Soviet cinema: rare photos, film clips & quotes. The story the world forgot to tell.
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“Ivan’s Childhood.” Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. 1962.
His first feature film. Based on a story by Vladimir Bogomolov. The war through the eyes of a boy scout. Ivan has no childhood left. It only comes back to him in dreams.
In the frame is a birch grove. Captain Kholin and the nurse Masha. Kholin was played by Valentin Zubkov. Masha was played by Valentina Malyavina. She was 20 then. She was a first-year student at the Moscow Art Theatre School. The scene was shot in a grove outside Moscow, and it was not an easy shot.
The film won the Golden Lion in Venice in 1962. For Tarkovsky it was the start of a world name.
“Once There Was a Singing Blackbird.” Directed by Otar Iosseliani. 1970.
Gia plays the timpani in the orchestra of the opera house in Tbilisi. The instrument is rarely heard. So Gia has plenty of free time. Dates. Friends. Long dinners. He is always rushing and always late. But at the right moment he makes it in time to strike the drums.
It was shot almost like a documentary. This is real Tbilisi at the turn of the 60s and 70s. The film reached Soviet screens in 1972. The lead role was played by Gela Kandelaki.
Critics still argue about it. Some say the director condemns his hero for wasting his life on trifles. Others see it differently. His talent was friendship and the gift of making people feel a celebration.
The last shot. A clock mechanism. Time keeps going. Watch this film.
THE LOVERS (1969). Directed by Elyor Ishmukhamedov.
Some film scenes stay with us forever. One of them is the unforgettable sequence of watermelons floating down a mountain river.
The film tells a story of young people, love, friendship and hopes for the future. Set in sunny Tashkent in the 1960s, it captures a time when life seemed full of possibilities and the world lay open ahead.
But one of the film's most memorable scenes has a remarkable story behind it.
The idea came to the director years before filming. One day, Elyor Ishmukhamedov went on a trip to the mountains with his father in an old Pobeda car. They bought around twenty watermelons and placed them in a mountain stream to cool while they stopped for lunch. Suddenly, a heavy rainstorm broke out. The water level rose, and the watermelons were swept away by the current.
Ishmukhamedov jumped into the river after them. He later recalled the experience as a moment of extraordinary excitement, full of thunder, rain, sunshine, a rainbow and rushing water.
Years later, that real-life adventure became one of the most beautiful scenes in Soviet cinema.
The sequence was filmed in the mountains. Rodion Nakhapetov played Timur, but a stunt double was involved in the dangerous waterfall scene. According to actor Shukhrat Irgashev, a dummy was thrown into the waterfall instead of Nakhapetov. The actor himself was later pulled out of the fast-flowing Chirchik River with a net.
Just look at those watermelons drifting down the mountain river. There is so much youth, freedom, sunshine and pure joy of life in this scene. It feels as if youth itself is carried along by the current.
For me, this is one of the most wonderful scenes in the history of Soviet cinema.
🎬 On this day in 1934. Chapaev premiered.
92 years ago tonight, Leningrad’s Titan cinema screened one of the most legendary films in Soviet history.
It was directed by the Vasilyev “brothers”, Georgi and Sergei, who weren’t actually related, just namesakes. They based it on Dmitry Furmanov’s novel about Civil War commander Vasily Chapaev, whom Furmanov fought alongside.
Some details worth knowing:
▪️ The directors used Furmanov’s diaries and the memoirs of his wife, Anna.
▪️ Anka the machine-gunner is named after her.
▪️ They also spent a lot of time in military archives and the Museum of the Red Army, and both had fought in the Civil War themselves.
Audiences were gripped from the very first screening. The film became a cultural phenomenon that people watched, quoted and retold for decades.
Have you seen it?
🎵 Now playing: a song from a Soviet classic
In Pyotr Todorovsky’s City Romance (1970), a lonely X-ray doctor meets a young kindergarten teacher, and two very different worlds try to find each other. The song many viewers remember from the film is Mireille Mathieu’s “Pardonne-moi ce caprice d’enfant” (“Forgive Me This Childish Whim”), a French summer hit of 1970 written by Patricia Carli.
Mathieu was adored in the USSR, and this song became tied to the film in people’s memories. Its tenderness and its plea for forgiveness suit a fragile, uncertain love story.
Some songs don’t just accompany a film. They become its heartbeat. 🎬
FOUR BEAUTIFUL AND TALENTED SOVIET ACTRESSES — ALL NAMED NATALIA! ❤️
1. Natalia Varley
2. Natalia Kustinskaya
3. Natalia Fateeva
4. Natalia Seleznyova
“God, it hurts so much…” Those were the last words spoken by Soviet actor Yevgeny Urbansky as his colleagues rushed to his side. The doctors had not yet arrived.
On November 5, 1965, exactly 61 years ago, a tragedy in the Karakum Desert claimed the life of one of the most remarkable actors of Soviet cinema.
Urbansky was filming The Director, in which he played the leading role of Alexei Zvorykin. The character was inspired by Ivan Likhachev, the director of the Moscow Automobile Plant.
A special ramp had been built about 40 kilometres from Bukhara. A car was supposed to race up it and leap into the air. Urbansky was strongly advised to let a stunt double perform the scene, but he refused. He wanted to do it himself.
The first take went almost perfectly. The crew decided to shoot another. That second take proved fatal.
The car overturned, and the frame of the windshield crushed the actor. The battery came loose and struck him on the head, fracturing his cervical vertebrae.
He lay on the sand dune, groaning in unbearable pain. The ambulance managed to get him to hospital alive, but an hour later, Yevgeny Yakovlevich Urbansky was gone.
He was just 33 years old.
He never got to see his daughter. She was born several months after her father's death.
