NEWSNOTES on

SoviET and EAsT EuROPEAN DRAMA and THEATRE

Volume 4, Number 3 September, 1984
DEAR READERS
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Viktor Rozov's The Nest of the Wood Grouse has completed its short run at
the New York Public Theatre under the direction of Joseph Papp. This is an
outstanding, extremely courageous play by the veteran playwright for which he
was severely reprimanded by the Party. In fact, Papp had to wait more than six
years for Soviet approval to produce it in the United States. Despite the
outstanding cast (Anne Jackson, Eli Wallach, Phoebe Cates and Beth Hurt), the
play did not arouse too much interest in New York, which is a great pity since it
deserves better. Your editor did not see it himself, but heard that it was staged
as a somewhat farcical comedy. This is unfortunate, since this play is a deadly
serious indictment of the new Soviet "upper class" despite its humorous
moments. The June 18 issue of Newsweek calls it "a humorous family drama" and
at one point compares it to Life With Father. I'm afraid this means that the play
was misunderstood. If any of our readers have seen it performed, I would
appreciate receiving a review. I certainly would not want to accuse wrongly a
superb director like Mr. Papp.
In early July, Cricot 2, a Polish theatrical troupe directed by the 69-year-
old Tadeusz Kantor, arrived in Los Angeles for the presentation of nine
performances at the Olympic Arts Festival. The members of the troupe were
touted as the only representatives from any of the boycotting countries at any
Olympic event. Kantor is certainly one of the greatest of all Polish theatre
directors (who can forget his Dead Class, for example). When asked why he
received permission to come, he speculated that the troupe had "fervent friends,
passionate friends, throughout the world, and that is why the Ministry of Culture
could not refuse. And furthermore, this regime seems more reasonable at a
certain intellectual level than former regimes." Kantor emphasized that Cricot
tours are never underwritten by the Polish government. "Cricot is not a state
supported or an official theatre. We never attempt to represent the. official line.
We are the representatives of the Polish people, not the state." Cricot
presentations are hardly cosidered traditional in theatre circles. One critic called
the troupe's appearance at the La Mama Theatre in New York "the biggest event
of the year in avant garde theatre." Nevertheless, Kantor's work is not considered
to be overtly political, and he denies that there are any political restrictions on
his work. "If I felt even a minimal trace of that, I'd leave the country," he
declared. Although no one mentioned the possibility of defection, Kantor made it
clear that he will to Poland: "Why do I always go back? Because an
artist must have a wall in front of him against which he can bang his head. I find
that it Poland." I would welcome a review of the Cricot presentations by any of
our California readers who were fortunate enough to attend them.
The Dawns are Quiet Here by Alexandr Volodin is scheduled to open at the
McCarter Theatre Company in Princeton in September. This excellent play was
one tl the most successful Soviet films which, despite its age, is still frequently
shown in the USSR. A review of this play would also be appreciated by
tWSNOTES.
Also mentioned in a Newsweek article (June 18, 1984) is the arrival of
Before the Dawn which tells about two families in Kiev, one Jewish the other
Christian, the night before the Nazis exterminated Jews at Babi Yar in 1941.
Written by a Soviet Jew, it made Soviet theatrical history with its clear criticism
2 .
of Moscow's refusal to acknowledge that Jews suffered the most under German
occupation - an .obvious fact which the Party never admits. Any additional
information on this play by any of our readers would also be welcome.
The Actors Theatre of Louisville (A TL) performed in Sofia, Bulgaria, as
part of the United States Information Agency sponsored exhibit, "American
Theatre Today." Performances began on June 28 and continued through July 15 in
F estivalna Hall in Sofia. ATL has previously performed as part of the exhibit in
Budapest and Belgrade. Presented were three bills of one-act plays which had had
their premieres at ATL. Bill One included Fifteen Minutes by Jane Martin and
Rurert's Birthday by Ken Jenkins; Bill Two Bartok as a o ~ by Patrick Tovatt; and
Bil Three Clear Glass Marbles by Jane Martin and Chee to Cheek and Goober's
Descent by John Pielmeier. Jon Jory, ATL Producing Director, accompanied the
group on the tour.
The 17th All-Union Film Festival recently took place in Kiev. More than
120 films were entered in three categories: feature films, films for children and
youths, and documentaries and popular science films. The main prizes were
awarded to the feature films The Shore (screen version of the well-known novel by
lurii Bondarev), produced by Mosfilm; Field Service Romance by the Odessa
Studios; and Blue Mountains or lm robable Stor by Gruziafilm. The festival prize
for directing went to ikita Mikhalkov or Without Witnesses, Mosfilm. Prizes for
acting went to Vsevolod Sanaev who appeared in the Belorussian lyrical comedy
Belye Rosy, and to Jurate Onaitite from Lithuania who created the vivid
character of a fisherwoman in the psychological drama A Woman and Her Four
Men.
Now ovai!ab!e on videotape: Meyerhold's The tv'lagnanimous Cuckold: An
Evening of Russian Constructivist Theatre: A Recreation of the 1922 Moscow
Production, produced and directed by Alma Law and Mel Gordon at the
Guggenheim Museum, December 1981. The tape includes: A Demonstration of
Meyerhold's Biomechanics, Three Scenes from the 1922 Production, and
Reminiscences by Meyerhold actress Stella Duff-Ogonkova. Filmed in
performance at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, with introduction and
commentary by Mel Gordon and Alma Law. 65 minutes. Color. Available on VHS
only. Includes copy of illustrated souvenir program with essays by Alma Law.t Mel
Gordon and others. $95.00. Additional programs $5.00; 10 or more copies, :;,3.00
each. To order: Send check or money order (U.S. dollars) to: Threatre Research
Associates, Rm. 733, Jill Arlington Blvd., Arlington, VA 22209.
Soviet Theatre Notes
On July II, Yurii Lyubimov was officially stripped of his citizenship by the
presidium of the Supreme Soviet for "engaging in activities hostile to the State
and damaging the prestige of the Soviet Union," thus closing the door to any
possibility that the sixty-six-year-old former chief director of the T aganka
Theatre might be able to return to Moscow at some later date. Not surprisingly,
the Supreme Soviet waited to make this move until after the Taganka Theatre had
closed for the season in June and had departed on tour to Novosibirsk. By the end
of the season the process of phasing out Lyubimov's productions had already
begun. It can be expected that when the T aganka season opens in the fall few if
any of them will remain in the repertory. The productions the theatre was
3
working on at the time of Lyubimov's dismissal as chief director in March have
also been dropped . They included Bulgakov's Theatrical Novel, which according to
Lyubimov was very close to being completed; Scene at the Fountain by Simon
Zlotnikov; and Viktor Slavkin's I'm Forty Years Old, but I Look Young on which
AnqtoJii Vosilyev had been working for some time.
