that Dovzhenko acquired his famous gray hair - from the blow he suffered, the director turned gray literally in a matter of days.

At the zenith of glory, in friendship with Stalin and "under the hood" of the special services

In the 30s, Dovzhenko, avoiding repression, moved to Moscow under the patronage of Stalin himself. He will leave Ukraine, not knowing that he will never be able to return back - even after death.

And in 1932, the most terrible thing in the fate of the director began, namely his warm and trusting relationship with the father of nations, which was initiated by Dovzhenko himself. He addressed a letter to the leader, where he asked to support his first sound film "Ivan" and to suppress the attacks of critics. Of course, Stalin supported. By the way, it was one of the first Soviet sound films to receive a prize at the Venice Film Festival.

Then Alexander Petrovich made another request - to help with the filming of Aerograd. This time, the leader personally received Dovzhenko and took the filming of the film under his personal control. Inspired, Dovzhenko rejoiced, not realizing that this was the beginning of the end - closeness with Stalin had not yet benefited anyone and did not promise anything good. But if you could understand it right away …

He did not even then know that such a close connection with the highest power has a downside: gradually accumulated and manifested contradictions between the artist's personal view of creativity and the official ideology.

Therefore, Dovzhenko had already filmed the film myth about the hero of the civil war, Shchors, on the direct orders of Stalin, who directly intervened in the filming process. It was incredibly difficult to work on the film, since in fact the director had to work in a strange creative tandem with Stalin - who took over both the approval of the actors for the roles and the editing of the script. Sometimes he forces the director to re-shoot the episodes six times. Dovzhenko, in turn, filled the film with Ukrainian motives, songs and dances, colorful shots and humor. And be that as it may, as a result, Dovzhenko received his first Stalin Prize for this film.

Film career decline

Since the late 1930s, he has devoted more and more time to literature and the preparation of scripts for his future paintings. In 1940 he shot a documentary film "Liberation" about the entry of Western Ukraine into the USSR. During the Second World War, he shot several documentaries "The Battle for Our Soviet Ukraine" and "Victory in the Right-Bank Ukraine", wrote publicistic articles and essays. And the script for the film "Ukraine on Fire" written in 1943, after discussion in the Politburo of the Central Committee, received an extremely negative assessment of Stalin and was not accepted for production.

The poetic picture "Life in Bloom", which Dovzhenko conceived back in 1944, was transformed into the film "Michurin" for the sake of ideological principles. The content of the footage was endlessly changed and re-edited by the director in an attempt to satisfy the demands of the Soviet censorship. Therefore, according to some critics, the result was a completely helpless work, containing nothing but propaganda pathos. Nevertheless, in 1949 Dovzhenko received the second Stalin Prize for this work, and during its filming - the first heart attack.

Games with Stalin

Many began to get the impression that Stalin and Dovzhenko were playing some strange give-away game: if somewhere the artist made concessions and shot propaganda films, then Stalin "turned a blind eye" to Dovzhenko's nationalist ideals.

Even more devastating for the Ukrainian director was the fate of his last work - the film Farewell America!, Conceived as a state order. It was a propaganda pamphlet based on the book by Annabella Bucar, a political refugee from the United States to the USSR. Dovzhenko remade this film to the point of exhaustion, trying to create an ideologically correct work. But as soon as work on the film was almost finished, the director received an order from the Kremlin to stop filming. The film lay in the archive for 46 years and only in 1995 hit the screens.

In the last years of his life, Dovzhenko worked on scripts for paintings, was engaged in pedagogical work, teaching at VGIK. Alexander Petrovich died on November 25, 1956 from a second heart attack at his dacha in Peredelkino. He outlived Stalin for three years. After his death, the film was shot by the director's widow Yulia Solntseva.

The legendary director was buried in a foreign land - in Moscow at the Novodevichy cemetery. In memory of their native land, friends brought a sheaf of rye and apples to the funeral, and threw a handful of Ukrainian soil into the grave.

For many, it still remains a mystery why the true Ukrainian Alexander Dovzhenko was not shot and rotted by the Soviet government in the camps, like thousands of others it disliked. After all, there were more than enough reasons for this. In this case, it will be just right to say: "Sherche la femme" - "look for a woman." But, about this in our next publication.