Cinema
Taras Shevchenko
Тарас Шевченко
Ihor Savchenko · 1951
Synopsis
In 1841, Taras Shevchenko completes his studies at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts; recently freed from serfdom, he has already published his verse. He returns to Ukraine, sees the condition of the serfs and writes poems the authorities will not forgive; around him are friends who worry and a police force that reads. The film follows him as painter, as poet, then as prisoner of the tsar.
Context
Entered in the Kyiv studio's plan as early as the second half of the forties, the film was photographed by Arkady Koltsaty and Danylo Demutsky. According to Naumov, Savchenko had finished it when Stalin formulated twelve remarks to be reworked; the director died in the meantime, and Mikhail Romm and Ivan Pyryev proposed that two of his students, Alov and Naumov, carry out the revisions. Presented in Kyiv on 15 December 1951, the film was released on the 17th, for the ninetieth anniversary of the poet's death, in a Russian version and in a version dubbed into Ukrainian.
Who it is for
A period film of nearly two hours, 108 to 118 minutes depending on the prints, which shows the poet as a painter, a prisoner and above all a revolutionary, as the end of the Stalin era required.
Prizes and reception
First-class Stalin Prize in 1952; the same year, at Karlovy Vary, a diploma of honour for direction and an acting prize for Sergei Bondarchuk.
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