Konstantin Ladeinikov is a Soviet intelligence officer trying to track down Dr. Hass, who at a pharmaceutical firm is developing a secret chemical weapon, RH gas, which stimulates brain activity in small doses and turns a person into an obedient animal in large doses; his work is complicated by the fact that Hass, being a political criminal, hides his identity, and no one knows what he really looks like.
Ivan Savushkin / Rolan Bykov / - Theatre actor, a former prisoner of the death camp, from which he managed to escape in 1944; the only one who saw Hass and can recognize him, because he goes as a spy to help Ladeinikov
I don’t like movies about spies, but I watched this one with incredible interest. I may even reconsider my approach to this genre. Although this picture itself, as the film critic Karaganov noted, stands out from this genre. The fact that the creators focused on art, not on a sharp plot. This is what I noticed in the first place.
The picture is very beautiful and incredibly stylish. It is black and white, protracted shots and an abundance of views of nature and the city is accompanied by magnificent music. Sometimes I forgot that I was watching a detective story, and just admired the symmetrical picturesque frames of architecture and nature. However, for the sake of the operator, it is worth seeing this film. There is a lot of intrigue here too.
The action takes place in the city of Dargate, whose name sounds very English, from which we conclude that everything takes place in the UK, although it is never directly talked about. This town is a resort, and everything we see happens during the so-called dead season, when there are practically no tourists. This complicates the work of Soviet spies, to which the attention of the police and German counterintelligence is doubly focused.
This film is more dramatic than detective. Yes, there are tense moments here, but personally I paid more attention to the psychology of the characters, their reaction to what is happening / or not happening /. Brilliantly showed his character Roland Bykov, convincing the viewer that the tortured in the death camp man who was lucky enough to escape from there, is in a terrible state, being forced to face again with his torturer. Waiting for this moment, thirsty because he wants to help the Motherland, but incredibly afraid of it.
There was a moment in the movie that horrified me. These are documentary footage taken during the war in one of the Nazi camps, where similar experiments were conducted. Needless to say, there is no more fictitious story than documentary. It was really scary to see.
At the beginning of the film, a real Soviet intelligence officer, Rudolf Abel, addresses the viewer. He was a colleague of Conon Young, who became the prototype of Ladeinikov. While serving in England, Conon traded slot machines (Ladeinikov sells jukeboxes in the film), was able to make a decent fortune and followed German scientists working in England.
The film fate of Ladeinikov, shown in the final, almost completely repeats the fate of the real Konon. But I will not describe it, because I do not want to spoil it, because I recommend watching this film.
Having the fame of classics of Soviet spy cinema and often placed in the same row with “Seventeen Moments of Spring” and “Shield and Sword”, “Dead Season” is a rather complex movie with its pros and cons. The main advantages - the creation of an atmosphere of "free" The West and the main concept, which we will talk about separately. The main disadvantages are the loose structure and flabby plot, which becomes acute only in the last half hour of screen time. There is often talk of the authenticity of re-creating the West in Estonia, where the film was shot. You can’t argue with this: bars, jazz, night and television advertising – all this consumer “paradise” is very reminiscent of the crooked Looking Glass, where a Soviet intelligence officer suffers. The problems experienced by Ladeinikov (the hero of Banionis) are in fact nothing compared to the anguish caused by living in a hostile environment. To convey it as a kind of purgatory, which only pretends to be paradise, but is actually a place of torment of conscientious souls (important lines of Professor O'Reilly and a Catholic priest), this Kulish managed brilliantly.
However, such a descriptive task would make the film a one-legged disabled, if it were the only one, the concept of "Dead Season" is much more difficult: to show this consumer purgatory as a legacy of fascism, which is the underbelly of any bourgeois and philistine. Deeply Nietzsche’s worldview of Professor Hass – this post-war Mabuse directly manifests itself in one of the scenes, so that the viewer can put together two conceptual halves of the Dead Season: the respectable and “democratic” facade of the “free” world and its true face, or rather the muzzle, that is, the division into full and inferior, superhumans and subhumans (all directly according to the precepts of Nietzsche).