Lyubimov had hoped that Yurii Andropov's accession to power following
Brezhnev's death in November 1982 would mark an end to the kind of interference
in artistic matters that had plagued the Taganka Theatre for almost all of its
twenty years existence. Professor Paul Debreczeny reports that at a run-through
of Boris Godunov in the second half of November 1982, Lyubimov said in answer to
a question about the banning in The Queen of Spades that Debreczeny "would
see that that kind of interference with the artist's work would be stopped by the
person of considerable sophistication who hod just risen to power." And as late as
May of this year Lyubimov stated to this writer that "if Andropov had lived I
would not hove been fired." All indications since then, however, point to the fact
that Lyubimov's faith in Andropov was either misplaced or that the Iotter was too
ill when he took office to hold out against the hardliners who had been waiting for
a number of years to silence the controversial director.
It also becomes more and more evident that the decision to remove
Lyubimov was made well before Andropov's death in February of this year.
Sources in Moscow now indicate that Anatolii E fros was offered the job of chief
director at the Taganka as early as January at a time when it hod already been
made quite clear to E fros that he would have to leave the Molaia Bronnaio
Theatre. After several years of conflict with the troupe at the Malaia Bronnoio,
the actors finally refused to work any longer with either Efros or with Aleksandr
Dunaev, who had been designated chief director of that theatre at the same time
Efros wus appointed a rank and file director in 1967 following the Iotter's
dismissal from the Lenin Komsomol Theatre. (And incidentally, it's time to
clarify for once and for all that Efros was never chief director at the Molaio
Bronnoio). Dunaev has since departed for the Moscow Theatre of Miniatures and
has been replaced by Evgenii Lozarev, a former actor and director at the
Mayakovsky Theatre.
Ironically enough, it was Lyubimov who, along with several other influential
theatre people, persuaded the ou.thorities to make a place for Efros and his actors
at the Malaia Bronnoia Theatre in 1967 rather than shipping him off to some
provincial theatre. Unfortunately, this time there was no Lyubimov around to
come to Efros's aid in providing on alternative to what must have been very
painful decision for the fifty-six year old director to be forced to make.
A book puqlished last year entitted Pages from the History of the Soviet
Theatre (Stronitsy istorii sovetskogo teotro) by Grigorii Khaichenko lends
additional weight to the likelihood that Lyubimov was on his way out well before
he was fired in March. Anyone familiar with Soviet historiography is quite aware
that there is a continual process going on of rewriting history to conform to the
most recent ideological guidelines and to remove the names of any persons who
for one reason or another ore considered enemies of the state.
In the case of Lyubimov, Khoichenko's book appears to be a striking
example of rewriting history in apparent anticipation of on event that had not yet
4 .
officially taken place. Approved for publication in August 1983, the book began
appearing in Western bookstores in April of this year, just a few weeks after
was disf')'iissed, and well before he was stripped of his citizenship.
While Khaichenko details in his book the history of the Theatre of Drama
and Comedy, os the Taganka is officially known, and discusses several Lyubimov
productions, the director's name is noticeably absent with the exception of one
fleeting reference to him (p. 171) in telling of the collective's formation in 1964:
"The core of the troupe was made up of Yu. P. Lyubimov's pupils at the
Vakhtangov Theatre School with whom he staged the graduation production,
Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan." The omission of Lyubimov's name
elsewhere in the book, either as founder or chief director of the T aganka, is
clearly more than an oversight as in every other instance where Khaichenko
speaks of a theatrical production, he never fails to mention the name of the
director.
The omission is all the more striking when one compares Lyubimov's
treatment in this book with the treatment of him by the same author in his Soviet
Theatre: Paths of Development published just a year earlier in 1982. While there
are certain differences between the two books, they cover essentially the same
territory and reflect a similar point of view. In the 1982 book, Khaichenko treats
the productions done by the three major Moscow directors, Efremov, Efros and
Lyubimov, in a fairly evenhanded manner, according about equal space to each of
them. Such is clearly not the case in the 1983 book. Also while both books discuss
o number of the same T aganka productions, most notably The Good Person of
Szechwan, Ten Days that Shook the World and The Dawns Here Are Quiet, several
of the theatre's most famous productions discussed in the earlier book, such as the
Lyubimcv's second Brecht production, The Life of Galileo, and Hamlet, are
noticeably absent from the 1983 book.
At season's end, the old Taganka building, which is so closely associated
with the history of Lyubimov's theatre, was closed for major renovation. Chances
are that when it reopens all trances of it's glorious past under Lyubimov will be
gone. It was only at Lyubimov's insistence that the old lobby and auditorium,
remained intact as long as they did. The official intention from the beginning was
to completely remodel them as soon as the new building was ready. Lyubimov
made no secret of his dislike for the new theatre. He, claimed that it was not
built the way he wanted, and he staged only two productions in it: o modernist
version of Chekhov's The Three Sisters, and Boris Godunov, a production which
was never allowed to open. Lyubimov also moved very few of his old productions
into the new theatre because, os he stated in an interview with this writer in
April, the new -stage had different spatial dimensions. In the same interview,
Lyubimov referred to the old Russian superstition that theatres don't like to be
moved to o new location, adding, "Look how history repeats itself. Poor
Meyerhold. They built him a new theatre and that was the end of him. And now
the same thing... But so far they haven't shot me os they did Meyerhold "
As for Efros, what his future at the Taganka will be is difficult to predict
at this point. By taking over the theatre and bringing in lgnatii Dvoretsky as his
literary director, Efros has won the enmity of not only the theatre troupe but the
artistic community as well. To prevent mass resignations by the actors, on order
immediately went out barring other theatres from hiring them. Nevertheless
5
changes are most certainly in the offing. At least one actor, Yuri i Medvedev, has
.already been fireQ, and by season's end the scenic designer, David Borovsky, who
had worked so closely with Lyubimov both at the Taganka and abroad for over
fifteen years, had resigned.
Meanwhile, Lyubimov has been overwhelmed with directing offers in the
West. In May he opened this year's Maggio Musicale in Florence, Italy with a
controversial staging of Verdi's Rigoletto (which according to Lyubimov was his
fiftieth production). Lyubimov's next stop was Vienna for an intensive month of
rehearsing Crime and Punishment at the Burgtheatre. Lyubimov will return to
Vienna in September to continue rehearsals with an opening date set for mid-
October. After thaf it's on to London and Paris to direct productions of
Dostoevsky's novel The Demons. Lyubimov has also been offered a theatre of his
own both in Italy and in France, where according to Variety, French minister of
culture, Jack Lang, has announced that the Russian director would become the
new director of the Bobigny theatre located on the outskirts of Paris.
After receiving numerous offers from theatre companies in this country,
Lyubimov has now accepted an invitati.on from Zelda Fichandler to make his
American directing debut at Washington D.C.'s Arena Stage, possibly as early as
December I 985. Fichandler, who has wanted Lyubimov to direct a production at
Arena Stage ever since she first met the director in Moscow in 1972, announced
that Lyubimov would be directing either Crime and Punishment or The Demons,
using the theatre's resident company for the production.
Anno Kareninn
A Performance Review
Alma H. Law
August 1984
On May 23, 1984, I was privileged to see the gala performance of Rodion
Shchedrin's ballet, Anna Karenina in the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. It was a
special performance for several reasons: It was the IOOth performance of the
ballet since it was composed by Shchedrin; it was performed in conjunction with
the visits by the Premier of North Korea and the King of Spain; and it featured
one of the progressively rare performances by Maria Plisetskaia.
