"The cinema of the Soviet Union, not to be confused with
"cinema of Russia" despite films in the Russian language being
predominant in the body of work so described, includes films produced by
the constituent republics of the Soviet Union reflecting elements of
their pre-Soviet culture, language and history, albeit they were all
regulated by the central government in Moscow.
Most prolific in their republican films, after the Russian Soviet
Federative Socialist Republic, were Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia,
Ukraine, and, to a lesser degree, Lithuania, Belarus and Moldavia.
At the same time, the nation's film industry, which was fully
nationalized throughout most of the country's history, was guided by
philosophies and laws propounded by the monopoly Soviet Communist Party
which introduced a new view on the cinema, socialist realism, which was
different from the one before or after the existence of the Soviet
Union."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_Soviet_Union)
List of films -
All films have English subtitles
or click on captions / subtitles symbol
Revolution and Civil War
"The first Soviet Russian state film organization, the Film
Subdepartment of the People's Commissariat for Education, was
established in 1917. The work of the nationalized motion-picture studios
was administered by the All-Russian Photography and Motion Picture
Department, which was recognized in 1923 into Goskino, which in 1926
became Sovkino. The world's first state-filmmaking school, the First
State School of Cinematography, was established in Moscow in 1919.
During the Russian Civil War, agitation trains and ships visited
soldiers, workers, and peasants. Lectures, reports, and political
meetings were accompanied by newsreels about events at the various
fronts."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_Soviet_Union)
1920s
"In the 1920s, the documentary film group headed by Dziga Vertov blazed
the trail from the conventional newsreel to the "image centered
publicistic film", which became the basis of the Soviet film
documentary.
Typical of the 1920s were the topical news serial Kino-Pravda and the
film Forward, Soviet! by Vertov, whose experiments and achievements in
documentary films influenced the development of Russian and world
cinematography.
Other important films of the 1920s were Esfir Shub's
historical-revolutionary films such as The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty.
The film Hydropeat by Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky marked the beginning of popular
science films. Feature-length agitation films in 1918-21 were important
in the development of the film industry.
Innovation in Russian filmmaking was expressed particularly in the work
of Eisenstein. Battleship Potemkin was noteworthy for its
innovative montage and metaphorical quality of its film language. It won
world acclaim. Eisenstein developed concepts of the revolutionary epic
in the film October. Also noteworthy was Vsevolod Pudovkin's
adaptation of Maxim Gorky's Mother to the screen in 1926.
Pudovkin developed themes of revolutionary history in the film The End
of St. Petersburg (1927).
Other noteworthy silent films were films dealing with contemporary life
such as Boris Barnet's The House on Trubnaya. The films of Yakov
Protazanov were devoted to the revolutionary struggle and the shaping of
a new way of life, such as Don Diego and Pelagia (1928). Ukrainian
director Alexander Dovzhenko was noteworthy for the
historical-revolutionary epic Zvenigora, Arsenal and the poetic film
Earth."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_Soviet_Union)
Strike! -Sergei Eisenstein (English Complete) (1924) Strike was Sergei Eisenstein's first film (1924). It depicts life at
a factory complex in Tsarist Russia and the conditions the workforce
experienced. The plot is about the workers organising a strike which due
to repression escalates into a full blown occupation. Its most famous
scenes like Battleship Potemkin where the violent measures used by the
Tsarist authorities. Acting mainly involved members of the First Workers
Prolecult theatre an experimental movement in the Soviet Unions early
years that attempted to replace the importance of plot with the power of
performance aided by special effects. Sergei Eisenstein was a member of
the Prolecult theatre before moving onto film and incorporated most of
that style into his films. Contains both Russian and English inter
titles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLiNKaUp0AA
The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of
the Bolsheviks movie (1924)
The film chronicles the adventures of an American, "Mr. West," and his
faithful bodyguard and servant Jeddie, as they visit the land of the
horrible, evil Bolsheviks. Through various mishaps, Mr. West discovers that
the Soviets are actually quite remarkable people, and, by the end of the
film, his opinion of them has changed to one of glowing admiration!