The director’s task in Dead Season was to show precisely the deadness of bourgeois abundance, which is opposed by the constantly implied homeland of Ladeinikov and Savushkin, where there is no power of capital and the enormity of experiments on people. Return home occurs only in the final, and for the hero, and for the audience – it’s just happiness (in one of the scenes, the hero thinks about how good it would be to pass through Tverskaya). Of course, “Dead Season”, like many films of its time, shows the realities of the “cold war” from only one ideological angle, but this is typical of modern films, the same “Bridge of Spielberg”, which just shows the fate of Abel after his arrest.
However, although Spielberg managed to create an eventful action-packed narrative, following which the viewer does not miss, yet we, Russians and especially those born in the USSR, Kulish’s film is somehow related. Although it may seem boring, slow, even sluggish, its conceptual content is still relevant in the era of biotech weapons. In any case, not brilliant, but a workshop on creating an atmosphere and proving the conceptual tasks of the director Kulish, coupled with the works of Banionis and Bykov, complementing each other (the first in the West is restrained and closed, the second is relaxed and emotional), all this looks very decent today on the screen.
Moreover, the close, one can even say the structural connection between capitalism and fascism is not in doubt, and it would not hurt to recall it (I personally recall only the brilliant Rostovnik Sidney Lumet on this topic). And more. Ladeinikov’s voiceover monologue makes you recall the style of American naurs, which Kulish formally focused on, this is obvious. In short, Dead Season is a movie with a great cultural and ideological potential, realized if not one hundred percent, then close to that.
Dead Season (Director Savva Kulish) The film is brilliant by the coincidence of real events.
At the beginning, Rudolf Ivanovich Abel explains the whole layout, and the prototype of Ladeinikov was the Soviet intelligence officer Conon Molósmoke.
Banionis wasn't just 'as an actor' preparing for the role. He talked a lot with Molo himself & #769; smoke, did not "copy" manners and gestures, and was attentive to his professional explanations. He told a lot, relaxing in the summer at the service dachas of colleagues. Modest requests man, did not draw at the taiga cottage fires with stories before the youth (youth from the same cottages). Often awake, drinking a kettle with clean Siberian spring water overnight.
Yeah, and as a result, Banionis turned out to be similar, wrong word. The only gray, Moló the smoke was not gray for a long time. But the rest is just exceptional. Psychophysiology from ideological perception.
Savushkin, a mind-blowingly far from intelligence, plays Robinson Crusoe in a children's theater. He has a team, children at home are naughty, roles in 5 performances. . . Christmas trees, finally! However, with his fine Bavarian dialect, and as having escaped psychochemical treatment, he agrees to go and try to recognize that German doctor from the concentration camp. Savushkin shuddered when he characterized Hass’s habits organoleptically and made his portrait. Savushkin and in the work proved remarkable.
It will be autumn in Moscow, and they will burn the foliage, and it will be time for theatrical seasons.
The afterword. This film will help create the right ideological field for those people who are genuinely interested.
I will not go into detail about the importance of this film and the relevance of the chosen topic. All these things, in my opinion, are on the surface. And it’s great that the creators of the film, far from the ordinary game of the special services, showed opposition to several psychopaths who dream of re-creating a strange world order of dystopia.
I would like to share my impressions of watching. I will highlight several components, thanks to which the film ' shoots', fascinates and fascinates even today.
First of all, I was shocked by this laconic style. Nothing superfluous. No explanation. It’s like watching a game of chess or witnessing a surgical operation. On the screen, something happens permanently, but we are shown the illusion of no action. This directorial decision seems to me brilliant, which forces me to review the film paying attention to the halftones, views and other details that in the usual genre ' spy' cinema is not customary to highlight.
Second, we have perfect stylization. It is necessary to take into account the realities ' Iron Curtain' and it is impossible not to evaluate the obtained ' picture'. There is no doubt that the film was made in Western Europe. Even knowing the truth that the film was shot in Soviet Estonia, it is difficult to find a catch in the details - the perfect work.