It is horribly difficult to take a I ,000-page masterpiece and turn it into a
two-hour dancing performance. One could find fault in this basic premise, or at
least in the selection of the many important scenes, and events which had to be
omitted from the final result. Nevertheless, with all its faults, the libretto by B.
Lvov Anokhin was quite good.
The music by Shchedrin, certainly one of the most important and most
versatile of contemporary Soviet composers, is both fascinating and disturbing. It
contains no tunes suitable for whisling after the performance, in fact nothing
which sticks in the mind. In spite of this, it is highly effective. Rather than
existing on a plane of its own, it is there only to underscore the action and to
express the inner feelings of the characters. This is why dissonance, agitation and
somber mood have the upper hand over the very sporce melodious passages. But it
is this inner conflict which the libretto stresses, so that the music fits quite well
.
6
The composer wrote the ballet for his wife, Plisetskaia, for many years the
.absolute prima ballerina of the Bolshoi. She is now 57 years old, a fact which is
quite visible in her performance despite her grace and elegance. The male lead,
B.G. Efimov who danced the part of Vronskii, was quite adequate but hardly
brilliant. This was not completely his fault, since the part he was dancing was
created primarily in support of the female lead. By far the most effective role
was danced by I. Katakinas, one of the major figures in the Lithuanian ballet
troupe in Vilnius. His was the part of Karenin. His rather tall, gaunt figure,
somewhat angular, was ideal to interpret the choppy, jerky, forced movements
with which Shchedrin' s dissonant passages had endowed him. He portrayed a man
torn between opposing forces, not knowing what to do, and turning this way and
that way in his attempt to find a way out.
The costumes were excellent with some except ions. For example, in the
opening scene when Anna first meets Vronskii, Plisetskaia wore an ankle-length
dress which was much too tight and obviously restricted her movements.
A very strong point was the staging. The stage of the Bolshoi is quite wide
and deep. The depth was increased through a platform which extended from the
front to the rear, and was increasingly elevated as it extended away from the
audience. The sides of the stage were also slightly narrowed as they extended to
the rear of the stage, giving the feeling of perspective which made the stage
appear to be unbelievably deep. The one scene which stood out in its
effectiveness because of this was the final one in which Anna commits suicide by
throwing herself in front of an oncoming train late at night. The way this was
accomplished was to dim the lights radically, to show the mere outline of Anna
stage front, and to have a large, round, red light approaching the audience from
the rear of the stage which became larger and brighter as it approached the
. audience accompanied by an orchestral crescendo.
All in all, the ballet and its performance was quite good, though not
outstanding. It was a pleasure to see Plisetskaia once more before her impending
retirement, to see Shchedrin taking bows on stage, and to experience the
psychological effect of a major performance in the Bolshoi.
L.H.
ANDREI TARKOVSKY
T arkovsky was a graduate of VGIK (All-Union State Institute of
Cinematography) in the late 1950's, during the Khrushchev period, when the de-
Stalinization process was at its heights. His first film, in 1960, was Steamroller
and Violin (Katok i skripka), which he directed in collaborat ion with Andrei
Konchalovsky-Mikhalkov, one of the most gifted and productive directors in the
Soviet Union today. The first film Tarkovsky made as an independent director was
Ivan's Childhood (lvanovo detstvo) in 1962. This tender story of a boy deprived of
his childhood by war was an immediate international success and catapulted the
director into the limelight. The film was a mixture of realism, surrealism and
impressionism which set the tone for his future work.
Certainly his major work of art was the f ilm Andrei Rublev, which was
completed in 1965 but was shelved for four years during which time he fought the
censors who insisted on major changes. It was finally released in 1969 in Paris,
7 '
after the director had make a number of concessions. Not until 1972 did the film
receive limited dis:tribution in the USSR, after additional severe cuts. With all the
imposed changes, however, the film was still far better than anything else which
was being produced in the Soviet Union at this time. The story is about the most
important Russian iconographer of the late 14th, early 15th century, Andrei
Rublev, whose message is quite clearly the inviolability of artistic freedom of
expression no matter what the political situation of the times may be.
Particularly the uncut version shows quite clearly the degree of courage within
T arkovsky and the reason why he became personna non grata for the Party
censors.
In 1971 Tarkovsky made Solaris, a metaphoric science fiction film about
space flights of the future. The film was not particularly successful, partly
because it received only limited distribution. . In 1974 he made The Mirror
(Zerkalo), which was strongly autobiographical and centered around his mother.
The censors held the film up for over a year before they released it to limited
distribution. Stalker, which he completed in 1979, was not released in the USSR
but was shown in Cannes over Soviet objections, where this science fiction film
was very well received.
In 1982 T arkovsky and his wife were permitted to come to Italy to film
the story of a Soviet emigre whose attempt to find his identity in Italy
ends w1th his suicide. The film was completed in 1983 and won a special jury
award in Cannes that summer. In the fall of 1983 T arkovsky turned to a new art
form. He staged Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov for a gala performance at Covent
Garden. The opera was conducted by Claudio Abbado, and won rave reviews.
On July 9, 1984, Tarkovsky asked for political asylum in the West, most
probably for eventual resettling in the United StQtes, although he still has quite a
bit of unfinished work to accomplish in Europe. This announcement came
immediately after his request for a three-year extension of his visa had been
turned down by the Soviet Government. The following day T arkovsky held a news
conference in Milano, Italy, which was attended by other Soviet exiles including
conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, theatre director lurii Liubimov and novelist
Vladimir Maximov. T arkovsky declared that he did not desire to return to the
Soviet Union since he would be forbidden to work there. During 24 years as a
filmmaker, the Soviet permitted him to produce only six films. "I can say that in
those 24 years I was unemployed for 18. There were periods in my life in which I
didn't have five kopeks to board a bus." The reason why his decision was so hard
for him is that his ailing 14 year-old son, who lives with his grandmother in
Moscow, has repeatedly been refused an exit visa to join his parents in Italy.
There is little doubt that T orkovsky is one of the most important
filmmakers in the world today. It is to be hoped that he will now have the
possibility to work at a pace more to his liking. He has great potential for the
future, since he is only 52 years old at this writing.
Incidentally, soon after Torkovsky's announcement, Pravda published on
interview with Nikolai Sizov, director of Mosfilm (the largest and most productive
of all Soviet film studios). Sizov admitted that the Moscowe Party Committee
hod criticized the studio's work and has issued clear new guidelines for future
films. All films directed by T orkovsky in the Soviet Union were products of
Mosfilm.
L.H.
8
COCTEAU REPERTORY ANNOUNCES 11-E WORLD PREMIERE OF
Tt:EATRE IN TI-E TIME OF t-I::RO AND SENECA
THEATRE IN THE TIME OF NERO AND SENECA by renowned Soviet
playwright Edvord Rodzinsky with English translation by Alma H. law will open
Cocteau Repertory's fourteenth season on September 6th at 8:00 pm. It will play
in repertory for an open run.