Soviet Cinema Vault retweeted
Если бы Игоря Талькова не убили, то сегодня он отмечал бы своё 70-летие. Если бы...
Но он обещал вернуться. В страну не дураков, а гениев. Пусть даже через 100 веков.
🎵 A SONG FROM SOVIET CINEMA — “THE LAST POEM”
This beautiful song, performed by Irina Otieva, comes from Love & Lies (1981), the Soviet film directed by Ilya Frez. It was released in New York in March 1982 under this title.
The music was composed by Alexey Rybnikov, originally in 1970 while he was working on Treasure Island. Years later, he found the perfect words in a poem by Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, translated into Russian by Adelina Adalis.
A song born years before the film found its place on screen — and one that still deserves to be heard.
Soviet Cinema Vault retweeted
3 ноября родился Александр Градский. Сколько раз слушаю эту песню, всего мороз по коже.
Alexander Gradsky would have turned 77 today. 🕯
Born November 3, 1949, he had a voice you could never mistake for anyone else’s: raw, soaring, and able to go from a whisper to a thunderclap in a heartbeat.
One of his most haunting performances is “Song About the Ship” from Nikita Mikhalkov’s cult 1974 film At Home Among Strangers, a Stranger Among His Own (Svoy sredi chuzhikh, chuzhoy sredi svoikh), with music by Eduard Artemyev. It sounds like a premonition and a farewell at the same time. Best heard in silence.
Gradsky passed away on November 28, 2021, but his songs, his rock operas, and that unforgettable voice live on Rest in peace, maestro.
🎬 Ещё больше о советском кино в Телеграме: t.me/+AKdUeJFiSQVhZTky
Tatiana Samoilova was offered the role of Anna Karenina in America, with Gérard Philipe set to play Vronsky. But she was never eager to go to America, and she would not have been allowed to anyway.
In reply to their Hollywood colleagues, officials at Goskino wrote that the actress Samoilova could not travel abroad for filming because she had no... completed higher education.
ANNA KARENINA
1967
DIRECTED BY ALEXANDER ZARKHI
On November 2, 1967, “Anna Karenina” premiered in cinemas across the Soviet Union.
Director Alexander Zarkhi had to fight hard to cast Tatyana Samoilova in the lead role.
Many members of the studio’s artistic council flatly rejected her. Some said she had “square hands,” others complained that she didn’t have a “Russian face.” But she still played Anna!
Samoilova was only 33 at the time of filming.
There have been many adaptations of this novel, and there will be many more. But in my opinion, no one has surpassed Samoilova in this role.
Ironically, Vasily Lanovoy was cast as Vronsky.
By then, Lanovoy and Samoilova were already divorced. Both had healed from the wounds of their three-year marriage. The old grievances were forgotten.
On set, they supported each other, completely disappeared into their characters, and never spoke of the past…
Tatyana Samoilova truly lived the role of Anna Karenina. She reread the novel dozens of times, pencil in hand.
During the months of filming, she became so immersed in the character that those close to her were seriously worried about her mental health.
And today, it’s hard to imagine that anyone else could have played Anna Karenina instead of Samoilova. Or do you see it differently?
ANNA KARENINA
1967
DIRECTED BY ALEXANDER ZARKHI
On November 2, 1967, “Anna Karenina” premiered in cinemas across the Soviet Union.
Director Alexander Zarkhi had to fight hard to cast Tatyana Samoilova in the lead role.
Many members of the studio’s artistic council flatly rejected her. Some said she had “square hands,” others complained that she didn’t have a “Russian face.” But she still played Anna!
Samoilova was only 33 at the time of filming.
There have been many adaptations of this novel, and there will be many more. But in my opinion, no one has surpassed Samoilova in this role.
Ironically, Vasily Lanovoy was cast as Vronsky.
By then, Lanovoy and Samoilova were already divorced. Both had healed from the wounds of their three-year marriage. The old grievances were forgotten.
On set, they supported each other, completely disappeared into their characters, and never spoke of the past…
Tatyana Samoilova truly lived the role of Anna Karenina. She reread the novel dozens of times, pencil in hand.
During the months of filming, she became so immersed in the character that those close to her were seriously worried about her mental health.
And today, it’s hard to imagine that anyone else could have played Anna Karenina instead of Samoilova. Or do you see it differently?
Tatiana Samoilova was offered the role of Anna Karenina in America, with Gérard Philipe set to play Vronsky. But she was never eager to go to America, and she would not have been allowed to anyway.
In reply to their Hollywood colleagues, officials at Goskino wrote that the actress Samoilova could not travel abroad for filming because she had no... completed higher education.
On November 3, 1988, the film “The Cold Summer of 1953” premiered. It was Anatoly Papanov’s last role, and he did not live to see it released. Voted best film of the year by the “Soviet Screen” magazine poll, it also won the USSR State Prize.
ANATOLY PAPANOV — 104 YEARS SINCE HIS BIRTH
THE COLD SUMMER OF 1953 (1988)
Directed by Alexander Proshkin
When director Alexander Proshkin brought him the screenplay for The Cold Summer of 1953, Anatoly Papanov agreed to take the role immediately. It was a story about his own generation, and he had something to say.
The filming was difficult for him. He often felt unwell and tired quickly. The role of Kopalych was emotionally demanding, too. Papanov did not simply play this character — he seemed to live his story.
Shortly before his character's death, Kopalych says:
“One thing I regret... the years. I so wanted to live a little, like a normal human being. And to work.”
It was Papanov's final film role. He did not live to record the dialogue for it. His lines were voiced by another actor, the talented dubbing artist Igor Yefimov.
Anatoly Papanov, People's Artist of the USSR, was born on October 31, 1922. He died on August 5, 1987, aged just 64.
Remembering a remarkable actor on his birthday.