Third, editing. For Soviet cinema, the smoothness of the material was never the prevailing value. Censorship has always taken precedence. That is why many wonderful tapes are incredibly cruel & #39; cut & #39;. Episodes look inconsistent in many cult tapes of the USSR and it is so familiar that it seems the norm. But in ' Dead Season' there is no such thing. It's a whole movie, like it was shot in Hollywood or Britain. However, Savva Kulish was so good that you still need to think worthy would even hypothetically work in Hollywood!
Fourth, actors. No one disputes the genius of the duo Banionis and Bykov. These two are so different and at the same time look incredibly great together.
It’s not just them who are the stars. Here it is up to the whole team - even the performers of the episodes are selected very carefully.
Fifth, details again. You can admire the chase or spectacular scene of the exchange, but to my taste, much more ' explodes the film' created in the framework of ' Dead Season' advertising. Fake smiles lead us into a consumer hell where everyone has their own unhappy place. And filmed as if before us really then advertising, boldly copied by the director.
Another detail is the entourage of nightclubs. A go-go dancer in the background during one of the talks shows the realism of the whole construction. It's like we're really in the Western world.
There are many more pleasant moments in this film. In all respects, this is an example of a decent movie. A movie in comparison to which James Bond films look like teenage nonsense. I will add in conclusion that I consider this tape as the first part of the dilogy, because the second film of Savva Kulish & #39;Committee 19' actually develops the theme started in the film.
10 out of 10
That’s how it happens sometimes: you watch a familiar and beloved film from childhood, and suddenly on, say, the hundredth first viewing catch yourself thinking – why is it so? There's no answer in the movie! And so it happened to me on -- well, maybe the twentieth viewing of Dead Season. All of us, “good moviegoers”, are fascinated by the Main Action of the picture, and we quickly forget its beginning, the starting point of its action. And in vain! Let me remind you: the film begins with information that at a foreign airport a certain contact between the Nazi criminal Dr. Haas and West German intelligence was killed, in whose pocket they found a encryption about the purchase of raw materials for the production of a certain HH gas. What immediately became known to the KGB and ... see the film. Who needs to eliminate the agent-intermediary so mediocrely (with the presence of terrible dirt!!!!) that the whole world learned about the RH project, not to mention its special services? No sane intelligence in this way would not have done, at least the encryption cleaned itself - it's about a terrible weapon, which themselves would be nice to have. Old underground resistance fighters? Unfortunately, I did not find a clear answer.
Anyway, along the way. The actor of the youth Savushkin was busy in the play "Club of famous captains". So, this performance was staged based on the children's eponymous, super-popular in the 60s-70s of the last century transmission of the All-Union Radio, which I then listened with great pleasure!
And I can not but say about the unique composer of the tape Andrey Volkonsky. The real prince (on his father) of an old Russian noble family, whose descendants returned to the Soviet Union in 1947, Andrei at home became an active propagandist of ancient organ and harpsichord music, creating in 1966 the ensemble “Madrigal”. It is thanks to Volkonsky that we enjoy the emotional author’s harpsichord passages in the Dead Season. Probably, they were very impressed by another young composer Tariverdiev, since he then “adopted” part of Volkonsky’s style for his subsequent work (you can compare the music from the Dead Season and from the Seventeen Moments of Spring: even a layman will find a lot in common in them!). Unfortunately, Prince Volkonsky and the Soviets did not grow together, and in 1972 he left for the cordon, where he died, without making world sensations in music.
8 out of 10
First I want to say that this is a classic film about scouts. The same ones that the boys looked at and wanted to become scouts. And his story is amazing. The insidious Nazi doctor continues to operate decades after the war. He is working to create a dangerous gas that can turn a person into a mindless, easily manipulated animal. The villain is immediately labeled a dangerous type. But! Nobody knows what he looks like. And our scout in Europe is going back and forth without much success. Here, the film immediately offers a non-standard twist. There is an actor who once escaped from a concentration camp where this Nazi scientist often appeared. And only this actor, far from the profession of scout, can identify a malicious doctor of science. Time is short, the desire of the actor is even less. But we need to act because the scale of the tragedy is impossible to imagine. It's very twisted. The plot is cool.
