Distinguished filmmaker Yuli Raizman's career stretched from the early days of silent film, the Stalin years , "the thaw" continuing to the generation of perestroika of the 1980s. Stalin's death in 1953 opened new opportunities to further develop films with a probing social conscience, "The Communist," was inspired by and made to mark the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution. Yuli Raizman's multi layered revisionist treatment of the traditional subject gives a fabulous historical insight of the tumultuous era. The story tells of the formation of large scale work parties assigned to build power infrastructure to generate progress and move the Motherland forward. It is a touching human drama, a rousing embrace of the values & ideals of those early revolutionists. The tremendous scale of this excellent production is evident from the opening moments, it is a beautifully composed dynamic work of Soviet cinematic art. Excellent performances portray with great feeling the struggles, ambitions and dreams of the common folk. There are also some wonderfully touching romantic moments just as in his earlier film Mashenka (42). Having a much broader dimension than for example the frivolity of "Tractor Drivers" from the late 30s, the altruistic heroes here are to be admired. Socialist propaganda? ...work hard contribute to your community, your country . A must see for anyone interested in Classic Soviet era filmmaking Highly Recommended !!
2 Reviews
Gives according to its ability, but that's not much
hte-trasme1 February 2015
Warning: Spoilers
One has to expect going into a Soviet film from 1958 called "The Communist" that one has a pretty good chance of getting a propaganda film. If one does, this movie is no surprise. Unfortunately, it leans more towards demonstrating the artistic dullness often inspired by devotion to the ideal of the socialist-realist "art movement" than its sometimes-amusing excesses. It does, however, contain some interesting historical insights into how tropes were manipulated in service of the political message.
Our hero is a superhumanly devoted Communist and hard-worker, declaring his loyalty without hesitation in rooms full of people full of people clearly hostile to Communism. Laboring more than anyone imagines possible for the party, he chops down a absurdly prodigious number of trees overnight when others will not help him. Lenin (played by a man who does actually look eerily like Lenin) is portrayed as a man dedicated to fixing the smallest details of work projects in every part of the country, while at the same time extremely busy with being the guiding hand of the revolution.
Our hero, near the end, becomes the only person in town killed when it is struck by malicious fire, allowing him to rather artificially become a martyr.
On the other hand it is interesting that that film contains some thematic material around how moral it may be (within the socialist framework) to pursue a woman who is technically still married -- and many fascinated glimpses at recreated 1920s Russian life.
There were a lot of non-propaganda films on non-political subjects produced in the Soviet Union. This isn't one of them, and it doesn't challenge the prevailing norms about how political material should be presented, or do anything out of its way to do anything interesting cinematically. This makes it the cinema equivalent of the much- derided "tractor novel," and it doesn't have much artistic merit outside of its political context.
Our hero is a superhumanly devoted Communist and hard-worker, declaring his loyalty without hesitation in rooms full of people full of people clearly hostile to Communism. Laboring more than anyone imagines possible for the party, he chops down a absurdly prodigious number of trees overnight when others will not help him. Lenin (played by a man who does actually look eerily like Lenin) is portrayed as a man dedicated to fixing the smallest details of work projects in every part of the country, while at the same time extremely busy with being the guiding hand of the revolution.
Our hero, near the end, becomes the only person in town killed when it is struck by malicious fire, allowing him to rather artificially become a martyr.
On the other hand it is interesting that that film contains some thematic material around how moral it may be (within the socialist framework) to pursue a woman who is technically still married -- and many fascinated glimpses at recreated 1920s Russian life.
There were a lot of non-propaganda films on non-political subjects produced in the Soviet Union. This isn't one of them, and it doesn't challenge the prevailing norms about how political material should be presented, or do anything out of its way to do anything interesting cinematically. This makes it the cinema equivalent of the much- derided "tractor novel," and it doesn't have much artistic merit outside of its political context.
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