Running time 1:13:37
Battleship Potemkin movie (1925)
Battleship Potemkin (Russian: Броненосец «Потёмкин»,
Bronenosets Patyomkin), is a 1925 Soviet silent film directed by Sergei
Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm. It presents a dramatized version of the
mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship
Potemkin rebelled against their officers.
Battleship Potemkin was named the greatest film of all time at the Brussels
World's Fair in 1958.
The film is set in June 1905; the protagonists of the film are the members
of the crew of the Potemkin, a battleship of the Imperial Russian Navy's
Black Sea Fleet. Eisenstein divided the plot into five acts, each with its
own title:
Act I: "Men and Maggots" in which the sailors protest at having to eat
rotten meat;
Act II: "Drama on the Deck" in which the sailors mutiny and their leader,
Vakulinchuk, is killed;
Act III: "A Dead Man Calls for Justice" in which Vakulinchuk's body is
mourned over by the people of Odessa;
Act IV: "The Odessa Steps", in which imperial soldiers massacre the Odessans;
Act V: "One against all" in which the squadron tasked with intercepting the
Potemkin instead declines to engage; lowering their guns, its sailors cheer
on the rebellious battleship and join the mutiny.
Directed by Sergei M. Eisenstein
Running time 1:11:38
Mother movie (1926)
In this film, the mother of Pavel Vlasov is drawn into the revolutionary
conflict when her husband and son find themselves on opposite sides
during a worker's strike. After her husband dies during the failed
strike, she betrays her son's ideology in order to try, in vain, to save
his life. He is arrested, tried in what amounts to a judicial farce, and
sentenced to heavy labor in a prison camp. During his incarceration, his
mother aligns herself with him and his ideology and joins the
revolutionaries. In the climax of the movie, the mother and hundreds of
others march to the prison in order to free the prisoners, who are aware
of the plan and have planned their escape. Ultimately, the troops of the
Tsar suppress the uprising, killing both mother and son in the final
scenes.
Running time 1:27:06
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlP9uGQ56ag&index=76&list=UUTKpdDNg-FgqRDg7TbIOgoQ
October (Ten Days that Shook the World) movie (1928)
In documentary style, events in Petrograd are re-enacted from the end of the
monarchy in February of 1917 to the end of the provisional government and
the decrees of peace and of land in November of that year. Lenin returns in
April. In July, counter-revolutionaries put down a spontaneous revolt, and
Lenin's arrest is ordered. By late October, the Bolsheviks are ready to
strike: ten days will shake the world. While the Mensheviks vacillate, an
advance guard infiltrates the palace. Anatov-Oveyenko leads the attack and
declares the proclamation dissolving the provisional government.
Directed by Grigori Aleksandrov, Sergei M. Eisenstein
Running time 1:42:20
Eisenstein - 'The General Line' (1929)
'The General Line' aka 'Old and New' ('Translit. Staroye i novoye') is a
1929 Soviet film directed by Sergei Eisenstein.
Running time 2:00:51
The New Babylon movie (1929)
In the beginning of the industrial revolution, the Paris Commune was
established in 1871 against the rich and the powerful, and violently
repressed by the army that remained faithful to a tamer form of
Republicanism. How could the love story between a young sales girl and a
soldier unable to decide if he was pro or against the radical fashion? Two
short months were needed for the answer to be found - in blood and tears,
and under rain that washes all past memories. Any day, a New Babylon shop
will open with frilly things for the bourgeois girls. The washerwomen will
be there to wash them.
Running time 1:33:27
"In the early 1930s, Russian filmmakers applied socialist realism to
their work. Among the most outstanding films was Chapaev, a film about
Russian revolutionaries and society during the Revolution and Civil War.
Revolutionary history was developed in films such as Golden Mountains by
Sergei Yutkevich, Outskirts by Boris Barnet, and the Maxim trilogy by
Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg: The Youth of Maxim, The Return of
Maxim, and The Vyborg Side.