Edvard Radzinsky is one of the most successful playwrights in the Soviet
Union today. His works hove been produced at some of the most influential
theatres in the Soviet Union including the Moscow Art Theatre. His first critical
success was I 04 Pages About Love directed by Anotoly E fros in 1964. It was
extremely popular in the Soviet Union, where it was produced by 120 theatres and
subsequently made into a film and a ballet. It later found its way into the
repertoire of major theatres in Eastern Europe, West Germany and Japan.
Rodzinsky was responsible for introducing the first instances of tragedy of
conscience, as well as of philosphical drama, neither of which has roots in Soviet
drama. He is also considered an unsurpassed master of the grotesque in the
Bulgakovian style. THEATRE IN THE TIME OF NERO AND SENECA is the third
part of a historical trilogy concerning the intellectual's relationship with
authority.
Tt-EATRE IN THE TIME OF NERO AND SENECA is being directed by
Cocteau Repertory Artistic Director Eve Adamson, who recently returned from a
cultural tour of Moscow and Leningrad sponsored by VAAP, the copyright agency
of the Soviet. Union. Rehearsals are slated to begin August I st. The cost will
feature Craig Smith as Nero and Harris Berlinsky as Seneca. Mr. Radzinsky is
planning to be in residence during the rehearsal period.
Performance times ore Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 pm and Sunday
matinee at 3:00 pm. Tickets are ~ 0.00. Special group rates and season
subscriptions ore available. For information and reservations call (212) 677-
0060. Cocteou Repertory is located at 330 Bowery (corner of 2nd Street), NYC
10012.
(Press Release)
WITKIEWICZ'S Tt-EY PERFORMED IN BUFFALO
As anomalous as Polish avant-garde works ore in the landscape of American
theatre, part of their attractiveness for American academic theatre directors and
audiences may lie in their confronting issues which American works for the stage
tend to ovoid. In their preference for the grotesque over the real, the works of
Mrozek, Gornbrowicz, and Witkiewicz aspire to a transcendent universality
uncharacteristic of plays grounded in a realist aesthetic.
In looking for on Eastern European play to produce this spring at Buffalo
State, director Andrea Castle Southard chose the enigmatic Polish ovont-gorde
playwright Stanislas Witkiewicz's 1920 play, They. This choice was dictated both
by the director's desire to stretch the intellectual and technical range of her
student-actors, and by her sensitivity to the play's abundant topical references to
the roles of art and individualism in society. They depicts, through a bewildering
9
array of bizarre charcters, the threats to the survival of art posed, on the one
hand, by grotesque, power-hungry Philistines ("They," the dictatorial League of
Absolute Automation, dedicated to the eradication of individuality and creativity),
and on the other, by the self-absorbed aesthetes and intellectuals who, through
their inability to respond genuinely to others' emotions and needs, remain passive
and allow "Them" to take over and control our lives.
They opens with a "half-act" which describes the domestic comedy of the
coldly intellectual art connoisseur, Callisto Balandash and his erotic mistress-
actress, Spika Tremendosa - would-be lovers who, through their own individual
egotism are frustrated in their efforts to make emotional and physical
connection. At length they are interrupted by a mysterious visitor - Seraskier
Bango Tefuan, chairman of the League of Absolute Automation, who declares that
the first step toward the leagues' goal of an automated, impersonal society is the
destruction and suppression of the arts, the symbol of individualism. Tefuan (later
revealed to be Spike's ex-husband, Count Tremendosa) renews his threat in the
"first" act, reappearing at Balandash's villa with THEY, grotesque, power-hungry
characters, which constitute the secret real government. THEY move into
Balandash's villa, demolish the hero's priceless art collection and then inaugurate a
fancy-dress ball in a final celebration before automationism is installed. During
the ball, Spika, performing in a theatre elsewhere, is killed by her frenzied acting
partner while perfomring in a farce-dell'arte (a theatrical form introduced to
hasten the complete abolition of drama). When her corpse is brought to the
festivities, her former husband Tremendosa, alias Tefuan, begins to disintegrate as
the ideological force behind the "secret real government," when he realizes that
his ideas on automation have arisen from his jealous, frustrated Jove for Spika.
The hellish Colonel Fondoloff
1
who has been Tefuan's right-hand man, assumes
leadership, persuading Balandash to take the blame for the crime. Balandash,
recognizing that his own intellectual individualism has been a sham, renounces all
his previous goals and goes willingly to the dungeons of the secret government,
content at last to be simply himself.
While an arena stage production might most effectively convey the play's
theme of the individual engulfed by the hordes of THEY, the Buffalo State
production made extremely interesting use of the resources of a large proscenium
.stage. The stage was divided into two playing areas. A transparent wall of
picture-frames spanned the entire width of the stage - a rather fittingly empty
icon screen which separated Balandash's drawingroom, locus of the scenes of
individual confrontation, from the inner sanctum of his picture gallery. Thus
during the later acts, the scenes of destruction of Balandash's art collection and
the satanic ball were continuously in view, creating a surrealistic effect of
theatrical double-exposure in which rtle crises of the individual protagonists
became inextricable from the grotesque antics of THEM. The "fourth wall" of the
proscenium was broken only at the very end of the play, as the intellectually
vacuous but physically monumental Colonel F ondoloff exited into the audience,
carrying forward into the contemporary world THEY's mission of destruction.
They bears a clear imprint of Witkiewicz's experience in the Russian
Revolution. Unlike other anti-utopian works of the early 1920's, however, They
presents its audience with no clear moral alternatives. Rather, They chillingly
confronts both its actors and its audience with the contradictory, yet related,
human drives to power and to self-destruction. Witkiewicz's prophetic vision of
10
They seems disturbingly relevant to those interested in the fate of the individual
and the arts
Melissa T. Smith, Oberlin College
"The Cinema and Our Times"
The following is a translation of an article which appeared on the front
page of Pravda on May 25, 1984. It follows closely on the heels of similar articles
which concerned themselves with theatre and children's theatre. All are in the
same vein, i.e., they expound the necessity for closer scrutiny of the artistic
product, and clearly indicate a return to a restrictive interpretation of Socialist
Realism. Now to the text:
The Soviet cinematographer occupies an important place in the spiritual
life of our society and makes an essential contribution to the development of
socialist artistic culture. He has gained world recognition with his
spirit, his loyalty to high humanist ideals, his optimistic aspirations for the future,
and his consistent affirmation of the role of the popular masses. The militant and
glorious traditions of Soviet film arts find their development and in
the creativity of talented masters of different generations who grew up on the soil
of our multinational culture.
Proceeding from the base of Lenin's evaluation that film is the most
important art form, the Communist Party is manifesting constant concern about
strengthening its didactic role and about creating the most fruitful atmosphere for
the creative search by the artists of the screen, and about equipping them with
the tools of contemporary technology. A new, clear witness of this is the
resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
and the Council of Ministers of the USSR, "Concerning the Measures for the
Further Raising of the Moral and Artistic Level of Motion Pictures and the
Strengthening of the Material and Technical Base of the Cinematographer."
