Parky at the Pictures (DVD 30/8/2012)

Anyone who considers modern sound cinema to be more sophisticated than the wordless pictures made between 1895-1930 should take a look at Alexander Dovzhenko's Zvenigora (1928), which employs a dazzling array of artistic theories and screen techniques to explore such diverse topics as Ukrainian mythology, Soviet industrialisation, pacifism, the beauty of the landscape and the arrogance of the European bourgeoisie.

Sergei Eisenstein left the premiere of this compelling blend of lyricism and montage claiming that it had much to teach the most accomplished film-maker. But, even those equipped with a rudimentary knowledge of Ukrainian history and folklore struggled fully to understand a complex avant-garde exercise that owed more to Charlie Chaplin and René Clair than the Kremlin. Indeed, it remains remarkable that the state censor granted it a release, as it was not just guilty of Formalism, but also of introducing the masses to Surrealism, Dada and Modernism.

Several critics have attempted to impose a degree of linearity upon the action and it certainly aids viewing to have a basic notion of the narrative thread. In the `ringing mountains' of Zvenigora, salt trader Nikolai Nademsky leads a band of Cossacks on a treasure hunt. However, they are forced to fight with Polish troops hiding in the woods and find their path blocked by a sinister monk (L. Barné), whose Rasputin-like malevolence haunts Nademsky's dreams, as he joins grandsons Semyon Svashenko and Les Podorozhnij at the pagan spring fertility ritual.

Soon afterwards, the Great War breaks out and the socialist Svashenko goes to the Eastern Front, while the nationalist Podorozhnij remains home with his grandfather to search the hills for the legendary hoard. Nademsky tells him about the traditions of the pre-Slavic tribes and he becomes obsessed with the beautiful princess Roxana (P. Sklyar Otawa), who tried to resist the invading Turks and Vikings.

These tales inspire Podorozhnij to paint his black horse white and join the Ukrainian resistance and oppose the Red Army ranks that include his brother. However, the cause is lost and the new order prevails, prompting Podorozhnij to head for Paris and Prague to raise the funds to mount a new treasure hunt, while Svashenko commits himself to the workers to bring progress to the backward peasants.

As a result of selfless labour, the railway comes to Zvenigora. But Podorozhnij is convinced that it will facilitate Muscovite imperialism and he urges Nademsky to join him in a sabotage mission. However, Svashenko leads the Bolshevik defence and Podorozhnij commits suicide rather than see his homeland subjugated. But Nademsky accepts the need for transformation and commits himself to the Communist utopia.

Although this breakdown allows the viewer an entry in the diegesis, this is a film to be experienced as much as fathomed. Dovzhenko employs montage in city symphony passages as dynamically as Dziga-Vertov, while the bucolic poetry is as serene as it would be in Earth (1930), which completed the Ukrainian trilogy. But, while the aesthetic aspects of Boris Zavelev's cinematography, Vasili Krichevsky's and Dovzhenko's editing are audacious, they almost pale beside the boldness of the political statements that defy centralism to celebrate the intrepidity and independence of the Ukraine.

Barely seen outside the Soviet Union, Zvenigora was allowed to slip into obscurity as Soyuzkino chief Boris Shumyatsky sought to discourage experimental direction by enforcing the tenets of Socialist Realism. Thus, it was only discovered in the West relatively recently and it has yet to acquire the same reputation as Earth and the second part of the triptych, Arsenal (1929).

Just as he detected seven episodes in Zvenigora, the outstanding Dovzhenko critic Ray Uzwyshyn identified a similar structure in this harrowing tale of military defeat and mass uprising. In the spring of 1917, Tsar Nicholas II (A. Yevdakov) continues to send Russia's youth to senseless slaughter, while a woman tries to sow seeds in a village almost entirely populated by amputees. But, as silhouette armies march to their doom, even the advancing Germans suffer casualties, with one soldier (Amvrosi Buchma) laughing hysterically from the twin effects of gas and the insanity raging around him.