Also notable were biographical films about Vladimir Lenin such as
Mikhail Romm's Lenin in October and Lenin in 1918. The life of Russian
society and everyday people were depicted in films such as Courageous
Seven and City of Youth by Sergei Gerasimov. The comedies of Grigori
Aleksandrov such as Circus, Volga-Volga, and Tanya as well as The Rich
Bride by Ivan Pyryev and By the Bluest of Seas by Boris Barnet focus on
the psychology of the common person, enthusiasm for work and intolerance
for remnants of the past.
Many films focused on national heroes, including Alexander Nevsky by
Sergei Eisenstein, Minin and Pozharsky by Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Bogdan
Khmelnitsky by Igor Savchenko. There were adaptations of literary
classics, particularly Mark Donskoy's trilogy of films about Maxim
Gorky: The Childhood of Maxim Gorky, My Apprenticeship, and My
Universities.
During the late 1920s and early 1930s the Stalin wing of the Communist
Party consolidated its authority and set about transforming the Soviet
Union on both the economic and cultural fronts. The economy moved from
the market-based New Economic Policy (NEP) to a system of central
planning. The new leadership declared a "cultural revolution" in which
the party would exercise control over cultural affairs, including
artistic expression. Cinema existed at the intersection of art and
economics; so it was destined to be thoroughly reorganized in this
episode of economic and cultural transformation.
To implement central planning in cinema, the new entity Soyuzkino was
created in 1930. All the hitherto autonomous studios and distribution
networks that had grown up under NEP's market would now be coordinated
in their activities by this planning agency. Soyuzkino's authority also
extended to the studios of the national republics such as VUFKU, which
had enjoyed more independence during the 1920s. Soyuzkino consisted of
an extended bureaucracy of economic planners and policy specialists who
were charged to formulate annual production plans for the studios and
then to monitor the distribution and exhibition of finished films.
Meanwhile, the USSR cut off its film contacts with the West. It stopped
importing films after 1931 out of concern that foreign films exposed
audiences to capitalist ideology. The industry also freed itself from
dependency on foreign technologies. During its industrialization effort
of the early 1930s, the USSR finally built an array of factories to
supply the film industry with the nation's own technical resources.
In Enthusiasm: The Symphony of Donbass (1930), his documentary on
coal mining and heavy industry, Dziga Vertov based his soundtrack on an
elegantly orchestrated array of industrial noises. In The Deserter
(1933) Pudovkin experimented with a form of "sound counterpoint" by
exploiting tensions and ironic dissonances between sound elements and
the image track. And in Alexander Nevsky, Eisenstein collaborated with
the composer Sergei Prokofiev on an "operatic" film style that elegantly
coordinated the musical score and the image track.
As Soviet cinema made the transition to sound and central planning in
the early 1930s, it was also put under a mandate to adopt a uniform film
style, commonly identified as "socialist realism". In 1932 the party
leadership ordered the literary community to abandon the avant-garde
practices of the 1920s and to embrace socialist realism, a literary
style that, in practice, was actually close to 19th-century realism."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_Soviet_Union)
The Great Consoler movie (1933)
The film takes place in America in 1899, and in its principal plot
depicts Bill Porter, who is the great consoler of the title, in prison. His
writing skills earn him privileges from the governor and he is spared the
inhumane treatment meted out to other prisoners. Porter is very much aware
of the brutality around him but, mindful of his better conditions, refuses
to write about prison life. He prefers to console his less-well-treated
friends, and indeed all his readers, with excessively romantic fantasies in
which good invariably triumphs.
Running time 1:31:32
Thunderstorm movie (1934) In a provincial town on the Volga River, the young and sensitive
Katerina marries Tikhon, a violent drunkard, and thus enters the crude
milieu of greedy salesmen, the "dark kingdom". Her mother-in-law, Kabanikha,
rules the family with an iron fist and endlessly harasses Katerina. One day,
when Tikhon is away, she meets Boris, a man who embodies everything Katerina
is longing for.