This document discusses the closely interdependent questions of the moral-
esthetic, professional-creative and the production-technological aspects of the
cinema. And that is natural. After all, every film is the sum total of collective
efforts by representatives of various creative professions and of various workshops
and subdivisions of cinematographic production. It is in the sphere ,of the cinema,
as nowhere else, that art and technology walk hand ' in hand; technical
imperfections are among the major obstacles on the rood of realizing the artistic
potential of cinematic art. '.
. .
Summarizing the positive and long-range artistic achievements of our
screen of the past years, and commenting on the deficiencies and "narrow spots"
in the work of the film studios in their organization and in the technical
equipment, in their process of making films and distributing them, the document
of the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers also presents an extensive
program for the perfection of all the links of the multifaceted film industry, and
for the strengthening and development of its material and technical base. With all
its spirit, the document aims the efforts of the film workers towards the creation
of works which would answer the demands of the present stage of the building of
communism, which would aid in the raising of the social activism of the masses,
I I
and which would win new successes in the economic and social development of the
country.
In recent years our cinematographers have created films imbued with a
sharp feeling for the times, with originality of design, and with a high level of
professional mastery. In several of them, it was impressively artistically brought
out what the important facets of social and spiritual development of our society
are, and what its achievements in the building of communism were. There were
successes in the development of historical, historico-revolutionary and wartime-
patriotic themes. Unfortunately, the specific weight of those films which contain
significant subject matter, which is able to satisfy the demands of the most
demanding audience, is rather modest, considering the general productivity of the
film studios. There is an obvious, strongly felt need for works portraying strong
contemporary characters, touching upon actual, contemporary moral problems,
and reflecting the multifaceted process to realize the development of socialism.
There are also insufficient artistic films which expose the essence of
contemporary imperialism and which aid in unmasking the ideological enemy. At
the same time, our screens allow wide access to films when the action is centered
around contrived conflicts, minor confusions and despondent descriptions of
existence. It can also be observed that a number of authors are striving to diverge
from the concrete, historical analysis of described developments, and to idealize
obsolete moral norms and princip'les of life. How to overcome these and similar
tendencies, and how to secure a high moral-artistic level of film production in
consonance with the demands of the Party, was the subject of a sharp and detailed
discussion at the recent All-Union Conference of Film Workers.
An all-encompassing solution of the problems facing the Soviet
cinematographer would entail not only the use of all measures to strengthen the
material-technical base for the production and distribution of films, but would
also mean the improvement of educational work with the creative personnel,
taking care of the growth of their professional mastery, and resupplying the
collectives with fresh talent. It would also include the raising of the scientific
level of criticism and film theory based on Party principles and to give those
involved an active voice in the artistic prqcess; and to bring about a film service
for the population by skillfully propagandizing the best Soviet canvases. It is
important to use the capabilities of screen art for expanding cultural exchange,
for propagandizing the Soviet way of life abroad, and to strengthen contact with
the progressive cinematographers of the world.
The main burden of responsibility for the realization of the above
mentioned Party and Government program lies on the shoulders of the
Government Committee of the USSR on Cinematography, which, .as it is noted in
the resolution, is still somewhat slow in perfecting the movie industry, and has not
brought about the required level for planning, organization of work in accordance
with preparation of personnel, critical analysis of scenarios and films, and the
activities of an apparatus for editing.
The recently introduced system for material stimulation, which takes into
account the specifics of various creative professions and technological links, and
also changes which were introduced into the principles governing the forming of
film groups, give the organizers of film production a reliable lever for the
increase of creative output by the studio collectives, for the concentration of the
12 .
best forces in the most important thematic directions, for attracting them to
participate in the creation of films of great socio-political significance, which are
difficult to produce. Goskino USSR and the Union of Cinematographers must
utilize the material opportunities allocated by the Government, so that our screen
art may be raised to a qualitatively higher level, which is responsive to the
demands of the times.
The resolution of the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers was
enthusiastically received by the Soviet cinematographers. They are filled with the
decision to make the cinema an even greater contributor to the ideological, moral
and esthetic educator of the Soviet people, particularly in the matter of the
building of communism.
Grigori Kozintsev's Film of King Lear
in a Russian Tradition
by Joseph Troncale, University of Richmond
L.H.
There are none of us committed to the study of Russia who do not often
find ourselves lost in the search throughout our points of contact with the country,
the people, and their culture either through history, the arts, the economy, or
what have you, attempting to discover and isolate particular qualities that can be
clearly marked and articulated as definitive of "Russianness."
Due to barriers one regularly encounters in the Soviet Union anecdotal
cleverness and sweeping generality frequently outstrip objective scrutiny and
substantive conclusions in such research. Yet, given the international climate at
least since WW II, the world wants to know and we feel compelled to continue
searching and to conclude what constitutes "Russianness." At all times, our
perspective should not be based on the premise that we are different and they are
foreign. Such a premise already narrowly circumscribes the potential benefit to
be derived from such an investigation. "Russianness" must be explored as an
expression of what we have in common and as an indication of the rich diversity of
the expression of our communality.
My approach in this paper will be to consider the quality of "Russianness"
exhibited by Grigori Kozintsev within the context of a Russian tradition and to
point out specifically how his film King Lear demonstrates that traditional quality
the world has come to expect of the Russian artist
.
Little information is available about the life of Grigori Kozintsev. Most of
what there is here and in the USSR consists largely of the director's own thoughts
on Shakespeare and his interpretations of Shakespeare's plays, chiefly Hamlet and
King Lear, and his film versions of them. The chronicle of his artistic life is
equally sketchy. We know that in 1922, together with Leonid Trauberg and Sergei
Yutkevich, the 17 year old Kozintsev opened the Factory of the Eccentric Actor
in Leningrad. It was a cooperative theatre effort that embodies in apolitical
terms the revolution's search in earnest for on artistic voice. At 19, Kozintsev
made his debut as a film director with the quasi "propaganda film poster" The
Adventures of Oktyabrina. His entire oeuvre consists of 17 films of which pernaps
13
half ore of lasting value either as milestones in the development of Soviet cinema
or as masterpieces, of world cinema.
His career as a director of stage and cinema from 1922 to his death in 1973
spans practically the entire period of the contemporary Soviet state as well as the
birth and development of modern Soviet cinema. His career witnessed the
feverish and daring efforts of Soviet filmmakers to create o new revolutrionory
cinema in the heady atmosphere of the twenties. Together with those remarkable
men - Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko, Gerosimov, Vertov, Yutkevich, and
Trouberg - Grigori Kozintsev ushered in the age of sound and later the age of
color into their world of cinema.
On the other hand, he also experienced the shock of the introduction in
1932 of Soviet Socialist Realism as the officially devised, endorsed, and enforced
program of esthetics governing the production of all art in the USSR. Though not
totally unscathed, Kozintsev also survived the years of the purges. He was among
those against whom Zhdonov, Stalin's infamous henchman and minister of culture,
directed his campaign to eradicate cosmopolitanism in Soviet art in the late 40's.
