Jump to content

Alexander Dovzhenko

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the Soviet and Ukrainian physician and psychiatrist, seeAlexander Dovzhenko (psychiatrist).
"Olexandr Dovzhenko" redirects here. For the poker player, seeOlexandr Dovzhenko (poker player).
Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Born
Alexander Petrovich Dovzhenko

(1894-09-10)September 10, 1894
Sosnytsia,Sosnitsky Uyezd,Chernigov Governorate,Russian Empire
DiedNovember 25, 1956(1956-11-25)(aged 62)
Peredelkino,Moscow Oblast,Russian SFSR,Soviet Union
Resting placeNovodevichy Cemetery,Moscow
Nationality
Occupation(s)Film director,screenwriter
Years active1926–1956
SpouseYuliya Solntseva

Alexander Petrovich Dovzhenko,alsoOleksandr Petrovych Dovzhenko[1](‹See Tfd›Russian:Александр Петрович Довженко,Ukrainian:Олександр Петрович Довженко;September 10 [O.S.August 29] 1894 – November 25, 1956), was aUkrainian[2]Sovietdirector,filmproducerandscreenwriter.[3][4]He is often cited as one of the most important early Soviet filmmakers, alongsideSergei Eisenstein,Dziga Vertov,andVsevolod Pudovkin,as well as being a pioneer ofSoviet montage theory.

Biography

[edit]

Oleksandr Dovzhenko was born in the hamlet of Viunyshche located in theSosnitsky Uyezdof theChernihiv Governorateof theRussian Empire(now part ofSosnytsiainChernihiv Oblast,Ukraine), to Petro Semenovych Dovzhenko and Odarka Yermolayivna Dovzhenko. His paternal ancestors wereChumakswho settled in Sosnytsia in the eighteenth century, coming from the neighbouring province ofPoltava.Oleksandr was the seventh of fourteen children born to the couple, but due to the deaths of his siblings he was the oldest child by the time he turned eleven. Ultimately, only Oleksandr and his sister Polina, who later becomes a doctor, survived to adulthood.

Alexander Dovzhenko in 1921

Although his parents were uneducated, Dovzhenko's semi-literate grandfather encouraged him to study, leading him to become a teacher at the age of 19. He avoided military service duringWorld War Ibecause of a heart condition, but during theCivil Warhe may have served for some time in the army of theUkrainian People's Republic.[5]In 1919 inZhytomyrhe was taken prisoner and sent to the prison on suspicion of intelligence for the UPR army. At the end of 1919, he was released at the request ofVasyl Ellan-Blakytny.After his release, for some time he taught history and geography at the officers' school of the Red Army. In 1920 Dovzhenko joined theBorotbistparty. He served as an assistant to the Ambassador inWarsawas well asBerlin.Upon his return toUSSRin 1923, he began illustrating books and drawing cartoons inKharkiv.At that time, Dovzhenko was also a member ofVAPLITE.

Dovzhenko turned to film in 1926 when he landed inOdessa.His ambitious drive led to the production of his second-everscreenplay,Vasya the Reformer(which he also co-directed). He gained greater success withZvenigorain 1928, the story of a young adventurer who becomes a bandit and counter-revolutionary and comes to a bad end, while his virtuous brother spends the film fighting for the revolution, which established him as a major filmmaker of his era.[6]

Ukraine Trilogy

[edit]
Earth(1930), the final film in Dovzhenko's Ukraine Trilogy

His following "Ukraine Trilogy" (Zvenigora,Arsenal,andEarth), are his most well-known works in the West.Arsenalwas badly received by the communist authorities in Ukraine, who began harassing Dovzhenko - but, fortunately for him,Stalinwatched it and liked it.[7]

Earth

[edit]

Dovzhenko'sEarthhas been praised as one of the greatest silent movies ever made. The British film directorKarel Reiszwas asked in 2002 by the British Film Institute to rank the greatest films ever made, and he putEarthsecond. The film portrayed collectivization in a positive light. Its plot revolved around a landowner's attempt to ruin a successful collective farm as it took delivery of its first tractor, though it opened with a long close-up of an elderly, dying man taking intense pleasure in the taste of an apple - a scene with no obvious political message, but with some aspect of autobiography. The film was panned by the Soviet authorities. The poet,Demyan Bedny,attacked its "defeatism" over three columns of the newspaperIzvestia,and Dovzhenko was forced to re-edit it.[8]

Appeal to Stalin

[edit]
Poster forAerograd(1935)

Dovzhenko's next film,Ivan,portrayed aDneprostroiconstruction worker and his reactions to industrialization, which was then summarily denounced for promoting fascism andpantheism.Fearing arrest, Dovzhenko personally appealed to Stalin. One day later, he was invited to the Kremlin, where he read the script of his next project,Aerograd,about the defence of a newly constructed city from Japanese infiltrators, to an audience of four of the most powerful men in the country -Stalin,Molotov,KirovandVoroshilov.Stalin approved the project but 'suggested' that Dovzhenko's next project, afterAerograd,should be dramatized biography of the born inUkrainecommunist guerrilla fighter,Mykola Shchors.