Meanwhile, an attempt is made to hijack a train carrying Ukrainian haidamaks. But, even though the attack is thwarted, the locomotive crashes on a steep downward slope and Semyon Svashenko, a demobilised trooper on his way to resume his duties in a weapons factory, emerges from the wreckage to proclaim his pride in his profession and his homeland. Yet, when a republic is proclaimed during the Easter celebrations in Kiev's St Sophia's Square, Svashenko refuses to march in the parade or sign up to Nikolai Kuchinsky's new army.

Instead, he becomes a Bolshevik deputy at the first meeting of the national government. However, proceedings are interrupted by a telegram from the Black Sea fleet announcing its support for revolution and Svashenko and his comrades leave the congress as the entire Ukraine is cast into a state of uncertainty that Dovzhenko conveys in a sequence showing activists attempting to sabotage trains, the bourgeoisie talking endlessly but doing nothing, and the people waiting for the emergence of a strong leader.

As the winter of 1918 sets in, the Bolsheviks make a bid to seize the arsenal and Svashenko leads the workers in a 72-hour rearguard that ends with the nationalist forces breaking into the premises and shooting at Svashenko, who has run out of bullets. But, despite the hail of gunfire, he remains invincible and dauntlessly declares himself to be a `Ukrainian worker' as the picture ends.

Having seen how Eisenstein used the factory sequences in Strike (1924) and the mutiny in Battleship Potemkin (1925) to extol the strength and unity of the people, many in officialdom were appalled by Arsenal's failure to exploit the uprising for maximum propagandist purposes. Indeed, Dovzhenko was accused in some quarters of promoting Ukrainian concerns ahead of the Communist crusade. Yet he would later argue that he was attempting to show how being a Ukrainian and a Bolshevik were not mutually exclusive.

Nevertheless, the Eastern Front sequences seem to be more imbued with humanism than Marxism, as Dovzhenko uses the silhouetted execution of a soldier unwilling to keep killing to suggest there is more than one way to oppose tyranny. In other passages, he employs montage to juxtapose this brutality with a peasant flogging his dying horse and a mother beating her crying children. But, by using long takes as often as rapid cutting, Dovzhenko is able to dwell on the grief of a mother who has lost three sons and, thus, emphasise the pain of individual loss that is so often ignored in films by contemporaries, who placed much greater emphasis on the intractability of the mass hero.

Despite denouncing the Tsarist regime and the chaos proposed by the anarchists, Dovzhenko seems only to offer qualified support for the Bolshevik victory by placing nationalism on an equal footing with egalitarianism and claiming pacifism as a superior sentiment to both. But, as in the other parts of the trilogy, he places his greatest faith in the land and the people who work it  Consequently, he and cinematographer Daniil Demutsky appropriate iconographic poses and give them a new revolutionary purpose and this sense of reverence would be even more apparent in Earth.

Bringing a sense of poetry to the Marxist dialectic, this shares many themes with Eisenstein's salute to collectivisation, The General Line (1929). But the pastoral patriotism is always tempered by a humanism that was rare in contemporary Soviet cinema and earned Dovzhenko the disapproval of the Kremlin.

Having lived a long and fruitful life, Nikolai Nademsky dies peacefully in an orchard. His passing convinces grandson Semyon Svashenko that the time has come to sweep away the old order and he argues with father Stepan Shkurat about the benefits of buying a village tractor to speed the ploughing. The vehicle arrives and there is rejoicing among the workers, who kick start the engine when it breaks down by urinating in the radiator. Amidst scenes of joyous labour, Svashenko crushes the fences erected by the kulaks to protect their property. But he pays the ultimate price when he is shot as he dances along a dusty path by landowner's son, Pyotr Masokha.

Orthodox priest Vladimir Mikhajlov meets with Shkurat to discuss the funeral arrangements. But he refuses the Christian rite and asks his neighbours to join him in a song-filled procession that will commemorate Svashenko's life and symbolise the undying link between the seasons and mankind's relationship with the soil. Masokha attempts to disrupt the ceremony by proclaiming his guilt, but the celebration continues and the birth of a child and the coming of the rains to nourish the crops seems to suggest that Nature has replaced God in this new Eden.