Donatas Banionis is hard to say. The scout must be cold-blooded and restrained, as Donatas was throughout the film. Therefore, he handled this role flawlessly. But still, the more important character here, in my opinion, is the hero of Rolan Bykov. He had something to play, and the character he has is more human, subject to emotions, nerves. Against the background of a professional scout who can stand up for himself, and is not deprived of knowledge about how to avoid dangers, the actor Savushkin makes him worry a little more, because he is an ordinary person, by the will of fate (and his own decision) turned out to be a participant in this dangerous game. A game whose outcome may be the fate of all those people captured on documentary footage. But on the scale of whole nations.
And everything would go wonderfully and wonderfully if the authors did not decide in the second part to arrange a small action movie in the style of James Bond. Yes, such an irony, in the reviews you can read that James Bond fans have nothing to catch in the film - action is not enough, but I am not a big Bond lover, on the contrary, I will say that it was this introduction of "bond" that slightly spoiled the impression of the picture. In the end, a fight began, a gloomy scientist, his henchman, a bubbly woman, who is being tortured for some reason right in the scientist’s country house. In addition, classic blows at a person tied to a chair and shouts “Who are you working for?” What was missing was the flashes of lightning in the night and the devil's laughter. Meanwhile, the scout rushes to rescue everyone. All this turned a good spy detective into some adventures of a brave 007 agent. Imagine if, in 17 Moments of Spring, Stirlitz had fought Himmler at the end and then raced him in cars for an exciting chase. And then fight again and heroically win. That would ruin a brilliant series. So "Dead Season" at the end spoiled and began to show action instead of a clever detective. I do not argue, for sure spies had to engage in combat fights with villains, but for it to be so revealing, so long and so far-fetched – of this I doubt.
Overall, as a spy movie, Dead Season is almost perfect. The only thing that spoils everything is the ending, as if it were made for a Bond movie. But the scene with the exchange of failed scouts became to some extent cultic, recognizable, it is a lot of parody. In my memory, it was in The Gentleman Show and The Town. So, the film put its name on the list of good detectives about scouts, but, for example, “17 Moments...” it clearly loses.
7 out of 10
A great film shot at the Lenfilm film studio telling about the life of a Soviet resident. There are no expensive special effects, innumerable explosions, endless shootings and pools of blood, which are so famous for American films of this genre. But there is a clash of minds, cunning and intrigue that keeps in suspense throughout the film.
The KGB receives information about the upcoming mass production of gas. The properties of this gas are such that in small doses it is able to stimulate the intellectual potential of a person, but in large doses it turns him into an obedient slave. The task is assigned to the Soviet resident Konstantin Ladeinikov (Donatas Banionis), but in the course of the task he faces a difficulty, since he cannot identify the main head of the project, Hass, since the Soviet special services do not have a photo of him. Therefore, Ivan Savushkin (Rolan Bykov), who, while in a German concentration camp, saw Hass, when he experimented on prisoners, is being transported to Germany. He was saved from death by the fact that he fled in 1944 and now he has to calculate and neutralize this terrible man.
As a criticism, intelligent viewers can point to the fact that there are no documents about such studies and if such weapons were created, the whole world would certainly know about it. But do we know all about the work of the special services of those years? How many documents and archives have been disclosed? What is the guarantee that such projects are not being conducted now? And even if this is an invention of the writer, it is quite an interesting find, because such plans quite took place, especially during the Cold War.
Unlike the movie Resident Mistake, there is practically no place for the inner experiences of the characters. They, like granite monoliths, hold all emotions and experiences within themselves. The film perfectly conveys the life and atmosphere of Western Germany, it seems that everything was really filmed in the capitalist world. Western intelligence is not shown primitively and schematically. On the contrary, despite its considerable cruelty, it cannot be called a stupid and weak opponent. It seems that there is a confrontation between two equal enemies.
Especially remember the scene in which the Secretary Hass, allegedly in contact with the Soviet resident, ceased to accept society. When she went to the cafe, no one wanted to sit at the same table with her. She was shunned like a leper. In my opinion, the most accurate definition of the entire capitalist way of life.
Connoisseurs of the Soviet detective is recommended.