In January 1935, the Soviet film industry celebrated its fifteenth anniversary with a major festival, during which the country's most renowned directorSergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein,who was in trouble with the authorities, and had not been allowed to complete a film for several years, gave a rambling speech that jumped from one esoteric topic to another. Dovzhenko joined in the criticism, raising a laugh pleading: "Sergei Mikhailovich, if you do not produce a film at least within a year, then please do not produce one at all... All this talk about Polynesian females, I will gladly exchange all your unfinished scenarios for one of your films." At the end of the conference, Stalin presented Dovzhenko with the Order of Lenin.[9]

Later, Dovzhenko was summoned to the Kremlin again, and told by Stalin that he was a "free man", who was not under "any obligation" to make the film about Shchors. He took the hint, and paused work onAerogradto follow Stalin's 'suggestion', and sent the dictator a draft of the screenplay for Schors. He was then summoned in front of the Boss of the Soviet film industryBoris Shumyatskyto be told that the script contained serious political errors.[10]His request for another meeting with Stalin was ignored, so he wrote to the dictator on 26 November 1936, pleading: "This is my life, and if I am doing it wrong, then it is due to a shortage of talent or development, not malice. I bear your refusal to see me as a great sorrow."[11]Stalin's response was a brief note to Shumyatsky, in December, listing five things that were wrong with the script, including that "Shchors came out too crude and uncouth."[12]

Shchors

[edit]

Dovzhenko completedAerogradin 1935. Before its release in November, Dovzhenko had begun work onShchors.According to Jay Leyda, who was employed in the Soviet cinema industry at the time:

Shchorstaught him the new difficulties of executing a suggestion from Stalin. In the three years before its release, Dovchenko had to submit every decision and every episode to a seemingly endless series of people 'who knew what Stalin wanted'. There were nightmare interview, some bitter, with the Leader himself, who was beginning to show signs of megalomania and infallibility...Dovzhenko later told friends about one frightening arrival in Stalin's office, when he refused to speak to Dovchenko, andBeriaaccused him of joining a nationalist conspiracy.[13]

Several of Dovzhenko's colleagues were shot or sent to labour camps during theGreat Purge,in 1937–38, including his favourite cameraman, Danylo Demutsky, who worked with him onEarth.[14]But when, at last, he had completedShchors,which was released in January 1939, he was paid a huge fee - 100,000 rubles[15]- and awarded theStalin Prize(1941).

Later work

[edit]

During the war, Dovzhenko wrote an article and a screenplayUkraine in Flames,which was denounced for its alleged 'veiled nationalistic moods'. There are two versions of who was behind the denunciation.Nikita Khrushchev,who was head of the Ukrainian communist party at the time, paid tribute to Dovzhenko in his memoirs as a "brilliant director", and described the denunciation ofUkraine in Flamesas a "disgraceful affair" initiated by the head of the political administration of the Red Army,Aleksandr Shcherbakov,who "was obviously trying hard to fan Stalin's anger by harping on the charge that the film scenario was extremely nationalistic."[16]Dovzhenko had read the scenario aloud to Khrushchev, but he claimed not to have paid much attention to it because he was focused on the war.

But a police report sent at the time by the head of theNKVDVsevolod Merkulovto the party secretary in charge of culture,Andrei Zhdanov,said that Dovzhenko greatly resented the behaviour of Khrushchev, and leaders of the Ukrainian writers' union, who had praised the scenario on first reading, but then denounced on orders from above. Dovzhenko was quoted as saying "I don't hold anything against Stalin. I hold something against.. people who throw malicious slogans at me after all their admiration of the screenplay - these people cannot guide the war and the people. This is trash."[17]

After being hauled in front of the Central Committee, Dovzhenko was excluded from various official organisations, cut himself off from fellow artists, wrote novels, and applied himself to writing a screenplay about the biologist,Michurin.The filmMichurinearned him another Stalin prize, in 1949, although it was revised so many times, in order to get political approval, that according to one historian, "a large part of the final version was made without him."[18]

Khrushchev claimed that with his rise to power after the death of Stalin and the execution of the police chiefLavrentiy Beria,the persecution of Dovzhenko ended, and he was able to "live a useful active life" again.[19]He embarked on two projects, a film adaption of the novella,Taras Bulba,byGogolandPoem About a Sea,neither of which was completed before Dovzhenko died of aheart attackon November 25, 1956, in hisdachainPeredelkino- though the latter was completed by his widowYulia Solntseva. [20] Over a 20-year career, Dovzhenko personally directed only seven films.

Legacy

[edit]

Dovchenko was a mentor to the youngSovietUkrainian filmmakersLarisa ShepitkoandSergei Parajanov.

