Waterproof 10 'A' All creative people fail. I wouldn’t call 'Horizon' a failure of Heifitz and Baklanov, but the picture makes an impression far from ambiguous. To correctly understand the film, you need, first of all, to trace its path in relation to the line of films ' a holistic focus'. By the time Joseph Heifitz began shooting the picture, already out ' Hope' Sergey Gerasimovich (April 1955), ' First tier' Mikhail Kalatozov (April 1956), ' Troubled Spring' Alexandra Medvedkin (August 1956), 'It began so.. .'. Lev Kulijanov and Yakov Segel (December 1956), ' Ivan Brovkin on virgin land ' Ivan Lukinsky (January 1959) and ' Alenka' Boris Barnet (March 1962). Heifitz’s tape closes the list (at least, to date, I have only been able to see these paintings). The next film, revealing in detail the 10-year epic of virgin landscaping, will be released only in 1979 - 'Taste of Bread'.
Only 8 films, half of which are comedies that do not pretend to be a serious display of events. Heifitz's film occupies a special place on this list. It was filmed as a peculiar ' summing up'. By this time, the enthusiastic and reckless enthusiasm of the first years of development noticeably subsided. If the first pictures were shot with the purpose to call young people to virgin land, then ' Horizon' was created as an answer to the question: how to keep youth on virgin land? Enthusiasm - the phenomenon of short-term and endless prolongation (extension) is not subject to. The brightest ' reckless ' romantics have always been young people. It is she who, not burdened with life experience, family, profession, is able to go in search of the notorious horizon in order to find her happiness and even the meaning of life on this path.
Putting my hand on my heart, the first half of the picture I definitely liked, but the second... Very strange was the combination of romance, labor enthusiasm, broken women's hearts and moralizing on the theme of leaving as betrayal. Grigory Yakovlevich Baklanov, one of the representatives of “lieutenant prose”, wrote a rather controversial script in which the comedic beginning through the everyday descriptive middle almost reached the tragic finale. Perhaps, thus, the writer sought to cover 6 years of virgin development, when even the uninitiated began to understand many of the miscalculations of the grandiose company. Probably, it was the outflow of young people from virgin land that caused the film to appear. If so, then the director took risks with the main characters. After all, when it comes to long-term living, it implies, first of all, the creation of a family. Who could have it here? . .
I'm not going to call it a bad movie. 'Bad' is a bad word. More controversial. Exactly. Because with something seen the viewer can agree, and something will be completely contrary to his nature. Something will evoke warm memories from the days of the student squads, and something will seem overly edifying. The unconditional success of the film is the cast, and, above all, the debut role of Alexei Safonov. In the fourth year of VGIK Alexey first starred in a movie. The picture ' Horizon' had high expectations. It was supposed to be the hallmark of Safonov. But that didn't happen. In the original version of the film, Sergey Safonov’s character wished to remain intellectually free. He wanted to protect his human dignity and leave the virgin land, because he did not feel necessary.
After watching the finished version, the film authorities considered the main character a deserter and ordered Heifitz to redo the film. As a result, the identity of the hero was almost destroyed. On the screens of the country, the film was modest and did not gain any laurels, and Horizon was released when Alexei was already graduating from the institute. Immediately after the end of VGIK Safonov enrolled in the staff of the Gorky Film Studio, but after an unsuccessful debut in the career of the artist, there was a pause. All of the above confirms that neither the wonderful director Joseph Heifitz, nor the talented writer Grigory Baklanov are to blame for the fact that the film turned out to be so : the logic of the main character’s actions was broken, which caused the finale to turn out to be crumpled, but the finale is the very emotional peak that the viewer remembers for many years. . .