Juxtaposing Daniil Demutsky's lyrical rural vistas with close-ups of the happy peasants, this is as much a hymn to humanity as a political tract. The images are composed to reinforce the unity between the people and the land and the produce it yields. Thus, the shots of apples, seeds, sunflowers and waving fields of wheat have both a romantic power and a propagandist positivity that are much more evocative than the cemetery oration about the Communist aeroplane and Svashenko's spirit providing the impetus that will ensure victory over the class enemy.

Also known as Storm Over Asia, The Heir to Genghis Khan (1928) formed the final part of Vsevolod Pudovkin's Revolutionary trilogy, which had started with Mother (1926) and The End of St Petersburg (1927). Initially denounced by Western and Soviet critics alike for its respective demonisation of the British and lack of realism, Pudovkin's last silent has since been re-evaluated as a masterclass in narrative montage and one of the most thrilling action adventures of the pre-sound era.

Although the Romanovs have been overthrown in Petrograd, the news has barely reached the Mongolian steppe by 1918. Consequently, all herdsman Valeri Inkishinov is concerned about is helping his ailing father and devoted mother by selling furs at the local market. Accepting a Buddha charm from his mother to protect him on the journey, he rides into a settlement dominated by scurrilous British traders like Viktor Tsoppi, who offers Inkishinov a derisory price for a valuable silver fox pelt that he is too desperate to refuse. He is sufficiently insulted, however, to attack the trading post and flees into the mountains, where he is given sanctuary by rebel leader Aleksandr Chistyakov.

Schooled in the principles of the Bolshevik Revolution, Inkishinov becomes a partisan and fights bravely against both the White Russians and their British allies. However, in 1920, he is captured by commander A. Dedintsev and is about to be executed when missionary Vladimir Pro finds an amulet containing a silken document stating that its bearer is a direct descendent of Genghis Khan. Realising that Inkishinov could become a puppet ruler to rally the Mongols in a rearguard against the Red Army, Dedintsev proclaims his captive is the reincarnation of the fabled warrior. However, his plan backfires when Inkishinov notices that Dedintsev's pampered daughter, Anel Sudakevich, is wearing his family fur and he plays on the tribal pride of his people and they rise up to drive the foreigners and their royalist lackeys out of the country. 

Despite Pudovkin making no claim for the authenticity of the storyline, it has become common to criticise screenwriter Osip Brik for the fallaciousness of the alliance between the British and the White Russians in Civil War Mongolia. Certainly the former were keen to see a restoration of the tsarist monarchy and Russia's return to the Great War. But to question the cinematic quality of the film on the basis of its historical innaccuracy seems ridiculous, especially as truth was often at a premium in other propagandist epics like Eisenstein's October (1927).

What matters here is the exceptional location photography of AN Golovnya and the way in which Pudovkin used it and the art direction of Sergei Koslovsky to create both a docudramatic record of an ancient way of life and a rousing adventure that was as thrilling as anything made in Hollywood for such dashing stars as Rudolph Valentino or Douglas Fairbanks. As always with Pudovkin, his linked montage technique is placed at the service of plot and character. But the charge of the Mongol horsemen is so dynamically edited (a quarter of the picture's 2000 images were required to produce it) that it is hard not to be carried along on the sandstorm that symbolises the sweeping away of tyranny and the rise of the oppressed.

Transformed from callow peasant to selfless chieftain, Inkishinov makes a winningly identifiable hero and his death in attempting to retrieve the pelt is deeply touching. But the performances (which are markedly less dependent upon typage than Eisenstein or Dovzhenko's features) are admirable across the board. Perhaps keen-eyed students of Soviet cinema will recognise the pipe-smoking British soldier stroking the cat as Boris Barnet, who was to become a fine director in his own right and the release of three of his best efforts in the Hyperkino format should do much to raise his profile with today's audiences.

