Volga, Volga (1938)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Volga-Volga |
| Original title | Волга-Волга |
 | |
| Country of production | USSR |
| original language | Russian |
| Publishing year | 1938 |
| length | 104 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Grigory Alexandrov |
| script | Nikolai Erdman, Vladimir Nilsen Grigory Alexandrow |
| production | Mosfilm Studios , Grigory Vasilyevich Alexandrov |
| music | Isaak Dunayevsky |
| camera | BA Petrov |
| cut | Eva M. Ladyshenskaya |
| occupation | |
| |
Volga, Volga ( Russian Волга-Волга ) is a Soviet comedy film. Grigory Alexandrov , accompanied and directed the script. The premiere took place on April 24, 1938, an international premiere took place on May 16, 1941 in the USA. The film is about a group of amateur musicians on their way to Moscow , where they want to take part in the talent competition “Moscow Music Olympiad”. The main action takes place on a steamship that sails on the Volga . The main roles are played by Lyubov Orlova , the wife of Aleksandrov, and Igor Ilyinsky . The music for the film was composed by Dunayevsky and the lyrics to the songs came from Lebedew-Kumach . The film is a "comedy about the talent of the people and the struggle with bureaucratism."
Movie title
According to Orlowa, the title of the film goes back to the Russian folk song Stenka Razin . When Alexandrov was rowing with Charlie Chaplin in San Francisco Bay , he sang this song about the Cossack Ataman. Chaplin jokingly recommended these words as the title of a film, but Alexandrov ultimately adopted this tip for his new film Волга-Волга .
The original duration of the film is 1:44 hours, in the US version it is 1:48 hours. The sound was mono and the aspect ratio 1.37: 1, 35 mm format , the film length is 2867 meters, in 11 parts.
The script came from Grigory Alexandrow (1903-1983) , who also directed. He returned from exile in Mexico in 1932 at the direct order of Stalin and was 34 years old when the film was made. In 1947 he received the title “ People's Artist of the USSR ”, in 1973 he became “ Hero of Socialist Labor ”. In 1941 and 1950 he was awarded the Stalin Prize. Lyubow Orlowa (1902–1975) (wife of Alexandrow), the female lead in the film, was referred to as "Marlene Dietrich of the Soviet Union". In 1941 she received the Stalin Prize for the films Volga, Volga and Circus . In 1939 she received the Lenin Prize , the medal “For the Defense of the Caucasus” and twice the Order of the Red Labor Banner . She was a People's Artist of the RSFSR (1947) and People's Artist of the USSR (1950). The loyal private relationship between him and his wife Ljubov Orlowa and Stalin was clouded, as some of their close friends were imprisoned or even subjected to the death penalty .
action
The plot is held together by the course of the boat trip on the Volga with the experiences of two amateur choirs on their way to the performance exhibition of the “Moscow Music Olympiad”.
Ivan Ivanovich Bywalow (played by Игорь Владимирович Ильинский (1901–1987)) dreams of serving in Moscow. Instead of being transferred to Moscow, he is supposed to prepare the all-union show for artistic amateur groups. There are two amateur collectives on site. On the one hand the folk choir of the postman Petrowa, called Strelka the arrow, and on the other hand the symphony orchestra led by the accountant Trybischkin. Both collectives demonstrate their skills in front of Byvalov, although Byvalov says that no one will be sent to Moscow. The accountant Alyosha Trubyshkin suggests that Byvalov accompany him to Moscow himself. Byvalov, as an educator of the talents of the people, is flattered. So the orchestra sets out on the Volga on the steamer Sevrjuga , which is steered by the funny pilot . However, the sailing ship Lesorub on which the choir and Strelka sailed to Moscow caught up with Byvalov's ship. If the two ships are forced to stay there, Aljoscha and Strelka have a fight, even though they are in love. To reconcile, Aljoscha comes on the sailing ship while Strelka stayed on the steamer. The steamer continues with Strelka and orchestra and Strelka sings her new Wolga song to the orchestra, but the wind carries away the sheet music. Strelka's new song will be sung by other amateur groups broadcast on the radio. And Strelka collapses in tears, because in this way she cannot prove her authorship of an “anonymous” song. Ultimately, both the choir and the orchestra arrive in Moscow. At first Byvalov pretends to be the creator of the Volga song, but after Aljoscha's and Strelka's reconciliation, the irritation clears up. Both amateur ensembles perform the “beautiful song” together and Strelka, Dunja Petrowa, receives the jury's first prize.