During the last 20 years of his life, roughly from the death of Stalin in
1953, Kozintsev directed only three films: Don Quixote (1956), Hamlet ( 1963),
and King Lear (1970). Often these films ore grouped by critics as o trilogy, the
chief intertextuolity of which is the life of the intellectual under Stalinism or in a
notion-prison. There ore many unusually poignant images in each film to
substantiate such o notion, though they ore certonly not limited to such on
interpretation. However, valid though it may be, such on approach based on the
consequences of political tyranny has become o cliche in Western interpretations
of most forms of contemporary Russian art. This approach seriously undermines a
sound critical analysis which these works hove no need to fear.
Kozintsev directed King Lear on the Leningrad stage in 1941 and returned
to it to make his film version in the late sixties. His film version is one of two
considered by critics to be among the most significant contributions to
Shakespearean film as well as to the fund of world cinema.
King Lear is a story of on aging king and the consequences of his decision
to step down and to divide his kingdom among his three daughters. The size of
each daughter's inheritance is determined by her public profession of love for the
old man. Deceived, Lear gives his kingdom to the two daughters whose
professions of love were most extreme. The other daughter exiled, Lear, shunned
and finally abandoned by the two he endowed with favor, descends to the level of
a wondering beggar, tottering on the edge of madness, finally falling into on abyss
of delirium. As always, tragedy in Shakespeare is never synonymous with
pessimism. Attended by the daughter he cursed and exiled, Lear regains his sanity
and o renewed vision of himself and his world, the spiritual dimensions of which
overshadow the death and mayhem that threaten and eventually engulf both him
and his faithful daughter.
In his film of Lear, Grigori Kozintsev is certain of his task and clearly
articulates in his writing the consequences of failure and success in it. His film
makes visually clear what lies immanent in Shakespeare's text. Commenting on
Kozintsev's film and on the peculiar form of his rather tenacious directorial
14 .
approach, Peter Brook alludes to a passionate conviction in the director's searc?
for and holistic sense of the play fo which everything is committed and related.
Structure is inseparable from meaning; for Kozintsev, as critics have noticed of
Hitchcock, structure is meaning and content in his film.
There is a sense of something specifically Russian in -- the director's
approach to the ideas in the play and his insistence on the inviolate link between
contemporary, real life and the meaning he has discovered in Lear. Kozintsev is
intensely dedicated to the clear depiction of the truths of lireln Shakespeare's
play, or, in other words, to the open discussion of the burning issues of man's
existence. This intensity and humanistic dedication is a significant part of the
tradition shared by all 19th century Russian art forms from the civic paintings of
Surikov, Perov, and Repin to the psychologically probing and philosophically
challenging writing of any number of Russian writers including Dostoevsky,
Tolstoy, and Chekhov.
Dostoevsky clearly isolates this tendency, perhaps more accurately, the
degree to which this tendency is prevalent among Russians, in The Brothers
Karamazov. At one point in the novel, Ivan Karamazov says to Alesha:
"And what have Russian boys been doing up till now, some of them, I
mean? In this stinking tavern, for instance, here, they meet and sit
down in a corner. They've never met in their Jives before and, when
they go out of the tavern, they won't meet again for forty years. And
what do they talk about in that momentary halt in the tavern? Of the
eternal questions, of the existence of God and immortality. And
those who do not believe in God talk of socialism or anarchism, of the
transformation of all humanity on a new pattern, so that it all comes
to the same, they're the same questions turned inside out. And
masses, masses of the most original fussian boys do nothing but talk
of the eternal questions! Isn't it so?"
Of course, it is not unusual for people, any people to approach such issues,
to enter discussions with some degree of intensity and seriousness of purpose.
But, in considering many questions of how things are done, for example, in the
U.S. and in the Soviet Union, the basis of comparison should hinge not on the
differences between the approaches, but on the similarities and the extreme to
which one or the other carries a particular common approach. For example, our
current administration's interpretation of Soviet national and public interest and
the prerogatives it thereby assumes. But great is the distance on that continuum
of simifarity between the degrees to which each government carries out these
prerogatives. Ernst Neizvestny, the world renowned Russian sculptor, told me,
"Yes, it's the difference between life and death."
In The First Circle, Solzhenitsyn puts it in terms of Russian heroes as
compared to Western heroes,
''Have you ever noticed what makes Russian literary heroes different
from the heroes of Western novels? The heroes of Western literature
are always after careers, money, fame. The Russians can get l o ~ g
without food and drink- it's justice and good they' re after. Right!"
15 .
Czeslaw Milosz in his collection of essays Emperor of the Earth: Modes of
Eccentric Vision, writes that
" Pasternak's and Solzhenitsyn's works, in a sense, "judge" all
contemporary literature by reintroducing a hierarchy of values, the
renunciation of which threatens mankind with madness. Or to put it
another way they reestablish a clear 'distinction between what is
serious in human life and what is considered serious by who s
zhiru besyatsyo (ore driven out of their minds by good living.)" -
As part of that 19th century Russian tradition, contemporary Russian artists,
including Kozintsev, feel it their moral duty to maintain what is of genuine
concern to mankind, that is, the serious discussion of and the search for answers
to those burning questions to which Dostoevsky referred.
In Mimesis, Erich Auerbach notes that "the strongest impression the
Western reader receives in Russian literature and the most essential
characteristic of the inner movement documented in Russian realism is the
unlimited, and passionate intensity of experience in the characters
portrayed." He odds
"It seems that the Russians hove preserved on immediacy of
experience which had become a rare phenomenon in Western
civilization of the 19th century. A strong practical, ethical, or
intellectual shock immediately arouses them in the depths of their
instincts, and in a moment they pass from a quiet and almost
vegetative existence to the most monstrous excesses both in practical
and spiritual matters. The pendulum of their vitality, of their
actions, thoughts, emotions seems to oscillate farther than
elsewhere in Europe."
In effect, we ore dealing with the author's own intensity as distinctly and
representatively Russian when discussing the pursuit of values, this immediacy of
experience, and concern for humanity.
In Western art, we focus on the disjunctures, the fractures, the
incongruities, the arbitrariness of life to prove there is no meaning. We want to
deconstruct meaning to prove that life is a vacuum, existence - a cruel joke. In
Russian art, on the other hand, though these realities ore not ignored, there is on
urgent need to make connections, to find meaning, to construct it. The Russians
ore long post the stage of preoccupation with the destructive effects of life's
incongruities on man. They hove picked up the pieces and ore about the task of
reconstructing man and his world into meaningful patterns.
In 19th century Russia, the artist considered it his moral obligation to keep
the eyes of mankind focused on these genuine concerns, to keep olive in the mind
of man the burning issues of his existence. This tradition of the artist as prophet
and priest is on obsession of the contemporary artist in Russia. It is summed up in
a single, simple word: obyazonnost'. And since literature was the beacon for all
other arts, for all contemporary Russian artists as distinct from the party's
socialist realists, this word conjures up the tradition to which they proudly belong
-the tradition of Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy; Nekrosov, Chekhov, and Blok;
.
16
Mandlstam, Pasternak, and Solzhenitsyn. It stirs in them a religious fervor and
the strength of conviction to execute their duty as artists. To these artists, the
course of human existence, the history of mankind is, as the 19th century Russian
historian Granovsky wrote, the history of its moral growth. And this moral growth
or progress is the sphere of the fulfillment of the Jaws of history. Granovsky
remarked that
''The purpose of history is the attainment of a moral and enlightened
individual personality, independent of fatalistic and of a society
which is appropriate to the demand of such a personality."