It's hard to believe that a film commissioned by the Soviet People's Commissariat for Finance to promote the sale of lottery bonds for the Peasant State Loan could be one of the most charming romantic comedies produced in the silent era. But that's exactly what The Girl With the Hat Box (1927) is. Marking Barnet's first solo outing (after he directed Miss Mend with Fyodor Otsep the previous year), this is primarily notable for the emergence of 18 year-old Anna Sten. But Barnet also varies the comic tone throughout, with the slapstick, satirical and situation humour often poking fun at the authorities, as well as those seeking to exploit the decent and industrious workers.

Anna Sten lives in a cottage on the outskirts of Moscow with her grandfather Vladimir Mikhailov. Each week, she travels into the city to sell the hats she has made for milliner Serafima Birman, who has informed the housing authorities that Sten is her live-in tenant so that she can prevent them from billeting a stranger in the upstairs room that indolent husband Pavel Pol uses for his own devices. However, when Sten takes pity on Ivan Koval-Samborsky, a student who sleeps rough at the local railway station, she suggests that they contract a marriage of convenience so he can move into her room above the shop.

With ticket-office clerk Vladimir Fogel also besotted with Sten, it's not long before her ruse is exposed and Birman refuses to purchase any more of Sten's hats. However, Pol had paid for her final batch with a lottery ticket that he was convinced was worthless. But, when Koval-Samborsky realises that it is worth 25,000 roubles, the ticket suddenly becomes hot property and Birman and Fogel enlist the help of their accident-prone maid Eva Milyutina in the bid to retrieve it and cash it in.

Pitched somewhere between René Clair's inspired chase farce An Italian Straw Hat (1927) and his 1931 lottery ticket talkie Le Million, this is an absolute delight that rattles along at a corking pace without ever feeling corny or contrived. Scripted by Vadim Shershenevich and Valentin Turkin, the action is more plot driven that the comedies of such Hollywood clowns as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. But the emphasis on a feisty working girl bears comparison with the vehicles tailored for Clara Bow and Marion Davies and it's dismaying to realise that the Ukrainian Anna Sten failed to capture the hearts of American audiences after mogul Samuel Goldwyn signed her up as `the new Garbo' for Dorothy Arzner and George Fitzmaurice's adaptation of Emile Zola's Nana (1934). Indeed, despite teaming with Fredric March in We Live Again, Rouben Mamoulian's 1934 reworking of Leo Tolstoy's Resurrection, and with Gary Cooper in King Vidor's prize-winning dramedy The Wedding Night (1935), Sten gained a reputation for being box-office poison and she was reduced to struggling along in supporting roles until the mid-1960s.

The luminous Sten is ably supported here by the scheming and hissably Westernised Birman and Pol, while Koval-Samborsky and Fogel make for amusingly contrasting swains and Mikhailov and Milyutina execute their pratfalls with acrobatic precision. But it's Barnet's timing of the knockabout and the audacity of his ridiculing of Party intrusion into daily life and the contradictions of the New Economic Policy that make this so engaging. Yet, while cinematographers Boris Filshin and Boris Frantsisson capture some evocative scenes of the snow-covered Muscovite streets and Barnet wisely had the proletarians triumph over the petty bourgeoisie, this was decried by the state censors for its mocking depiction of communal living and for its over-reliance on the tropes of decadent generic cinema. Regardless of such ideological slackness, the film was popular with domestic audiences and now exudes a joyousness that was all-too-often absent from the pictures produced during Boris Shumyatsky's tenure of the Soviet film industry's front office.

Rather like perhaps his closest Hollywood counterpart, Frank Capra, Barnet was able to switch convincingly between comedy and drama and he revealed a gift for understated politicking in his first sound feature, Outskirts (1933). Also known as Patriots, this is a fascinating study of Soviet attitudes to the First World War and the part played in it by what later came to be known as the military-industrial complex. Largely eschewing overt Marxist references, but still highlighting the manner in which the masses were exploited by the capitalist few, this makes for intriguing comparison with other pacifist tracts of the period, such as Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and GW Pabst's Kameradschaft (1931).