The blond postman Dunja Petrowa from the provinces, "Strelka", is the "ideal typical socrealistic plot of the positive heroine" and is developing from the postman in the provincial town of Melkovodsk on the Volga to the winner of the Mastersingers competition in Moscow. Your lay choir (synonymous for the proletariat ) has a wonderful song, but has no knowledge of sheet music. On the way to Moscow, this choir joins the classical orchestra of its lover Aljoscha (synonymous with intelligence ). Although this is the guardian of the art of writing, it lacks inspiration. The song that you get lost on the way is miraculously on everyone's lips in Moscow and proves: It is not the authorship of the individual, but the united singing in the collective that is important. The sentence constructions are easy to decipher, but many individual characters speak a different language on their own.
“There are no water pipes, telephone lines do not work, the local musical instrument production is nothing but rejects, the administrator in charge has only one thought: how to get to Moscow as quickly as possible, his secretary yells at the supplicants and does not let any city dwellers snore in a carriage, take every opportunity to stop in the pub and otherwise only worry about their musical instruments, there is nothing to eat in the restaurant, the postwoman refuses to take telegrams, instead of a bridge there is a ferry that is notorious for its accidents , and the only steamer on the quay is a gift from the Americans that is ready for scrap. ”Every figure, every object, every prop here points to circumstances, the exposure of which, as Maja Turovskaja aptly writes, could just as easily have led to a ban on the film. (After Schattenberg, as well as Maja Turovskaja: Volga-Volga i ego vremia. In: Iskusstvo kino 1998, No. 3, 59–64.)
background
The film is considered characteristic of the unrealistic musical comedies produced by the Soviet filmmaker Gregori Alexandrov. Many film reviews point to fundamental influences of Mack Sennett's comedies . The Soviet jazz comedies of the 1930s painted a more colorful picture of Soviet life for its citizens, in keeping with Stalin's message, “Life has gotten better and is fun”. But the people were exhausted from the increasing collectivization and the gulags .
In August 1932, Grigory Aleksandrov was invited to Maxim Gorky's dacha. It turned out that Stalin was visiting. He spoke of the need for a new Soviet culture that is an "optimistic, happy art full of fun and laughter". At a people's congress of the CPSU Central Committee , the slogans “Give us comedies” and “Laughter is the brother of power” were highlighted. Accordingly, the film directors in the country were called comedies to turn. It was said of those gathered that many letters from viewers arrived and were called for in the comedies. Thus, Volga-Volga must be addressed as a standard Soviet film and an example of socialist realism . But it was also one of the most popular Soviet films of the 1930s, with long box office lines across the country.
The Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was a fanatical movie lovers and this movie was one of his favorite movies. In 1938 he handwritten the rhyming words (in Russian) for a song of the music comedy: “A happy song is good for the heart, it never gets too much for you. All villages, big and small, love this melody, and the cities sing it! ” Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his memoir that in the pre-war period Stalin laughed at him because he resembled a character in the film.
For Stalin there were constant previews of new films in the private projection room of the Kremlin. After his “acceptance”, he asked to cut a long scene with a French kiss from the film Volga-Volga . In fact, among the enthusiastic visitors, Stalin himself was one of the most enthusiastic. In 1942 he even sent a copy of the film to US President Roosevelt for his "further education". Stalin had obviously had the film shown so often that he could reproduce the film gags and jokes before they came in the original sound.
In 1941 the film received the Stalin Prize I category . "Alexandrov was able to celebrate his well-deserved triumph by monitoring the color images of this year's May parade."
Performances
After the world premiere on April 24, 1938 in the Soviet Union, a dubbed US version followed on May 16, 1941. Stalin had sent his favorite film to Roosevelt. The film was one of the successful Soviet music films by Grigory Alexandrow and Isaak Dunayevsky from the 1930s and 1940s. Performances were in Finland on May 25, 1941, Mexico on September 30, 1942, and performances in France on March 13 and in Denmark on June 10, 1946.
After the war , the film was distributed in the Eastern Bloc countries , as a result of which it was played alongside Bulgaria, Romania and Poland, especially in the Soviet occupation zone and later the GDR. From 1945 to 1950, the Soviet company Sojusintorgkino (Sovexportfilm) took care of the distribution of films in the Soviet Zone / GDR, mainly Soviet films, mostly with German subtitles, were distributed.
The film, dubbed by Tobis-Filmkunst , was shown in German cinemas from June 7, 1946 under the title Wolga-Wolga .
In the east of Germany, the song of the water carrier, yes, it already has its meaning ... retouched in German by Alexander Ott, spread on the radio, which made the song popular.
This Soviet film was revived on June 20, 1959 in Finland. On July 9th, 2006 it was shown at the "Russian and Soviet Film Festival" in Japan. In the Soviet Union, the film repeatedly ran under the title Волга-Волга . Film versions were also shown in Burkina Faso , Brazil and Greece .
