The Beshin meadow
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The Beshin meadow |
| Original title | Бежин луг (Beschin lug) |
| Country of production | Soviet Union |
| original language | Russian |
| Publishing year | none (shooting time 1935-37) |
| length | today's fragment: 30 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Sergei Eisenstein |
| script |
Alexander Rscheschewski Sergei Eisenstein Isaak Babel |
| production | Mosfilm |
| music | Gavriil Popov |
| camera | Eduard Tissé |
| occupation | |
| |
The Beshin Meadow is a half-hour, Soviet film fragment that the director Sergei Eisenstein directed between 1935 and 1937. The film title is borrowed from a literary model by Ivan Turgenev , but its content is based on the case of Pawel Morozov , who was killed by reactionary relatives according to the official Soviet reading , but whose historical authenticity is doubtful.
action
The story takes place among collective farms of the early Stalin era .
Young Stepok's mother died as a result of the severe beating of his father, a coarse kulak . The father is deeply angry with his son because he warned the other kolkhoz farmers about a planned arson. Nevertheless, there is a barn fire. Behind them, however, are other kulaks who holed up in a church after their act. However, the kulaks are captured and taken away. A little later, however, the arsonists succeed in overpowering their guards and freeing them again. Stepok, who has to guard the grain from thieves every night with other kolkhoz boys, is shot by his father. He dies in the arms of an old communist who carries him back to the village through the rolling cornfields.
Production notes
Beschin lug , so the original title, was prevented from being completed by numerous political decisions. The film, which was largely completed in the spring of 1937, never premiered because it no longer exists in its Eisensteinian concept. In Germany, the half-hour fragment was first seen on January 24, 1972 on ZDF .
Background to the history of origin and interesting facts
The Beschin-Wiese was to be Eisenstein's first film after his return from the United States (1932). But during Eisenstein's absence, the political climate in the USSR had changed significantly. The era of experimentation (1920s) in Soviet cinema had given way to a massive control frenzy on the part of the Stalin culture. In Boris Shumyatsky , an extremely loyal functionary had taken over the general management of the main film administration in Moscow, who accurately executed the orders of his cultural-political superiors. Eisenstein was suggested to make a musical comedy, which he did not like. When Eisenstein again made the counter-proposal to stage an eccentric comedy, Shumyatsky again rejected this idea.
Eventually an agreement was reached on the present material, and in 1935 Eisenstein was able to start filming Beschin lug . After two thirds of the shooting, the director received the order to stop. After the script changes requested by Shumyatsky, Eisenstein was able to continue it. In the course of the following year, cultural policy changed in the context of the Stalinist "purges" in such a way that Eisenstein's plans no longer fit into the given cultural concept at all. At this point the director had completed his roughly five-hour film and showed friends like Lion Feuchtwanger , who was enthusiastic. In March 1937, Eisenstein was just editing the film when he had to finally bury the project shortly before it was finished. Even his important name no longer protected him from such dangerous accusations as those of "formalism" and "subjectivism", and so he had to indulge himself in openly displayed self-criticism in order to prevent the worst. The film material was requisitioned and later probably destroyed.
In 1963, a good 15 years after the death of her husband, Sergei Eisenstein's widow handed over his film archives to the Eisenstein archive. The material was viewed by the director Sergei Jutkewitsch and the film historian Naum Kleiman . Both of them put together the pictures that Eisenstein had once cut out for himself from a positive copy in painstaking detail so that parts of the film could be reconstructed with still photos. Of this approximately 60-minute attempt at reconstruction, about half was later used for a first international performance of The Beschin-Wiese . This work is therefore not a film with moving images, but simply a series of photos, which certainly leave an impression of what this Eisenstein film could have looked like.
Assessments
“This“ photo film ”suggests that Beschin lug would have become one of Eisenstein's masterpieces. The composition and the inner dynamics of the pictures are still convincing here; Structure and style make it clear that - beyond the mere, realistic description of an individual case - a parable of the compelling power of the new era would have emerged. "
In the lexicon of the international film it says: "Since Eisenstein formalized the Turgenev template" Notes of a hunter "... neglecting the political aspects into a symbolic primal conflict between father and son, the film fell victim to the Stalinist cultural censorship: in 1937 filming had to be stopped The unfinished film disappeared in the archive (...) Using assembly plans, Naum Kleemann and Sergej Jutkewitsch reconstructed this fragment, which consists primarily of stills and is extremely interesting from a film-historical point of view. "
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Reclams film guide, by Dieter Krusche, collaboration: Jürgen Labenski. P. 229. Stuttgart 1973
- ↑ Bucher's Encyclopedia of Films, Verlag CJ Bucher, Lucerne and Frankfurt / M. 1977, p. 212.
- ↑ Whether this happened through Soviet authorities, through improper storage or through German bombing raids on Moscow in 1941/42 can no longer be clarified today.
- ↑ The Beshin Meadow. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed January 1, 2019 .
Web links
- The Beshin Meadow in the Internet Movie Database (English)