In the summer of 1914, Aleksandr Chistyakov and his sons Nikolai Bogolyubov and Nikolai Kryuchkov struggle to make ends meet as cobblers at a shoe factory in the further reaches of the Russian Empire. Indeed, things are so tough that even a horse turns to the camera to complain about his lot. But firebrand student Mikhail Zharov is determined to make a stand and he urges the workforce to come out on strike. His timing couldn't be worse, however, as war breaks out between Russia, Britain and France and the Central Powers of Austria-Hungary and Germany and the demand for boots for the troops suddenly means everybody is working flat out to meet the orders.

Keen to do their bit for the Motherland, Bogolyubov and Kryuchkov join up and soon march away to the Eastern Front. But the hostilities are not confined to the battlefield, as shoemaker Sergei Komarov falls out with his German tenant and regular checkers partner Robert Erdman, who moves out and has to endure the abuse of neighbours who had previously accepted him without question. They are equally aggressive towards Hans Klering, a German prisoner who was captured in a trench by Bogolyubov, who is angry at the loss of his brother during the fighting.

But Klering (who also happens to be a cobbler) finds an unlikely friend in Komarov's daughter, Yelena Kuzmina, who incurs her father's ire by falling in love with the foe. She hopes they can be together when news comes that Alexander Kerensky has deposed Nicholas II and installed himself at the head of a Provisional Government. However, much to Kuzmina and Bogolyubov's frustration, he insists on remaining committed to a conflict that can only heap more misery upon a populace whose patriotic zeal is waning.

What is most striking about this shockingly neglected film is the boldness of the tonal change that occurs with the outbreak of war. Despite the workers being talked into a strike by the ardent Zharov (who is eventually discredited for his support for Kerensky), the initial action is positively jovial. Yet, even after the townsfolk begin to feel the impact of both war and revolution, a vein of dark humour remains that is entirely in keeping with the gallows approach that people tend to adopt in times of crisis. The use of sound is key here, as Barnet equates the noise of the factory with artillery fire, while the match shots between a dead soldier's boot being flung into No Man's Land and a new pair being tossed on to a growing pile emphasises the grim connection between conflict and commerce (which is later reinforced by the fact that the factory can afford to purchase expensive new machinery to do the work once performed by men who have gone to become cannon fodder).

Yet, for all Barnet's digs at church and state and his challenge to the divisiveness of nationalism, this is much more a human drama than an ideological treatise. Thus, he creates fully realised characters whose fates would have mattered to viewers who would have recognised their situations from their own recent experiences. Ironically, of course, 1933 saw Adolf Hitler's National Socialists come to power in Germany and vanquish the already far-fetched hopes of a new internationalism overtaking the continent. But Barnet's optimism retains its poignancy and it is heart-warming that he could still espouse it three years later in By the Bluest of Seas.

Written by Klimenti Mints, this is an unclassifiable mix of comedy, melodrama, musical and fantasy that seems to take place on a Caspian equivalent of Prospero's island far from the tempestuous realities driving the purges that Stalin was conducting from the Kremlin. The censors condemned Barnet (who is officially credited as co-director with Azerbaijan's first professional film-maker Samad Mardanov) for allowing the story to become overly emotional. Indeed, with cinematographer Mikhail Kirillov sublimely capturing the spirit of the sea as the sunlight glints upon the waves and Sergei Pototsky using his fulsome score to convey its beauty, romance and dreadful power, it is impossible to view this with much sang froid. But Barnet also finds room to extol the virtues of collectivisation and the true nature of camaraderie.

Caught in a ferocious storm in the Caspian Sea, sailors Lev Sverdlin and Nikolai Kryuchkov are rescued after two days adrift by fishermen and taken to their Azer island. On meeting Yelena Kuzmina, the elected leader of the Light of Communism kolkhoz, the newcomers are instantly smitten and insist that, as their identity papers and voyage orders have been washed clean, they can stay as long as they wish. Amused by their ardour, but recognising their usefulness in repairing nets and a broken boat motor, Kuzmina allows them to remain and even tolerates Sverdlin's gauche attempts to flirt with her as they walk along the beach sharing his rations. She even forgives Kryuchkov when he drops her necklace into the water when she visits him on the craft he is mending.

