Late Soviet and Post-Soviet cinema

The Soviet power structure, along with its attendant censorship on all
foreign and domestic films, was firmly in place through the end of the
1980s. Despite this interference, a number of interesting filmmakers
began creating work in the 1970s and 1980s; films included Elem Klimov's
brutal war drama Idi i smotri (Come and See, 1985), Grigori Chukhrai's
Russian-Italian spy thriller Zhizn prekrasna (Life Is Wonderful, 1979),
and Andrei Tarkovsky's science fiction allegory Stalker (1979).
Tarkovsky is perhaps the most important director of this era of Soviet
cinema, but state censorship drove him from the country into self-
imposed exile for two years, until Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of
glasnost (openness) arrived in the Soviet Union.

Tarkovsky had a long and distinguished career in Russian filmmaking from
the late 1950s onward; his early film Ivanovo detstvo (Ivans Childhood,
1962) tracked the adventures of a twelve-year-old Russian spy during
World War II as he slips across German lines to collect information for
his country.

The film was begun by director Eduard Abalov, who was abruptly fired;
Tarkovsky was brought in to finish, though initially he received no
screen credit. The movie is a somewhat sentimental drama, firmly in step
with Soviet Cold War policy. But Andrey Rublyov (Andrei Rublev, 1969), a
violent historical drama about fifteenth-century Russian religious life
and warfare, centering on a particularly ascetic monk, was so stark in
its depiction of medieval hardship that, though made in 1966, it was
held from release by the authorities until 1969 and then shown only in a
severely edited version (the cuts have since been restored).

Solyaris (Solaris), a mystical science fiction film, followed in 1972;
it was remade by Steven Soderbergh in the United States in 2002.
Tarkovsky further tweaked authority with his radically structured semi-
autobiographical film Zerkalo (The Mirror, 1975), and after completing
Stalker (1979), he shot the dreamlike Nostalghia (Nostalgia, 1983)
during a sojourn to Italy. After his defection from the USSR in 1984,
Tarkovsky made one final film before his death, the Swiss/French
production Offret(The Sacrifice, 1986), in which Alexander, an aging
journalist (beautifully played by Erland Josephson), confronts his lack
of faith on the eve of World War III.

Tarkovsky s death, and the many prizes his films had won in
international festivals, ironically accelerated the rebirth of
filmmaking in Russia. In addition, films that had been suppressed for
years finally received a belated release. Aleksandr Askoldov's gently
critical film about the Russian Revolution, Komissar (The Commissar),
for example, which had been sitting on the shelf since its production in
1967, was finally released in 1988. A greater frankness about sex and
drugs was apparent in Vasili Pichul's Malenkaya Vera (Little Vera,
1988), while Pavel Lungin's Taksi-Blyuz (Taxi Blues, 1990) presented
contemporary Moscow as a neon wilderness of alcohol and poverty, albeit
with a darkly humorous tone. Pavel Chukraj's Vor(The Thief, 1998) was
even more provocative, telling the tale of a Soviet mother and child who
are held in thrall by a charismatic con man in the Stalin-era 1950s. In
2002, Alexander Sokurov's Russkiy kovcheg (Russian Ark) marked a turning
point in the cinema: a digital movie shot in one continuous take,
recorded directly onto a digital hard drive imbedded in the camera. For
ninety minutes, Sokurov's camera prowls through the Hermitage, the great
Russian art museum in St. Petersburg, as a fabulous gallery of
historical personages drift in and out of the film in one spectacularly
extended traveling shot.

Sokurov got the film on the second take, despite the freezing weather,
and thus on 23 December 2001 a new era in the movies was born. In
Poland, the documentary and feature filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi's
Struktura krysztalu (The Structure of Crystal, 1969) and Iluminacja
(Illumination, 1973) were bold cinematic experiments, while Andrzej
Wajda contributed to the birth of the Solidarity Movement with the
production of increasingly political films, particularly Czlowiek z
zelaza (Man of Iron, 1981). Despite a military crackdown in the last
days of 1981 in opposition to the Solidarity labor movement, Wajda,
Zanussi, and Krzysztof Kieslowski continued to work in Poland, creating
movies of originality and beauty. Kieslowski's last great work, his epic
Trzy kolory (Three Colors) trilogy, Blue (1993), White (1994), and Red
(1994), was shot in Poland and France and dealt with the pressures of
life in materialistic modern French society.

One of the most enigmatic and influential figures of the Polish cinema
is Agnieszka Holland, whose career began in Poland; later she moved in
succession to Germany, France, and finally the United States. Born in
Warsaw in 1948, Holland experienced firsthand the horrors of anti-
Semitism, as her entire family on her father's side was murdered under
the Nazi regime in World War II. Educated in Czechoslovakia, she
graduated in 1971 from the Prague Film School and made her first films
for Czechoslovakian television. As a screenwriter, Holland became
closely associated with Andrzej Wajda beginning in 1977 and co-wrote the
screenplays of many of his films, including Bez znieczulenia (Without
Anesthesia, 1978) and Danton (1983).

In 1979, Holland directed and co-wrote the feature Aktorzy prowincjon-
alni (Provincial Actors), which won the Critics' Prize at the Cannes
Film Festival. Provincial Actors displays an early use of Holland's
poetic realism in a political tract loosely allegorized in the play-within-a-
film form. The company of players in the film put on the Polish play
Liberation, yet Holland shows the stifling atmosphere of conformity and
yearning for freedom that the players experience. Abused by a tyrannical
director who obviously represents a figurehead of the colonizing forces
ruling over Poland, one actor experiences a breakdown; as a result, his
relationship with his wife becomes unbearable. Holland's next feature
film, Goraczka (Fever, 1981), was banned by the Polish government. Based
on a story by Polish writer Andrzej Strug, Fever tells of the political
struggle at the turn of the twentieth century when Poland fought for
independence. Released right after the imposition of martial law in
Poland, the film was almost immediately banned because of its brutally
realistic portrayal of the occupying Soviet forces. Holland's next film,
Kobieta samotna (A Woman Alone, 1981), was the last film she directed in
Poland, chronicling the plight of an unmarried mother employed as a
letter carrier who embezzles the money of old-age pensioners to make
ends meet when unexpected expenses arise.

After the imposition of martial law, Holland emigrated to Paris, where
she began planning Bittere Ernte (Angry Harvest, 1986), produced in West
Germany, drawing upon her experience as a Polish Jew for the screenplay.
Set during World War II, the film examines the problematic love affair
between a Jewish woman, Rosa Eckart (Elisabeth Trissenaar), and the
Christian German farmer Leon Wolny (Armin Mueller-Stahl), who hides her
from the Nazis. Holland's next two films, Europa, Europa (1990) and
Olivier, Olivier (1992), return to the inevitable themes of moral
ambiguity, violence, and power. Europa, Europa, based on actual events,
tells the story of a Jewish teenager in Nazi Germany who poses as a
member of the Hitler Youth in order to survive the war. Olivier, Olivier
is a deeply disturbing film about a mother whose son disappears at the
age of nine and then resurfaces six years later in Paris. But is it her
son, or is it an imposter?