La commissaire

The Russian film Komissar was shown in the U.S. with the translated title The Commissar (1967). It was co-written and directed by Aleksandr Askoldov. This film wasn't released until 1988, 21 years after it was produced. Not only were we deprived of the film, but Aleksandr Askoldov, the director, was never permitted to direct a movie again. The explanation for this delay, and this punishment, was that "the film depicted the Red Army in a negative way." That sounds realistic enough, until you see the movie. To me, the Red Army was depicted in a heroic fashion. There must have been subtle offenses, not clear to a non-Russian.

The movie is set in Ukraine, where the Red and White armies clashed in the Russian Civil War. Nonna Mordyukova portrays Klavdia Vavilova, a Red Army commissar, who is fighting against the Whites in the post-revolutionary war. She becomes pregnant, and is billeted with a Jewish family during her pregnancy.

Anti-Semitism lies just below the surface of the entire film. Both the Reds and the Whites were guilty of it, although I believe it was worse from the Whites at that time. We don't see actual pogroms during the movie. A synagogue is boarded up when the Whites take over the town, as are many houses. It wasn't clear to me whether these were all houses with Jewish families.

However, there's a horrific scene with three of the Jewish children terrify their own sister. They tell her to "come up out of the cellars," and then they "shoot her" with their toy weapons. Obviously, they are playing out a scene that they've witnessed.

The acting is outstanding throughout the film. Rolan Bykov plays the husband, Yefim. (It's interesting that Bykov himself was Jewish.) Raisa Nedashkovskaya plays Maria, Yefim's wife. Both Rykov and Nedashkovskaya are excellent actors. Yefim is a strange character--in some ways brave, and in some ways childish. He'd rather dance than work, and he'll break into song when one would least expect it.

Maria, his wife, is a more traditional role. The only problem with the casting is that Nedashkovskaya is incredibly beautiful. That would work if she were a young, newly married wife. However, the couple live in poverty, with many children to care for. Beauty doesn't last long in situations like that. Realistically, Maria would be worn down and broken by that point in her life. In the movie, she's still youthful and radiant.

The protagonist of the film, Klavdia Vavilova, is a loyal Communist and she is as brave and strong as any man in the movie. In fact, when she's having the baby, and she's told to push, she has a flashback to a moment when she and other soldiers are trying to push a heavy artillery caisson over a hill.

As a mother, with a newborn child, she is torn between her baby and her duty to the Red Army. Nonna Mordyukova, who portrays Klavdia Vavilova, was a great Soviet actor. She is excellent in this role. She looks like a strong, tough Ukrainian woman, who would not be out of place in the Red cavalry. Director Askoldov could probably have chosen a young beauty for the role of Klavdia. Instead, he went with an actor with broad shoulders and strong features. Mordyukova inhabits the role, and the movie's greatness is due in large part to her work.

We were very fortunate to see this film at Rochester's Dryden Theatre in the George Eastman Museum. The Dryden owns an excellent 35mm print, and seeing it projected on the large screen was a wonderful experience. However, it will work almost as well on a small screen. The Commissar is available on DVD. Don't miss it!

A film on the same echelon as Kilmov's Come And See, Jancsó's The Red and The White, Shepitko's Ascent and the great Russian silents as well as the vanguard 60s cinema. This is one of those films where image and sound form a perfect marriage committing to screen an onslaught of ingenious, uproarious and emotional imagery marred with wonderful sound design and score, all strung together by ingenious editing. This is cinema.

The story is one of a Red Army woman officer during the Russian civil war, who ends up pregnant and is forced to live with a Ukrainian Jewish family, who has been used and abused countless times by the red and the whites. This is a story of humans coming together and setting aside their differences and understanding each other amongst suffering and strife. It is a test of loyalty to one's self, one's family, one's country.

Commissar was banned on its initial completion and writer/director Aleksandr Askoldov was kicked out of the Communist party and not allowed to work in the film business in any form again. It wasn't until 1988 that the ban was lifted and the soundtrack remastered/re-done along with a reconstruction of the picture, which was fairly intact. But not until now has it been wildly available so I really would urge anyone who enjoys Kurosawa, Tarkovsky, Tarr or any of the before mentioned films to seek this one out. The US DVD from Kino is probably their best transfer yet; very pristine and sharp with no a lot of dirt or scratches, although it is from a PAL source so there are some ghosting effects on large movements, making the picture look simultaneously in slow mo and normal frame rate

Throughout the movie, `Commissar', the innocence and naivety of the children allows them to be used as a medium through which many emotions can be conveyed. Sheltered from reality by their youth, the actions of children reflect their environment, unhindered as they are by experience, opinions, or understanding. The actions of a child are not filtered by taboos; the actions are pure and unadulterated regurgitations of the world around them.

The example that stands out the most in the film is that of the playful pogrom. The actions of the three children, taken against the fourth, are a horrible reflection of the world they live in. However, this is not the only such example. In fact, the same concept, used in the very next scene, shows a beautiful reflection of the strength and courage of a family caught in the maelstrom. As the bombs begin to fall, and the children all begin to wail within the cellar, it falls on Efim to hold everything together. He does this in an incredibly powerful scene, standing up in the middle of his family and beginning to dance. Instinctively the children stand up to join their father in an act they are obviously as familiar with as the pogrom, and are placated by mimicking the ritualistic, soothing moves of their father. Whether or not they understand the significance of the dance, just as they may or may not fully understand the pogrom, is irrelevant to them. All that is important is that it and their father are there to give them comfort.

Through the same general device, two very different ends are achieved. Many responses stressed the horrifically moving quality of the pogrom scene, but fail to mention the beauty and hope of a father dancing with his children, while the world rips itself apart around them.

During the Russian Revolution, the Red army enters an isolated town and leaves behind a female revolutionary, Klavdia, who has become unexpectedly pregnant. Klavdia stays with a Jewish family to have her baby.

A remarkable film, but one which was left unfinished. The director, Aleksandr Askoldov, is only credited with one movie, and it as if he put a lifetime of ideas into this single film.

I was surprised to hear that "Komissar" was filmed in 1967, a year when the USSR was already firmly past Kruschev's thaw and entering the repressive Brezhnev era, because there is something very "thawish" about this film. The general criticism of war, the dignity of ordinary people during a time of calamities, and the juxtaposition of battles with moments of civilian life, all hearken back to the ideas expressed in "The Cranes are Flying" (1956). As in all Soviet cinema, many of the central ideas are expressed through symbolism. This makes the film somewhat difficult for viewers who are not used to this style, but most people tend to find it refreshing and psychologically stimulating. It certainly prompts more post-film discussions than current American cinema that simply shoves the director's point of view down the audience's throat.

Some of the themes that I found particularly interesting were: the use of the innocence of children to depict the horror of war, the image of saddled horses without riders galloping into battle, and, of course, the father dancing in the midst of a bomb raid. Most of all, I thought that the change in Vavilova - going from a rough, battle hardened Red Army officer to a nurturing mother, is the most poignant aspect of this film. The scene where Vavilova is hunted my soldiers for having a child mimics her own persecution of a man who leaves the army to be with his beloved. The soldiers turn out to be figments of her imagination, but the point is obvious. However, Vavilova's decision in the end of the film (which I will not reveal for fear of getting blacklisted by the IMDb NKVD) is puzzling in light of the changes in her character. I suppose that Askoldov's opinion that a person's nature cannot be changed by one experience is contrary to my own optimism. Still, I find the end to be somewhat unrealistic.