Such is Kryuchkov's passion for Kuzmina that he feigns illness one day so he can slip away and buy her some flowers and a new necklace. However, Sverdlin is so appalled by his treachery that he calls a meeting of the residents and denounces his comrade for shirking.  Left alone with his shame before he can refute the accusation, Kryuchkov breaks the necklace in his remorseful frustration and the beads bounce across the wooden floor. Nevertheless, the remain friends and they even discuss the prospect of Sverdlin marrying Kuzmina as they shoot the breeze in their cabin as they put out to sea. But a gale blows up and they are powerless to prevent Kuzmina from being washed overboard.

Distraught at costing their beloved her life, Sverdlin and Kryuchkov return to shore, where the former announces that he intends leaving the island as there is no longer anything to detain him. But, as they listen to the sound of the locals holding a memorial for Kuzmina in the village hall, they spot her bobbing on the water in a lifebuoy and rush out to rescue her. Overjoyed at being reunited, the duo escort Kuzmina to the hall, where she is welcomed with tearful relief. However, the focus soon shifts to Sverdlin, as his neighbours have made him a going away suit and he tries it on with forced gratitude as he watches Kryuchkov walking Kuzmina home.

By the time he runs on to the beach, however, Sverdlin is surprised to see Kryuchkov looking crestfallen on the doorstep of Kuzmina's shack. He shrugs that she must love Sverdlin as she has rejected his advances. But, on going inside, he learns that Kuzmina has a fiancé in the Pacific fleet and accepts that it is his patriotic duty not to steal a serving man's girl while he is away. Charging along the tideline, Sverdlin calls after Kryuchkov as he sails away and they stand together on the deck to salute Kuzmina and proclaim their pride in her fidelity.

In many ways similar to the buddy movies that were becoming an increasing staple of Hollywood comedy, this is a beguiling amalgam of rousing folk song, sentimental romance and wisecrack screwball. Sverdlin and Kyruchkov banter eagerly in a Bing`n'Bob kind of way, while Kuzmina plays a blonde variation of Dorothy Lamour in a pair of overalls rather than a sarong. But this is never a formulaic love triangle saga, as Barnet keeps shifting the tone and forcing characters and onlookers alike to deal with moments of spontaneous joy (such as Sverdlin and Kuzmina sharing some bitter lemons), social humiliation and crushing tragedy.

The leads are superb and the film has enormous charm and a textural sensuality that is scarcely associated with Soviet cinema. But suggestions it is a masterpiece are as misplaced as the comparisons with Jean Vigo's L'Atalante (1934). Barnet's audiovisual mastery is never in doubt, with his control of the cross-cutting in the storm sequences being matched by the Expressionist distortions as Kryuchkov is overcome with shame after his very public vilification. But the narrative is a touch friable, while the denouement feels like a sop to Shumyatsky in the hope he would overlook the half-hearted effort at conforming to the tenets of Socialist Realism.

The mood is much more sombre in Mark Donskoi's The Childhood of Maxim Gorky (1938), which launched a trilogy that would be completed by My Apprenticeship (1938) and My Universities (1939). Intended to chronicle `the blossoming of a genius', this is a masterpiece of latent Socialist Realism that owes as much to Hollywood mythologisers like John Ford and French humanists like Jean Renoir as Soviet apologists like Pudovkin and Dovzhenko. Moreover, as Donskoi was never a member of the Communist Party and Gorky was a personal friend, this is less prescriptive in its discussion of lower-class living conditions in the 1870s and more relatable in its presentation of how such casual poverty and coarse affection might impact upon an impressionable mind.

