We were taught not to betray friends, relatives and the Empire.
- What if one of the betrayals was inevitable?
- There is always a compromise, girl.
Rushet's up. I got close to him. He drew his lips and whispered to his ear:
- Nope. Not always. Then you have to choose those who can forgive. © Sergey Lukyanenko, "Emperors of Illusions"
Screening is such a specific genre in which it is practically impossible to keep the letter of the book intact; yes, in general, it is not necessary - it is right that cinema lives by its own laws, and literature by its own. The difficulty is that if the work concerns not only the sphere of cinematography, but has a literary or other primary source (the same music, for example), it would be very nice to keep at least some of the ideas that were invested in it. Of course, it will be a different work, but its value depends not only on how good it is from the point of view of cinematography, but also from the point of view of its correspondence to the source, the expression of its basic morality and the simulator of the atmosphere. This is an inevitable problem, but it cannot be said that it is insoluble: for more than a hundred years of the existence of cinema, people have figured out how to get around it, and back in 1905, Georges Méliès amazed viewers with his adaptation of Julvern’s adventures.
"Cities and Years" Evgenia Chervyakova could become a good film, however, omitting the main message of the original novel by Konstantin Fedin, the director did not bring a new, not necessarily even original idea to his work, and therefore a complex and multifaceted work turned into, in essence, an uncomplicated melodrama about forced betrayal and the horrors of war.
On the one hand, it is impossible not to pay tribute to the cinematic skill of Mr. Chervyakov: of course, it was the thirties, and in the cinema mostly worked people closely associated with either Eisenstein, or Pudovkin, or FEX, and therefore it is not surprising their directorial professionalism, but - how beautifully staged mise-en-scene! What wonderful footage with the theater (literally theater) of military operations! What amazing characters in the background, secondary characters! That Kyrgyz officers, that a ruffled demonic futurist at a pompous exhibition, that fat-swimming patrons in luxurious coats - these people attract the attention of the audience much more than the main characters ... which, in fact, is not good. Because the film is not about them, but about a lover and an intellectual rushing between duty and feeling with large crying lips (and there is no typo here), but about his friend with a dull and formidable expression of his face, resolutely shining with the glasses of round glasses.
It is rather strange that such a film was released in the thirties: of course, it has the necessary pinch of ideology, a little pathetic, revolutionary pathos and the triumph of a simple Soviet citizen. But at the same time, the main characters are a traitor-intellectual, who, although he is sick with all his heart for his fatherland, is strongly attached to the life in Germany he lost, and a German officer with a powerful jaw and a pensive, but not at all malicious expression. They are the central characters, they are given enough time and fatherly directorial sympathy, not officer Kurt, who is actually here “for the good”. Therefore, the current situation, Kurt’s angry speech, the whole topic of betrayal of the Motherland, the final murder – it does not look natural or justified. Unlike the original novel, where Fedin sympathizes with his hero, but does not harbor any illusions about him, Andrei, performed by Ivan Chuvelev, looks not as an intellectual broken by the millstones of time, but as an unhappy boy who became confused, and therefore his spontaneous act does not cause tragic expectation and catharsis. In fact, his betrayal is literally a “spontaneous act,” not the decision of an adult who does not understand what place he should take in the new world. And therefore the final shot of Kurt, his former best friend, is perceived not as a tragic necessity, as in ancient plays, but as the senseless cruelty of a representative of a new generation incapable of human feelings.
However, looking at all the above, it becomes clear why the film was not popular, unlike other Soviet films of 1930 (Earth, Feast of St. Jorgen, Quiet Don). He's just -- not Soviet enough. And at the same time not interesting enough in itself: of course, the individual scenes are impressive, and the production is beautiful, but, in fact, it is nothing more than a melodrama about the war. Too bad.
5 out of 10