Running time 1:20:14
A Strict Young Man movie (1935) The characters debate the role of free love and free will within the
Soviet social and political economy.
Running time 1:34:42
"Immediately after the end of the Second World War, color movies such as
The Stone Flower (1946), Ballad of Siberia (1947), and Cossacks of the
Kuban (1949) were released. Other notable films from the 1940s include
the black and white films, Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible and the
Encounter at the Elbe.
The Soviet film industry suffered during the period after World War II.
On top of dealing with the severe physical and monetary losses of the
war, Stalin's regime tightened social control and censorship in order to
manage the effects recent exposure to the West had on the people. The
postwar period was marked by an end of almost all autonomy in the Soviet
Union. The Catalogue of Soviet Films recorded remarkably low numbers of
films being produced from 1945 to 1953, with as few as nine films
produced in 1951 and a maximum of twenty-three produced in 1952."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_Soviet_Union)
Masquerade movie (1941) The play begins when beautiful Nina (Makarova) loses a bracelet during a
masked ball. Another woman finds it and without revealing who she is gives
it to an ardent Calvary officer admirer at the ball. This officer had
earlier spend the evening learning how to gamble from Nina's husband Arbenin
(Mordvinov). When the young officer shows the bracelet to Arbenin, the
husband starts to suspect that he has been betrayed by his wife, Nina. The
film depicts the effects of Arbenin's jealousy on everyone around the
couple, leading to a quarrel with and calculated humiliation of the officer,
Arbenin poisoning his wife, and finishes with a strange out of left field "I
told you so" from someone who Arbenin had injured a decade earlier.
Running time 1:41:15
The Fall of Berlin documentary film (1945) Fall of Berlin – 1945, The Fall of Berlin, or just Berlin is a Soviet
documentary film about the Battle of Berlin, titled in Russian Битва за
Берлин 1945 г., literally The Battle for Berlin – 1945. The film was
directed by Yuli Raizman and Yelizaveta Svilova. The film begins with an
animated map of Eastern Europe with Soviet soldier double exposed on the
bottom. The narrator lists the names of the rivers that the Red Army crosses
as they march west: Volga, Don, Desna, Dnieper, Bug, Dvina, Neman, Vistula,
and finally, Oder. The Soviet arrival at the Oder river is shown, along with
the broken bridges across it. The undeterred men of the Red Army are shown
as they cross the river while under German fire. The use of missile
artillery by the Soviet forces is showcased. After the Oder is crossed, the
assault on Berlin itself begins. Footage of the actual battle is shown, as
the Red Army fights German troops, street by street and building by
building. This is interspersed with shots of Nazi propaganda films showing
parades in the same areas, providing a sense of irony. A dramatic sequence
follows a detachment of the Red Army in the assault on the Reichstag, which
ends with the famous photograph, raising the Red Flag over the Reichstag.
When the Russian troops entered Berlin, they began to push forward to the
Reichstag. There were soldiers from every available battalion, with flame
throwers, rifles, sniper rifles, automatic weapons, like the PPSh-41, and
others. There were over 40 Soviet T-34 tanks that were pushing the German
soldiers back. The battle for Berlin was one of the longest battles for a
city in the years 1900-2000.Shortly before the Russian troops entered
Berlin, Hitler was ready to make a half-peace with England and the USA,
giving away Berlin to them. He said: "I'd rather give Berlin to the
Americans or the English, only to prevent Russian forces from taking it
over!", but he thought of this too late. Shortly after that the Russians
approached and attacked Berlin. On the 8th of May, 1945, the flag of the
USSR replaced the Nazi German flag in Berlin. This was the end of World War
II in Europe.
Running time 1:03:09
The Village Teacher movie (1947)
Village Teacher was the first postwar production by Soviet director Mark
Donskoy, of "Gorky Trilogy" fame. Vera Maretskaya stars as Varenka, a
starry-eyed young Moscow teacher who accepts a post in a forsaken Siberian
village. The story follows Varenka's career from the pre-revolutionary
Czarist regime to the end of WWII. It is a period of great unrest in the
world and shattering personal heartbreak for Varenka.