The pervading melancholic mood is deftly established during the party thrown by Nizhni-Novgorod dye factory owner Vasili (Mikhail Troyanovski) and his wife (Varvara Massalitinova) for their widowed daughter Varvara (Yelizaveta Alekseyeva) and her young son Aleksei (Alyosha Lyarski). Indeed, such is the envious reception afforded by his uncles (Vasili Novikov and Aleksandr Zhukov) that Aleksei seeks the companionship of workers like Grigori (K. Zubkov) and Ivan (Danil Sagal), as well as such outsiders as Lenka (Igor Smirnov), a disabled boy who keeps insects as pets.

Life changes for the family when the factory burns down and Aleksei comes to experience cruelty and violence. But what leaves a greater impression on the boy is the nobility of the proletariat, who suffer the indignities and injustices of exploitation with an indomitability that Donskoi suggests is shared by his contemporary audience. Consequently, it's a sense of common humanity that Aleksei takes with him as he leaves home to seek his fortune.

Striking photographed (often from a revealing first-person perspective) by Pyotr Yermolov, this may not always be dramatically subtle or technically ambitious. The performances are also sometimes overwrought and Lev Shvarts's score leaves viewers little room for emotional manoeuvre. But, with its mix of maxims, folk songs, anecdotes and poignant vignettes, Ilya Gruzdev's screenplay enables Donskoi to remain true to the spirit of Gorky's autobiography, while Ivan Stepanov's studio interiors evocatively capture the grinding harshness of both domestic and industrial existence.

Moreover, this loving recreation of rural Russia under Alexander II also emphasises the essential decency of folk whose failings derive from the oppressive tsarist system under which they toil rather than from their own inherent flaws. Thus, this is an idealised reconstruction of the environment that helped shape the future author's personality and talent rather than a portrait of the young artist as a prototype Bolshevik. Furthermore, it tackles themes and traits with the same compassionate universality that would characterise Gorky's writing.

Investing the title role with a solemnity that contrasts tellingly with the peppiness that characterised such Hollwood biopics of the period as Norman Taurog's Young Tom Edison (1940), Alyosha Lyarski ably upheld the tradition established by Jackie Coogan in Charlie Chaplin's The Kid (1921) and continued after the war by Enzo Staiola in Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948) and Jon Whiteley in Charles Crichton's Hunted (1952). However, he didn't live to see these pictures, as he was killed at the age of 19 in an artillery battle near Lychkovo-Lyubnitsa in 1943.

Finally, we move forward two decades for the week's only colour film, Don Quixote (1957), which was adapted from the landmark Miguel de Cervantes novel by Yevgeni Shvarts for director Grigori Kozintsev, who had been responsible, with Ilya Trauberg, for Soviet cinema's other great Maxim trilogy - comprising The Youth of Maxim (1934), The Return of Maxim (1937) and The Vyborg Side (1938) -  which is long overdue a DVD release. Somewhat overshadowed by Kozintsev's later productions of Hamlet (1964) and King Lear (1971), this remains the most successful translation of a text that had already been brought to the screen by GW Pabst and Rafael Gil (in Germany and Spain in 1933 and 1947 respectively) and which would subsequently slip through the fingers of both Orson Welles and Terry Gilliam, whose interpretations would be dogged by ill fortune before being reluctantly abandoned. Indeed, only Albert Serra has since come close to capturing the spirit of Cervantes in the beguilingly revisionist Honour of the Knights (2006).

With his mental state already fragile, Alonso Quixano (Nikolai Cherkasov) has convinced himself through reading romantic fiction that he is a knight-errant destined to fight for truth and justice. Much to the dismay of his niece (Svetlana Grigoryeva) and housekeeper (Seraphima Birman), he borrows a shaving plate from the local barber (Viktor Kolpakov) to use as a helmet and, defying the priest (Vladimir Maksimov), he dresses himself in armour to fulfil his destiny as Don Quixote de La Mancha. Saddling his horse Rocinante, he enlists podgy servant Sancho Panza (Yuri Tolubeyev) to be his trusted squire and they ride off together in search of adventure.

