L'enfance de Maxime Gorki

Detstvo Gorkogo (The Childhood of Maxim Gorky) - 1938 Directed by Mark Donskoy G. Shenotinnik

A Review By Ollie

The Childhood of Maxim Gorky, tells the story of Aleksei Peshkov a 12 year old boy, living in 19th Century Russia, who would later be known as Maxim Gorky, possibly Russia's most famous and celebrated novelist and dramatist. Made in 1938, the film is based on Gorky's autobiography `My Childhood', and is rich and powerful film which will capture your attention from the beginning.

Naturally, being made in 1938, the film is in black and white, although the story is so colourful and vibrant, with characters so alive, you would be forgiven for thinking the film was made much later. It definitely does not feel almost 65 years old.

Aleksei Lyarsky, who plays Gorky, is instantly likeable as the young protagonist. Capable of portraying emotions far beyond his years, he works superbly alongside a cast of commanding and believable proportion. There is an almost Dickensian feel to some of the characters. While desperately sad, and easy to sympathise with, the Grandfather has an ineffable quality, both humorous and self pitying. In stark contrast, Maxim's Grandmother is a simple woman, one of goodness and truth, representing all that is beautiful in the optimism of the poverty in which they live.

This film is more than an autobiographical look at one person's life. It is a peek through the windows of a time long since passed, a history lesson and above all a lesson in life, love and friendship. This is probably the most definitive coming of age drama I have seen, with more authority and gravitas than Truffaut managed in the much acclaimed `400 Blows'.

There are several scenes which stand out. From a simple act of kindness from Maxim, when he gives a crippled boy his pet mouse, to Gorky and his friends sitting around a fire dreaming of a Utopian Neverland; from his Grandfathers almost comedic reactions to their ever increasing poverty, to the tears of his Grandmother as he hands her a coin.

This is a rich and immensely strong film, advanced well beyond it's years, which holds it's own exceptionally well nearly 65 years later. This film will leave an indelible mark on your memory, if only from the simplicity of the tale it tells. It is, without doubt, pure cinematic poetry. A piece of film history which everyone would do well to try and see –it will not disappoint. An extremely well earned 10/10!

Ollie

When Dwight Macdonald (a brilliant, iconoclastic film critic for decades, for Esquire, Paris Review, the New Yorker, and other magazines) taught a film course at the University of Wisconsin in the '70s, this was one of only about 15 films in his course. (Others included Rules of the Game, Children of Paradise, Keaton's Cops, and Seven Samurai, to give you an idea of the range and level of films he chose.) This film has stayed with me-- in a way, it has haunted me-- for thirty years, since I first saw it back then. I only recently rented it from Netflix and discovered, all over again, the mature and sophisticated style of early Russian filmmakers, and the power they could generate, particularly with material as touching and honest as Gorky's autobiography. Even minor characters, like the crippled boy who keeps insects as pets (metaphor alert--this movie is about serfs), dreaming he can some day set them free in the fields around the Volga, are utterly believable. It really is a must for every serious film-goer.

In his moving autobiographical novel 'My Childhood', Maxim Gorky saw his childhood as 'a beehive to which various single obscure people brought the honey of their knowledge and thoughts on life; often their honey was dirty and bitter, but every scrap of knowledge was honey all the same.'

Mark Donskoy recreated forcefully this 'beehive' full of loves, like the one between a grandmother and her grandchild, full of fighting or camaraderie among the children, but also, full of brutal violence between wife and husband or between parents and adult children, full of superstition, of alcoholism, of poverty and of revolutionary actions against the czarist State. His directing of a memorable cast (with a marvelous babushka), and in the first place of the children, is simply sublime. The street, kermis and sea scenery is brilliantly shot by his cinematographer, Pyotr Yermolov. The movie's prime message is that 'if we are ordered to do something wrong, our duty is to stand firm and be strong.' This impressive human portrait of life in the 19th century should be a reminder for all spectators of where we all come from. A real masterpiece.

If you're not familiar with Maxim Gorky, he was a famous Russian author. Moscow's Gorky Park is named in his honor. Mark Donskoy's "Detstvo Gorkogo" ("The Childhood of Maxim Gorky" in English) looks at the author's younger years. If the movie - based on Gorky's autobiography - is any indication, then Gorky had a very Russian childhood. Not just the clothes that he and his relatives and acquaintances wore, but their lifestyle and attitude towards their predicament. Seeing what Gorky's childhood was like, it's easy to see why he ended up subscribing to revolutionary ideas. There was a reason why he adopted the pseudonym Gorky (Russian for "bitter").

The movie is very well done. The scene where the prisoners get paraded through town makes clear why Russia had a revolution. Finally, the song played at the end sounds like something that you'd expect to hear in a Hollywood epic from the era (except in Russian, obviously). I wouldn't call this one of the greatest Russian movies ever, but it's nevertheless a solid piece of cinema. I recommend it.

A good-looking memoir whose nostalgia for the days of the Tsar is tempered by visits from the Secret Police and scenes of prisoners being lead to the Gulag (luckily a thing of the past by the late thirties!), punctuated by beautiful shots of Mother Russia...

The resemblance between Alexander Lyarsky as the young Alexei (as he is called in the film - a role he also plays in the next part of the trilogy - and his illustrious subject at that age has been well captured in the Russian style, as one would expect. That Lyarsky died during the German occupation sadly also doesn't come as a surprise...