Running time 1:38:17
Падение Берлина. Серия 1 / The Fall of Berlin film 1
(1950)
Part 1
Alexei Ivanov, a shy steel factory worker, greatly surpasses his production
quota and is chosen to receive the Order of Lenin and to have a personal
interview with Joseph Stalin. Alexei falls in love with the idealist teacher
Natasha, but has difficulties approaching her. When he meets Stalin, who
tends his garden, the leader helps him to understand his emotions and tells
him to recite poetry to her. Then, they both have a luncheon with the rest
of the Soviet leadership in Stalin's home. After returning from Moscow,
Alexei confesses his love to Natasha. While they are both having a stroll in
a wheat field, their town is attacked by the Germans, who invade the Soviet
Union.
Alexei loses his consciousness and sinks into a coma. When he awakes, he is
told that Natasha is missing and that the Germans are at the gates of
Moscow. In the capital, Stalin plans the defense of the city, explaining to
the demoralized Georgy Zhukov how to deploy his forces. Alexei volunteers
for the Red Army, takes part in the parade in the Red Square and in the
Battle of Moscow. At Berlin, after receiving the blessings of his allies –
Turkey, the Vatican, Romania and Japan – and watching a long column of
Soviet slaves-laborers, Natasha among them, Adolf Hitler is furious to hear
that Moscow has not fallen. He dismisses Walther von Brauchitsch from his
office and offers the command of the army to Gerd von Rundstedt; the latter
refuses, saying that Stalin is a great captain and Germany's defeat is
certain. Hitler orders to attack Stalingrad. In the meanwhile, Göring
negotiates with British capitalist Bedstone, who supplies Germany with
needed materials. After the Soviet victory in Stalingrad, Vasily Chuikov
tells Ivanov that Stalin is always with the Red Army. The storyline leaps to
the Yalta Conference, where Stalin and his Western Allies debate the future
of the war. The treacherous Winston Churchill intends to deny the Soviets
access to Berlin and almost manages to convince the gullible Franklin Delano
Roosevelt to accept his plans. And the war rages on toward Moscow, with
Alexei in the midst of battle and Natasha trapped in the concentration camp.
Running time 1:10:45
Падение Берлина. Серия 2 / The Fall of Berlin film 2
(1950)
Part 2
Stalin asks his generals who will take Berlin, they or the Western Allies.
The generals answer that they will capture the city. Alexei's Guards Army
advances towards Berlin, while Hitler has a nervous breakdown and demands
that his soldiers fight to the end. The Germans plan to execute the inmates
of the concentration camp in which Natasha is held before the arrival of the
Red Army, but Alexei's unit liberates the prisoners before they carry
through their design. Natasha faints, and he does not find her. Hitler and
the German leadership fall into despair and lose their grip on reality the
closer the Soviets get to Berlin. Hitler orders to flood the subway stations
as the Soviets approach, drowning thousands of civilians. He then marries
Eva Braun and commits suicide. Gen. Hans Krebs carries the news of Hitler's
death to the Red Army and begs for a ceasefire. Stalin orders to accept only
an unconditional surrender. Alexei is chosen to carry the Victory Banner,
alongside Mikhail Yegorov and Meliton Kantaria. Their division storms the
Reichstag and the three hoist the banner atop of it. The Germans surrender
and Red Army soldiers from throughout the USSR celebrate victory. Stalin's
plane lands in Berlin, and he is greeted by an enthusiastic crowd of peoples
of "all the nations", holding posters with his picture and waving various
nations' flags. Stalin carries a speech in which he calls for world peace.
Standing in the crowd, Alexei and Natasha recognize each other and are
reunited. Natasha asks Stalin to let her kiss him on the cheek, and they hug
while prisoners praise Stalin in numerous languages. The film ends with
Stalin wishing all peace and happiness.
Running time 1:15:01