The vocation, then, of these artists as prophets is to summon man to
consciousness: consciousness of himself as a man and his difficult Jot as such, and
consciousness of his task of moral growth. This is Kozintsev's call at the
beginning of his film of King Lear. This is his task throughout the work. He
perceives this to be the thrust of Shakespeare's drama. And Kozinstsev, a devoted
follower of Dostoevsky, demonstrates in his film that this consciousness can be
achieved only by the panful peeling away of the many layers of delusion acquired
through years of self deception.
Many film critics agree that film versions of Shakespeare's plays offer the
broadest possible avenues for the full exploration of the inherent potential of the
plays' imagery. Additionally, cinema provides the opportunity for the essentially
collaborative nature of thB drama to be realized and to find its resonance in the
various cmematic devices. In both cases, film makes possible the rediscovery of
Shakespeare's poetic genius. Kozintsev's filmic poem of King Lear is to
surface of reality as Shakespeare's original poetic version is to every day speech.
In Lear Kozintsev has created a visual cinematic imagery that is not
merely a COri'Venient structure upon which to hang the verbal poetic imagery of
Shakespeare nor does the filmic image serve simply to reinforce or repeat the
visual image conjured up by Shakespeare's words. Kozintsev was bold enough to
reach beyond these artistically restrictive and reductive boundaries. As he wrote
on the filmic rendering of Shakespeare,
"The problem is not one of finding means to speak the verse in front
of the camera, in realistic circumstances ranging from long shot to
close up. The aural has to be made visual. The poetic texture itself
has to be transformed into
10
a visual poetry, into the dynamic
organization of film imagery."
Taking the basic themes of awakening of conscience and consciousness as the most
significantly intense and burning issues of man's existence, Kozinstev has
attempted to bring the full lyrical beauty of Shakespeare to its complete fruition
through his own equally powerful, lyrical filmic image in King Lear
The first moments of Kozintsev's film visually instruct us on the direction
the entire film will take. The subjects of Lear, inhabitants of a world common to
all men but alien to him, are enroute to the castle, the haven of the small world of
Lear's making where conscience and consciousness are forbidden. They are
summoned by the blast of a horn to witness the meeting of these two worlds in
Lear's tragic fall back into the number of mankind. The jagged edges of men's
17 .
broken souls that litter the landscrape of life were strange to Lear. The call was
for him to share in the real life in which men's Jives become thus. Like an epigram
the horn - the caH to conscience and consciousness - announces that all who pass
this way hereafter must answer that call. Lear is one of those whom Heraclitus
must have had in mind when he wrote, "Men sought truth in their own little worlds
and not in the great and common world." The blast of the horn is the summons to
a consciousness of who we are and what we are about and the values underlying
both concepts. Following Dostoevsky's premise that "In the face of the earthly
truth, the eternal truth is accomplished," Kozinstev is concerned with
reestablishing the coordinates of man's spiritual reality in his physical reality.
And in Lear, he retraces one man's reorientation of his life according to those
coordinates.
With these accursed questions in mind Kozintsev has organized his film
imagery in King Lear around the elements of nature: fire, wind, water, and the
earth. His elemental/ontological concern for man is reflected in austere images
of nature which are always functioninp on the physical as well as the metaphsycial
level. The "philosophical landscapes" I he created constantly prod Lear toward a
transfiguration and eventual resurrection, two traditional themes in which Russian
literature of the 19th century is particularly rich. In Kozintsev's film all of
reality becomes a metaphor that reflects in raw elemental power the truth of why
and how one has lost one's way and the p<>int in time and space when one begins
again the journey toward self, the moment when consciousness begins to exceed
the boundaries of self.
Kozintsev's choice of the four elements as the organic structure of the
poetic idea of self-discovery is an ingenious reading of the individual exchanges of
Edgar, Lear, and Edmund with nature. He wrote that "the pictures of nature
found here are in constant motion and ceaselessly change character. They are
correlated ~ with the inner worlds of the heroes and with the development of
the theme." . They introduce and give closure to the thematic movements that
dominate Kozintsev's rendition of Lear. Let us focus for the moment on the
opening scene of the film when all tnemterested parties are filing into the Great
Hall for Lear's announcement of the surrender of his crown and the partitioning of
his kingdom. The lighting, in general, and fire, in particular, play a role equal in
power to the rage demonstrated by Lear when Cordelia responds that she has
nothing to say. Illuminated only by the quivering flames of wall-mounted torches,
the Great Hall reinforces the chiaroscuro of passion, deceit, and filial loyalty to
be played out there. Cordelia emerges to the center from behind a flame that
occupies the right side of the frame. Proceeding to the Great Hall with her
sisters, and throughout the ordeal of forced professions of filial love, Cordelia is
radiantly illuminated, bathed in lighting brighter by far than that of any other
character and equal in brilliance to the fire of the torches. There is no doubt in
whose heart the flame of filial love and loyalty burns brightest, while Goneril and
Regan loom in the shadows. The ceaselessly changing character and constant
motion of the images of nature are clearly evident in the images of fire in this
scene. Lear enters and goes immediately to warm himself by the fire. One of the
first shots of him is through the fire and smoke of the enormous fireplace. He
greedily warms himself by this center of family life, but the flame is perverted by
him. His possion to be flattered and cajoled makes unnatural demands on the
source of family warmth and transforms it into the consuming fire that engulfs
and destroys him, his three daughters, and the entire splintered kingdom. At the
18 .
same time, it is the fires of battle that contribute to the purification of Lear's
soul preparing him:to rejoin Cordelia. Thus the image of fire comes full circle.
Water imagery also plays a crucial role in structuring meaing in Kozintsev's
film. After Lear's public denunciation of Cordelia atop the castle wall, she and
the king of France take their marriage vows with the clear sound of the sea
lapping the shore. She departs from all that is dear to her on the sea. It ferries
her physically to a different land and confirms metaphorically that her soul is an
inhabitant of a different world where truth is value, not condemnation. Cordelia's
silence before Lear's demands for superfluous professions of love and devotion
remains the measure of truth throughout the film. The scenes of her exit to
France, her return to defend Lear, her reunion with him, and, finally, her death
are filled with images of water. Cordelia's integrity is the catalyst for growth in
the film; she dares to make Lear realize the vacuity of his existence. Her refusal
to shower him with empty phrases of filial devotion initiates Lear's return to
himself. Finally aware of the treachery of Regan and Goneril and understanding
his guilt before Cordelia, Lear reaches the nadir of his life from which the only
way is up. The point of upward movement, of growth in self knowledge, is marked
by a storm that pelts Lear with rain into a new consciousness of the world around
him and a new understanding of his place in it. His raging soliloquy before the
forces of nature is an indictment of his two daughters and an admission of his own
tragic flaw.
There is also a timeless quality that the water imagery gives to Lear. The
sea assumes an epic stature that informs the film with a sense of the t1meless
dimension of the eternal truth that Cordelia represents. In spite of the mayhem
and carnage that texture the film's surface reality, Cordelia's unfaltering
commitment to Lear and her own integrity leave no doubt as to what will endure.
