Russian and Soviet Film Adaptations of Literature, 1900-2001: Screening the Word

235 Pages·2005·2.75 MB·English

by  Stephen Hutchings

Russian and Soviet Film Adaptations of Literature,
1900–2001
This book examines the importance of film adaptations of literature in Russian cinema,
especially during the Soviet period when the cinema was accorded a vital role in
imposing the authority of the communist regime on the consciousness of the Soviet
people. The book provides many interesting case studies and brings together many
leading authorities on the subject.
Stephen Hutchings is Professor of Cultural Studies and Russian at the University of
Surrey. Recipient of two large AHRB grants and author of monographs on Leonid
Andreev, Russian Modernism, and Russian literature’s relationship with the camera. He
is currently researching post-Soviet television culture.
Anat Vernitski is Lecturer in Russian at the School of Slavonic and East European
Studies, University College London. She has published on twentieth-century Russian
literature and on cultural representations of Orthodox Christianity. She is currently
researching Russian émigré literature.
BASEES/RoutledgeCurzon Series on Russian
and East European Studies
Series editor: Richard Sakwa, Department of Politics and International
Relations, University of Kent
Editorial Committee:
George Blazyca, Centre for Contemporary European Studies, University of Paisley
Terry Cox, Department of Government, University of Strathclyde
Rosalind Marsh, Department of European Studies and Modern Languages, University
of Bath
David Moon, Department of History, University of Strathclyde
Hilary Pilkington, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of
Birmingham
Stephen White, Department of Politics, University of Glasgow
This series is published on behalf of BASEES (the British Association for Slavonic
and East European Studies). The series comprises original, high-quality, research-level
work by both new and established scholars on all aspects of Russian, Soviet, post-Soviet
and East European Studies in humanities and social science subjects.
1. Ukraine’s Foreign and Security Policy, 1991–2000
Roman Wolczuk
2. Political Parties in the Russian Regions
Derek S.Hutcheson
3. Local Communities and Post-Communist Transformation
Edited by Simon Smith
4. Repression and Resistance in Communist Europe
J.C.Sharman
5. Political Elites and the New Russia
Anton Steen
6. Dostoevsky and the Idea of Russianness
Sarah Hudspith
7. Performing Russia: Folk Revival and Russian Identity
Laura J.Olson
8. Russian Transformations
Edited by Leo McCann
9. Soviet Music and Society under Lenin and Stalin
The Baton and Sickle
Edited by Neil Edmunds
10. State Building in Ukraine
The Ukranian Parliament, 1990–2003
Sarah Whitmore
11. Defending Human Rights in Russia
Sergei Kovalyov, Dissident and Human Rights Commissioner, 1969–2003
Emma Gilligan
12. Small-Town Russia
Postcommunist Livelihoods and Identities: A Portrait of the Intelligentsia in Achit,
Bednodemyanovsk and Zubtsov, 1999–2000
Anne White
13. Russian Society and the Orthodox Church
Religion in Russia after Communism
Zoe Knox
14. Russian Literary Culture in the Camera Age
The Word as Image
Stephen Hutchings
15. Between Stalin and Hitler
Class War and Race War on the Dvina, 1940–46
Geoffrey Swain
16. Literature in Post-Communist Russia and Eastern Europe
The Russian, Czech and Slovak Fiction of the Changes 1988–98
Rajendra A.Chitnis
17. Soviet Dissent and Russia’s Transition to Democracy
Dissident Legacies
Robert Horvath
18. Russian and Soviet Film Adaptations of Literature, 1900–2001
Screening the Word
Edited by Stephen Hutchings and Anat Vernitski
Russian and Soviet Film
Adaptations of Literature, 1900–
2001
Screening the word
Edited by Stephen Hutchings and Anat
Vernitski

LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2005
by RoutledgeCurzon
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by RoutledgeCurzon
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or
Routledge's collection of thousands of eBooks please go to
www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Editorial matter and selection © 2004 Stephen Hutchings
and Anat Vernitski
Individual chapters © the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-01104-X Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-30667-1 (Print Edition)
Contents

List of plates viii
List of contributors x
Acknowledgements xii

Introduction: the ekranizatsiia in Russian culture
xiv
STEPHEN HUTCHINGS AND ANAT VERNITSKI

PART I Film adaptations from the start to Stalin: manufacturing the myth 1

1 ‘Crime without punishment’: reworkings of nineteenth-century Russian 3
literary sources in Evgenii Bauer’s Child of the Big City
RACHEL MORLEY
2 Educating Chapaev: from document to myth 19

JEREMY HICKS
3 Ada/opting the Son: war and the authentication of power in Soviet screen 33
versions of children’s literature
STEPHEN HUTCHINGS

PART II Literature and film in the post-Stalin period: the myth in retreat 45

4 Adapting foreign classics: Kozintsev’s Shakespeare 47

DAVID GILLESPIE
5 The sound of silence: from Grossman’s Berdichev to Askol’dov’s 59
Commissar
GRAHAM H.ROBERTS
6 Film adaptations of Aksenov: the Young Prose and the cinema of the Thaw 69

JULIAN GRAFFY
7 Screening the short story: the films of Vasilii Shukshin 84

JOHN GIVENS

PART III Re-viewing Russia: myth and nation 99

8 The Mikhalkov brothers’ view of Russia 101
BIRGIT BEUMERS
9 Adapting the landscape: Oblomov’s vision in film 118

RUSSELL SCOTT VALENTINO
10 ‘Imperially, my dear Watson’: Sherlock Holmes and the decline of the 128
Soviet empire
CATHARINE THEIMER NEPOMNYASHCHY

PART IV From text to screen, Soviet to post-Soviet: re-interpreting the myth 142

11 ‘I love you, dear captive’: gender and narrative in versions of The Prisoner 144
of the Caucasus
JOE ANDREW
12 Post-Soviet film adaptations of the Russian classics: tradition and 156
innovation
ANAT VERNITSKI

Bibliography 167
Index 179
List of plates

0.1 A scene from Gerasimov’s Young Guard (Molodaia gvardiia, 1948) 14
0.2 A poster advertising Kheifits’s The Big Family (Bol’shaia sem’ia, 1954) 16
1.1 Viktor and Kramskoi encounter Mania in Bauer’s Child of the Big City (Ditia 28

bol’shogo goroda, 1914)
1.2 Viktor and Kramskoi peruse Viktor’s album of society belles 30
1.3 The juxtaposition of idealized aesthetic image and real self-image 31
1.4 Mary steps over Viktor’s corpse 36
2.1 Chapaev directing Pet’ka’s fire from Chapaev (1934) 48
2.2 A scene from Petrov’s Chapaev is With Us (Chapaev s nami, 1941) 51
6.1 The trio of friends in Colleagues before Sasha departs for Kruglogor’e 94
6.2 Alesha and Vlad’ka arrive for work in the quarantine service of the Leningrad 95

port
6.3 The trio of friends in My Younger Brother in Tallinn 99
6.4 Dima and Iurka in the fishing collective farm 99
8.1 A scene from Mikhalkov’s Oblomov 130
8.2 A scene from Mikhalkov’s Unfinished Piece for a Mechanical Piano 132
8.3 A scene from Mikhalkov’s Dark Eyes 136
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