In 2006 Igor Lopatonok produced a colored version of the original black and white film, with digital coloring and film restoration . The color film version was shown for the first time on February 14, 2010 on the First Channel of Russian TV .
gallery
- Actor portraits
Igor Iljinsky and Maria Mironova
Igor Ilyinsky
Lyubov Orlova
Lyubov Orlova
Andrey Tutyshkin
Film image
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review
“Box office successes and popularity ratings are more reliable. This does not mean that someone who was enthusiastic about Grigory Aleksandrov's film “Volga, Volga” (Mosfilm 1938) was also a staunch Bolshevik or shared the taste of Stalin, whose avowed favorite film was this musical. [See. Oksana Bulgakova, here: 66] But it means that with this film a common language was found and offers of identification were made that were acceptable to the audience. Here an understanding took place about what was worth striving for, what was amusing, what was happiness. It was not decisive whether a film was believable or realistic. Neither in the East nor in the West do people go to the cinema to see their own misery shown. Author = Susanne Schattenberg "
“[...] a musical comedy that represented a step forward compared to earlier works by its director, [...] was Alexandrov's Volga-Volga. This time Alexandrov wrote his own screenplay, based on the recently increased efforts to exploit the talent of amateur actors [...]. Here was a more original and productive field for humor and entertainment than the foreign jazz of Funny Boys . "
Others
The German film drama Volga-Volga exists from 1928 and premiered on November 15, 1928. The director of the film was Viktor Tourjansky. The main actors were Hans Adalbert Schlettow as Stenka Rasin , Lillian Hall-Davis as Princess Zaineb and Boris de Fast as Iwaschka, the ataman's confidante. The production company was Peter Ostermayr -Filmproduktion and distribution was carried out by the Austrian Luxfilm Koppelmann & Reiter (1928), the international rights went to the American Kinematrade Inc. in 1933.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Photo by Chaplin and Aleksandrow on How Charlie Chaplin inspired Soviet director Alexandrov to make a Volga film . "In his book Epoch and Kino , Alexandrow wrote about this" wonderful day "that four of them drove: Alexandrow himself, Eisenstein, Chaplin and a lifeguard for emergencies."
- ↑ Volga, Volga, Mother Volga, You flow calmly there, |: You have no idea what a terrible Don Cossack has in mind.
- ↑ Борис Виленкин: Как стреляли Любовью Орловой Lyubow Orlova - megastar of Soviet Hollywood (Boris Wilenkin: How Lyubov Orlova was shot up ). In: Komsomolskaya Pravda . April 15, 1994. Text in Russian
- ↑ smarthistoryblog.com
- ↑ 2715 meters are at the Federal Archives - Use Media Film Online reported
- ^ The 3rd Russian Film Festival . In: The Telegraph . November 5, 2009.
- ^ Actor Igor Ilyinsky: biography, creativity
- ↑ Translated from the Russian by Friedrich Hitzer. In: Association of German Film Clubs e. V. (Ed.) On the occasion of the Bad Ems retrospective 1966, page 318.
- ↑ “Stalin's penchant for films and the existence of his private screening room in the Kremlin, where he saw every film before he released it, are widely known.” From Susanne Schattenberg: cf. Oksana Bulgakova: Lord of the Pictures - Stalin and the film, Stalin in the film. In: Agitation for happiness. Soviet art in the Stalin era. Bremen 1994, pp. 65-69.
- ↑ When Stalin wanted to kill John Wayne : “Stalin was enthusiastic about films with jazz music. During the thirties he commissioned three other productions of this type in addition to the Volga-Volga . ”In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. ; Volga, Volga. ( Memento from June 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Grigori Aleksandrov: Volga-Volga - Волга-Волга (1938)
- ↑ Neues Deutschland from June 7, 1946, p. 3
- ↑ Stalin's favorite film restored in color for Valentine's Day
- ↑ Digital handbook on the history and culture of Russia and Eastern Europe
- ↑ Volga, Volga in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- ^ Filmportal.de: Wolga - Wolga Germany 1928 feature film
Web links
- Volga, Volga in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Volga-Volga in the All Movie Guide (English)
- Stalin's favorite film restored in color . In: AFP , February 12, 2010
literature
- Ulrich Gregor, Friedrich Hitzer: The Soviet Film I 1930-1939 a documentary. Association of German Film Clubs V. (Ed.) On the occasion of the Bad Ems retrospective in 1966.
- Susanne Schattenberg: Stalin's Engineers: Living Worlds Between Technology and Terror in the 1930s . R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-486-56678-4 . ( online in Google book search, text version with sources )
- Tatiana Jegorowa: Soviet Film Music (An historical servey) . harwood academic publishers (OPA Overseas Publishers Association), Amsterdam 1997, ISBN 3-7186-5910-7 . ( online in Google Book Search)
- Herbert Marshall: Masters of the Soviet Cinema: Crippled Creative Biographies . Routledge, New York 1983, ISBN 0-415-72664-6 . ( online in Google Book Search)