When I was born, I cried; afterward, every day I lived, I explained to me why I cried when I was born. - Dmitry Grigorovich, "Guttapercha Boy". A week of New Year’s viewing, combined with a week of screening of Russian classics of the 18-19 centuries. Film 4th.
I remember how many tears I shed over this book in high school. Then I read the classics, and I remember many works over which I sobbed (this and "Gadfly" Ethel Lillian Voynich, and "Thunderstorm" and "Unprisoned" Ostrovsky, and a few more), but over the book "Guttapercha boy">>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Because this is the story of an unfortunate orphan child who was constantly tortured by the person to whom he was given for upbringing, and who eventually destroyed him once.
I confess that I did not know about the film adaptation of this work until yesterday, when I chose the film for viewing as part of our weekly program. And of course, I couldn't miss this movie, given how sad the book was. And so we saw it today. And it is impossible now to forget the frozen grimace of grief on the clown's face, and the unspeakable sadness in his eyes, and it is frightening, and this look cuts to tears.
This film was shot by one of the brilliant directors of Soviet cinema - Vladimir Gerasimov. The plot tells the story of one child, a boy Peti, eight years old, left without a mother and father, at the end of the nineteenth century in the Russian Empire. The Soviet drama "Guttaperche boy", is based on the novel of the same name Dmitry Grigorovich.
The film was created in the best traditions of Soviet cinema of the fifties. The main roles are performed by such titans of Soviet cinema as Alexei Gribov, who starred in many films and is certainly familiar to the viewer as the captain of the Striped Flight, and Mikhail Nezvanov, who was filmed at Eisenstein in Ivan the Terrible. The director chose a heavy dramatic story for the film adaptation, and the actors did not fail, skillfully playing their characters. Orphan Petya is given for training in the circus to the evil and inhospitable acrobat Carl Becker. The boy is very talented and makes great progress in the circus arena. But the hard-hearted mentor makes Petya to work without breathing, on the verge of the possible, and also treats him like an animal. The only one who sympathizes with the little boy is the clown Edwards, who is trying to somehow help the young acrobat.
As it turned out, the laws in this area (in the sense of defining orphans) did not work, apparently children died often, but nobody cared about it - everyone was interested only in money and the problem of survival ..., especially in the lower strata of society. What do you say, time flies, in the courtyard of the twenty-first century ... and the problems are still the same, and yet these problems are topical, will disturb the hearts of people always, like this film ...
The author of the story knew about this, so he created this work (to draw attention to this fact...). Despite the fact that I saw the film for the first time only today, at my conscious age (at 42), it made a very strong impression on me, and I cried no less than when I was a child over this book.
Historical films, classical dramas, film adaptations of works by Russian and foreign writers, wonderful life-affirming and simply ridiculous to tears comedy, beautiful, amazing fairy tales shot by Soviet cinema, still excite the hearts of the audience. In all these films, there was one main character, whose name is the people. More than half a century passed, until now these films look with great interest and not only because of nostalgia, it was a real art, in which our life was clearly reflected as in a mirror.
In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. There were other "heroes" on the scene. These are the bandits of the dashing nineties and those who managed to survive in gang violence and legalize themselves, becoming a “respected” member of society – investigators, policemen, drug addicts, prostitutes, socialites, businessmen, pimps and all the motley public that sits on the back of the impoverished people and also chases them. This is the whole difference between cinema (and not only cinema) of the Soviet period and modern “art”, where in the theater, naked people gallop on stage and brandish obscene objects for depraved pleasures.
Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Nekrasov... There is no one to come and protect ordinary people from the omnipotence of the powerful of this world, to tell about the needs of ordinary people, and did not appear, did not produce them in the light of post-Soviet Russia, chasing the West in search of "values of the civilized world." Is it not because of sorrow for the people Pushkin went into exile in Chisinau and Mikhailovsky, is not for this reason Dostoevsky went straight from the scaffold?
There is neither Pushkin, nor Dostoevsky, nor Nekrasov, they have become for new generations something abstracted from their aspirations and reflections on the fate of the Russian people, in no way connected with it. But only a blood connection with the people raised these poets and writers to a height inaccessible to modern best-selling authors.
And here is one of the masterpieces of the 50s of the last century - "Guttapercha boy". In the country where this film was made, there were smiles and tears of sadness and joy. This life contained a whole era and gave the world an example of the people in law and in essence of the state. And then she was killed, this era. And did not become "guttaperche boy", with the genius Mkhatov Gribov, now such a movie is not removed, as today there are neither high-rise installers, nor firemen, nor carpenters on the screens.
But the living, eternal art cannot be killed. Whenever the viewer or reader wants to quench his thirst with spring water, he will return to the inexhaustible source of folk art of a magnificent period in the history of mankind, called the Soviet era.
I think that the film is very heavy: the heart tears impressionable, and the indifferent will not even watch. Therefore, I can only recommend to those who wish to get acquainted with the problems of those who have lived and live at the bottom of society ... the century and the country do not play a role ...
10 out of 10