Monument to Alexander Dovzhenko in Nova Kakhovka

TheDovzhenko Film StudiosinKyivwere named after him in his honour following his death.

In 2016, after the Ukraine government had announced a programme of 'decommunisation' of place names,Karl LiebknechtStreet inMelitopol,in East Ukraine, was renamed Oleksandr Dovzhenko Street. On 30 January 2023, after Melitopol had been occupied by the Russian army during the2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine,Melitopol'sRussian-installed Mayor,Galina Danilchenkoannounced that the street would be given back its previous name.[21]

Filmography

[edit]
Bukovina: a Ukrainian Land(1939)

*codirected by Yuliya Solntseva

Film award

[edit]

A film award called theOleksandr Dovzhenko State Prizewas named after him for his great contributions in the film sphere.[22]

References

[edit]
  1. ^Oleksander Dovzhenkoat theEncyclopedia of Ukraine
  2. ^Е. Я. Марголит, ДОВЖЕНКО//Great Russian Encyclopedia[1]Archived2020-07-25 at theWayback Machine
  3. ^Richard Taylor, Nancy Wood, Julian Graffy, Dina Iordanova (2019).The BFI Companion to Eastern European and Russian Cinema.Bloomsbury. pp. 1934–1935.ISBN978-1838718497.{{cite book}}:CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. ^Peter Rollberg (2009).Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema.US: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 187–191.ISBN978-0-8108-6072-8.
  5. ^Who is Hidden behind the Figure of a Genius? The Context of Dovzhenko’s Work
  6. ^Leyda, Jay (1973).Kino, A History of the Russian and Soviet Film.London: George Allen & Unwin. p. 242.ISBN0-04-791027-5.
  7. ^Miller, Jamie (2010).Soviet Cinema: Politics and Persuasion under Stalin.London: I.B.Tauris. p. 64.ISBN978-1-84885-009-5.
  8. ^McSmith, Andy (2015).Fear and the Muse Kept watch, The Russian Masters - from Akhmatova and Pasternak to Shostakovich and Eisenstein - Under Stalin.New York: The New Press. p. 158.ISBN978-1-59558-056-6.
  9. ^McSmith, Andy.Fear and the Muse.p. 162.
  10. ^McSmith, Andy.Fear and the Muse.pp. 158–59.
  11. ^Clarke, Katerina and Dobrenko, Evgeny (2007).Soviet Culture and Power: A history in Documents, 1917-1953.New Haven: Yale U.P. pp. 289–90.ISBN978-0-300-10646-6.{{cite book}}:CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  12. ^Clarke, and Dobrenko.Soviet Culture.p. 295.
  13. ^Leyda.Kino.p. 354.
  14. ^Miller.Soviet Cinema.p. 89.
  15. ^Clarke, and Dobrenko.Soviet Culture.p. 281.
  16. ^Khrushchev, Nikita (1971).Khrushchev Remembers.London: Sphere. p. 154.
  17. ^Clarke, and Dobrenko.Soviet Culture.pp. 383–84.
  18. ^Leyda.Kino.p. 395.
  19. ^Khrushchev.Memoirs.p. 306.
  20. ^Leyda.Kino.pp. 402–03.
  21. ^Danilchenko, Galina."Дорогие мелитопольцы! Улицы, проспекты, бульвары, шоссе, переулки, площади и проезды в Мелитополе вернут свои исторические названия.(Dear citizens of Melitopol! Streets, avenues, boulevards, highways, lanes, squares and driveways in Melitopol will return their historical names)".Telegram.Retrieved2 February2022.
  22. ^"On the State Awards of Ukraine".zakon.rada.gov.ua(in Ukrainian). Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine - Legislation of Ukraine.RetrievedMarch 10,2022.

Further reading

[edit]
  • Dovzhenko, Alexandr (ed. Marco Carynnyk) (1973).Alexandr Dovzhenko: The Poet as Filmmaker,MIT Press.ISBN0-262-04037-9
  • Kepley, Jr., Vance (1986).In the Service of the State: The Cinema of Alexandr Dovzhenko,University of Wisconsin Press.ISBN0-299-10680-2
  • Liber, George O. (2002).Alexander Dovzhenko: A Life in Soviet Film,British Film Institute.ISBN0-85170-927-3
  • Nebesio, Bohdan. "Preface" to Special Issue: The Cinema of Alexander Dovzhenko. Journal of Ukrainian Studies. 19.1 (Summer, 1994): pp. 2–3.
  • Perez, Gilberto (2000)Material Ghost: Films and Their Medium,Johns Hopkins University Press.ISBN0-8018-6523-9
  • Abramiuk, Larissa (1998)The Ukrainian Baroque in Oleksandr Dovzhenko's Cinematic Art,The Ohio State University (UMI).
[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alexander_Dovzhenko&oldid=1229331990"