Undaunted by the fact that his progress is being hampered by a sorcerer named Freston, Quixote delivers a shepherd boy (S. Tsomayev) from his cruel master (Aleksandr Benyaminov). However, he proves less heroic in charging a flock of sheep he mistakes for an army of giants and finds himself the subject of gentle mockery when he attempts to rescue Lady Altisidora (Tamilla Agamirova) from her own servants in the conviction that they are abducting her in her own carriage. Yet, when Altisidora tries to tease the old man, he resists her wiles and declares his devotion to Dulcinea del Toboso, the most virtuous maiden in Christendom, who is actually a milkmaid named Aldonsa (Lyudmila Kasyanova).

Riding on, Quixote and Sancho encounter a band of prisoners being escorted to the gallows. He demands to know the crimes for which they have been sentenced and is so taken by their pleas of innocence that he allows them to disarm their jailer and is soundly beaten and has his lance snapped in half for his troubles. Badly shaken by his experience, Quixote enters a nearby inn convinced it is a castle and asks whether any of the revellers need help resisting oppression. But, rather than taking pity on the deluded nobleman, they settle him down in the bed of Maritornes (Galina Volchek), whose jealous husband sets about the stranger who ends up jousting with wine vats after he is covered in feathers and unceremoniously dumped in the cellar.

Anxious to spare Quixote any further humiliation, his niece brings him home and entrusts him to the care of newly qualified doctor Sanson Carrasco (Georgi Vitsin). However, he is baffled by the case and fails to prevent his patient from being spirited away by Lady Altisidora, who wishes to show him off to the Duke (Bruno Frejndlikh) and Duchess (Bruno Freyndlikh) and their cynical courtiers. Unimpressed by his guest's courage in pacifying a caged lion, the Duke stages a mock funeral for Lady Altisidora, who supposedly died of unrequited love for Don Quixote. However, she miraculously rises from the dead during the knight's eulogy and the Duke reprimands him for placing such faith in love, virtue and fidelity.

Sancho Panza fares marginally better when he is duped into believing he has been appointed to the governorship of an island. Called upon to settle a dispute involving a woman who claims she has been assaulted by a man who insists was merely protecting his money, he proves a wise judge. But, though his new subjects are impressed by his brand of justice, they drive him away in time for him to rejoin Quixote as he tilts at windmills he believes to be giants under Freston's sway. Bruised by a fall from one of the whirring sails, Quixote looks up to see the approaching Knight of the White Moon, who challenges him to a duel.

Soundly defeated in combat, Quixote is surprised to discover that his adversary is none other than Carrasco, who demands that he adheres to the code of chivalry and consents to being confined in his home. While returning to La Mancha, however, he meets the shepherd boy he had helped at the outset of his odyssey and any hopes that he had performed at least one good deed are dashed when he blames him for the increased cruelty of his enraged master. Crushed by the revelation, Quixote succumbs to a melancholy that draws him closer to death.

Having already excelled in the title roles of Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky (1938) and the two-part Ivan the Terrible (1944 & 1958), Nikolai Cherkasov gives the performance of his career as the deluded innocent whose well-intentioned actions invariably worsen the situation of those he seeks to assist. Like Lear, Quixote blunders around the countryside taking counsel from a fool whose sagacity is masked to spare his master's blushes and diminutively rotund comedian Yuri Tolubeyev makes a splendid foil to the tall, angular Cherkasov. The supporting cast are equally accomplished, with Tamilla Agamirova and Bruno Freindlich being pantomimically wicked as the cynics whose misuse of power is rightly deemed to be far more heinous than a geriatric's bookish folly.

Beautifully photographed by Andrei Moskvin and Apollinari Dudko to capture the autumnal shades of the Crimean locations standing in for 16th-century Spain, the picture benefits greatly from Natan Altman's magnificent sets, which make ramshackle taverns and ducal palaces seem equally authentic. But what makes the deepest impression is the way in which Kozintsev and Shvarts discuss such highly politicised themes as reality, idealism, pragmatism and scepticism without resort to overt Marxism. Consequently, this always feels more in tune with Cervantes than Khruschev.