Exiled by Lear, she is carried away by the sea. When Lear and his kingdom are
engulfed in the vile designs and ambitions of the ill-fated triangle of Edmund,
Goneril, and Regan, Cordelia is brought back by the sea to fulfill her
commitments of filial love and loyalty. A prolonged shot of the teeming froth at
the conflux of two bodies of water mark the reunion of Cordelia's anxious spirit
with the ill, broken spirit of her father. And finally, as Lear's words "Forever,
forever, forever" .echo menacingly at the end, the camera focuses on the stone
niche where Cordelia was hanged and slowly pans the sea beyond it returning, as if
reluctantly, to the cruel home of all the natural phenomena, the earth.
The location chosen by Kozintsev for his film is austere. Barren, rocky,
parched and cracked, it is the landscape of disillusionment, death, and despair. It
is the jarring visual representation of the subtle cataclysms man experiences
throughout life's journey. As the tragic hero, Lear must learn to call this home.
It is the macrocosm hitherto unnoted and uncharted by him. Its movement is set
in motion from the opening frames of the film. There is a band of madmen and
beggars constantly traversing the ugly surface of this inhospitable realm. Its
number eventually joined by Lear, Edgar, and Gloucester, the moaning band is a
permanent, almost surrealistic fixture of the earth, allowing no man to deny his
place in the group without serious consequences. Before Lear begins to realize
who he is and what he has done, there are several shots of him sealed securely
within his carriage as he crosses this landscape from one daughter to another. On
his final journey in this way, after his carriage has passed into the distance, the
eye of the camera practically swallows huge boulders as it pans from Lear's
19 '
entourage to Edgar, already by his father's hand one of the herd of unfortunates.
Lear is already enroute to the same fate.
Stone is also no more than stone in Kozintsev's film. After Cordelia's
death, Lear describes the coldness and hardness of men's hears and calls all those
gathered around "people of stone." Earlier he wishes he were a surgeon to
examine the hearts of stone in his daughters, Regan and Goneril. And finally,
Cordelia's body hongs lifeless in a stone niche prepared for her by the cold hearted
Edmund and Lear's other daughters. Still not allowing his images to stand still in
meaning, Kozintsev uses the some stone niche as the frame for his prolonged shot
of the sea after Cordelia's death, accentuating Shakespeare's optimism in the face
of overwhelming tragedy.
The fourth element of the organizational structuring of the film is wind.
From the very moment Lear disinherits Cordelia, our focus is directed to the
ominous formation of black storm clouds. They are rushed into position by a wind
whose rage bursts with a force equal to that of Lear's. Muted until the lost blow
of filial betrayal has been struck, the wind howls implacably thereafter stopping
only after Lear finally reaches the point of return to himself. The howling wind
cruelly echoes the din of confusion and the stork truth of Lear's tragic flaw. As
Lear tokes final leave of his two daughters who hove stripped him of his entourage
and closed their doors in his face, th temper of the wind begins to flare. It
reaches a feverish peak when the homeless Lear and his fool are caught in the
deafening rain storm mentioned earlier. The powerful moment in Lear's life is
clearly marked not only by the magnificent storm but also by nature's reaction to
it. There are shots of animals rushing back and forth anticipating and fearing the
storm's rage and, perhaps, reacting together with the storm to the fracture of the
natural relations between father and daughter. It appears that Lear himself is
orchestrating nature's violent reaction to his deep sense of Joss. He calls for the
destruction of the world that has become so abhorrent ot him. He must scream
his words to be heard over the wind's howling. The composition of the scene is a
stroke of genius. The dimly lit frame is empty except for the rain, the wind, and
the barren cracked earth. Beginning his ravings, Lear enters the frame on a
diagonal path from the upper right hand corner. Moving to the center of the
frame with his fool on his bock, Lear stops and the camera tokes a closer shot of
his face. Buffeted by the wind, pelted by the rain, and struggling against the
storm's mad howling to hear himself think, the raving, wide eyed Lear stands on
the verge of "brain fever," the condition to which several of Dostoevsky's chief
heroes so often fall prey. Lear doesn't complete his diagonal path, but returns
from the center to exit the frame from the point of his entry. He does not go
mod, but instead begins his upward movement from ruin.
One of Kozintsev's main concerns was that he (ft "link Shakespeare with
art, even the most contemporary art; but with life." Through his use of the
images of the earth, fire, wind, and water in Kina Lear as the organizational
principle of the film's imagery, Kozintsev lyricollyeplcts "thydnner connections
between the life of the world and that of the human soul." He locates the
coordinates of man's spiritual reality in his elemental physical reality, keeping
them constantly before man's eyes thus facilitating frequent contemplation of the
burning issues of his existence. It is through the flow of the primitive power of
nature in the film that Kozintsev successfully overcomes the urge to recreate
Shakespeare's poetry. Instead of filming verbiage, Kozintsev creates an equally
lyrical impression of life. hl his I Remember, Pasternak wrote,
a>
.,
"Metaphorical language is the result of the disproportion between
man's short : life and the immense and long-term tasks he sets
himself. Because of this, he needs to look at things as sharply as an
eagle and to fgnvey his vision in flashes which can be immediately
apprehended." ..
The cinematographic technique of Grigori Kozintsev in King Lear is a
series of such flashes by which one can, as best he is able, apprehend the truth of
existence as the Russian mind might perceive it.
FOOTNOTES
1
Geoffrey Reeves, "Finding Shakespeare on Film: From on interview with
Peter Brook," in Charles Willison Eckert's Focus on Shakespearean Films
(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1972), p. 37.
2
F .M. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett and
Rev. Rolph E. Motlaw (New York: W.W. Norton, 1976), p. 215.
3Aieksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle, trans. Thomas P. Whitney (New
York: Bantam Books, 1969), p. 324.
4czeslaw Milosz, Emperor of the Earth (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1981 ), p. 80.
5
Erich Auerbach, Mimesis, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1968), pp. 522-523.
6
Auerbach, p. 523.
7
Leonord Schapiro, Rationalism & Nationalism in Russian 19th Century
Political Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), pp. 59 and 84.
8
see Jock J. Jorgens, Shakespeare on Film (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1977), p. 3. Jorgens expresses grave reservations about approaches to
Shakespeare's plays which focus on the verbiage (as Pasternak calls it) in isolation
from the other rich elements of the stage, for example, movement, lighting, set
design, and costumes. The cinema exploits these elements and more.
9
Jorgens, p. I 0.
1Grigori Kozintsev, "Hamlet and i ~ Lear: Stage and Film," in
Shakespeare 1971, ed. Clifford Leech and J. -argeson (Toronto: University of
Tor onto Press, 1972), p. 191.
12
Grigori Kozintsev, Shakespeare: Time and Conscience, trans. Joyce Vining
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1966), p. 57.
13
Kozintsev, King Lear, p. 33.
21

and King Lear," p. 194.
15
soris Pasternak, "Translating Shakespeare," trans. Man.ya Harari, in I
Remember, trans. David Magarshack (New York: Meridian Books, Inc., 1960), p:
126.
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