ANTI-STALINIST FILM STIRS MOSCOW BY VIVIDLY RECALLING PURGE ERA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01365R000300290027-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 1, 2004
• Sequence Number: 27
• Publication Date: January 28, 1964
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2005/01/13 : CIA-RDP88, 01365ROp0P00 A27J7 ~, - ~t
tC ~-IA~C 1t- 1
NEW :YOIC TIMES
JAN 2 8 1964
Anti-Stalinist Film Stirs Moscow.
By Vividly. ecalling Purge Era
Y U
citizen are expected to have an
impact in cinematographic form
far exceeding the initial effect
of Yuri Bondarev's controver-
sial novel, "Stillness," on which
the film 1s based.
Press reviews and movie-
goers' reactions point up the
sense of participation evoked
by the film, which had Its
premiere in Moscow's modern-
istic Rossiya Theater yesterday.
The great and difficult truth
of a large slice of life of our
people has been realized con-
vincingly and exactly," Izvestia,
the Government newspaper,
said.
"The .authors of the film have
shown us a great and complex
segment of our life; they have
shown it truthfully and boldly,
in the best realistic traditions
of our art" was the comment
of Pravda, the Communist party
paper.
Several hours after viewing
the film two Russians shared
their feelings with an Ameri-
can,
"They came to arrest me in
the early morning hours just as
it happened in the movie," a
woman in her late 30's said
guardedly. "Those scenes of
postwar Moscow were scenes of
my youth."
A man in his early 40's said:
"The film really affected me
:because I had experiences very
much like Sergei."
Sergei Vokhmintsev, the prin-
cipal hero of the film, is the son
of the arrested man. He is ousted
from the party for having failed
to report his father,'s arrest. He
rest of a stanch Communist on
an informer's charges in the
1949 purge is the central
episode in a three-and-half-hour
anti-Stalinist=film that promises
to be one of the major Soviet
motion-picture events of the
t\ycar. .
The arrest scene and other
incidents close to the life ex-
perience of almost every Soviet
By THEODORE SIIABAD
Special to The Now York Times
MOSCOW, Jan, 27-The ar- leaves the Petroleum Engineers
Institute, where he was study-,
ing, and goes into virtual exile,
in a remote desert oil explora
tion area.
Mr. Bondarev's novel, serial-'
ized in the liberal literary jour-
nal Novy Mir in 1962, was one:
of the early examples of anti-
Stalinist literature that recalled
the all-pervasive atmosphere of
the renewed terror of the post-
war years.
There were critics who did
not like Mr. Bondarev's gloomy
novel on the ground that it dis-
torted the past. But others, not-
ably Konstantin Paustovsky,
the writer, defended Mr. Bon-
darev's theme as an intergral
part of what took place in the,
Soviet Union during the "cult,
of personality."
The filmmakers have softened
the brutal impact of the novel'
by adding a sketchy epilogue:
that brings the lives of thei
characters from the dark days;
of 1949 to the new era that.
began with Premier Khru--
shchev's denunciation of Stalin
in 1956.
The film also omits scenes of
genuine postwar poverty de
scribed in the novel as well as
Stalinist slogans and statues
that were part of the dailyI
scene in those days. Stalin's name is mentioned I
only once, but within the limits:
imposed by the officially ap-'
proved "socialist realist" ap-
proach, Mr. Bondarev and the,
film's director, Vladimir Basov?
who joined in writing the script,,
have rendered reasonably credi-
ble scenes of postwar Moscow
that differ sharply from the
glossy photography character'
istic of many current movies',.
that use the Soviet capital as a,
background.
The film's title, "Stillness,",
refers to the comparative si-1
,once of civilian. life that envel-;
ops Sergei, a war veteran, after
the roar of battle. It is shoti
in leisurely style in wide-screen
black and white.
Approved For Release 2005/01/13 : CIA-RDP88-01365R000300290027-7