Otets Sergiy (1918) User Reviews

A modern and even scandalous movie for it's time...

[Al_X · 8/10 · 29 September 2006]

"Otets Sergei" is a film that couldn't have been made in any other time period. Literally. The censorship of Czar-era Russia had tight regulations concerning religion and politics (the portrayal of the royal family). This movie was made before the revolution of 1917 in a time of turmoil, it could just barely be made then; boasting the name of Tolstoy being a big asset. After the revolution, no such movie would be made for a long time.

Otets Sergei has both a very unconventional religious figure and it portraits the Czar as having extra-marital relationships. At heart it is the life story of a young successful army officer, prince Kasatsky, who unknowingly falls in love with the mistress of the Czar. When he eventually finds out the truth about his soon-to-be-married wife (she wants to marry him to stop the rumors about her affair with the Czar), he is so shocked that he retreats to a monastery to become a monk (and after years Father Sergei). Later he battles with the temptations of sexual lust and the dreams of how things could have been.

The movie has many uncommonly modern characteristics. Besides the daring subject it has a rather strongly developed lead character, good storytelling and cinematography and a script which deals with human emotions without being exploitative or sentimental. Altogether it has a very modern touch to it for a movie made in 1917, although the lack of sound (originally it had a score played live to the audience) does make it a little weary at times. Still it is a prime example of the art film movement of pre-soviet Russia and a timeless story of unfulfilled love.

The film has a typical "Russian ending", with almost total humiliation of the central figure, but it is not there to morally condemn Kasatsky, it's just that this was how stories like this always ended in the tragedy genre. One could see a moral lesson here, but to me what makes this movie interesting is that it doesn't seem to want to give one.

Father Sergius

[cvasquez93 · 8/10 · 5 September 2015]

The story of Father Sergius is a Russian Silent film directed by Yakov Protazanov based on the events of Prince Kasatsky. Kasatsky becomes engaged to Mary and soon finds out that she had an affair with Tsar. Protazanov then follows Kasatsky journey and his struggle to attain pure holiness. Protazanov creates very picturesque scenes. Throughout the film the camera is set up in specific ways to capture the atmosphere of the rooms and kind of give the image of somber and helplessness. When Kasatsky becomes a monk he still suffers with the inability to be holy. The scene where he cuts his own finger in order to protect himself from being seduced by a woman is a good example of how Protazanov is able to create a feeling of helplessness. This scene takes place in his cell, which is very dark and still and has no indication of life. Another scene in which Protazanov captures Kasatsky feeling of dread and agony is when his reputation grows and people come from all over to come visit him and get prayers from him. Throughout this scene Kasatsky become the main focus of the frame and the people around him are constantly moving and approaching him as he stands still and tries to take it all in. Protazanov does a great job at capturing life around Kasatsky flowing as he just stands still and suffers in his own agonizing feeling of self worth. As the film goes on you see the journey of Kasatsky and how the film evolves around his mental state.

In order to become devout one does not need to renounce daily life!

[frankde-jong · 7/10 · 24 December 2023]

Yakov Protazanov was a director from the early Russian cinema, the pre Eisenstein period. He made films in both Tsarist Russia and in the Communist Soviet Union. I have seen three films of him: "Queen of spades" (1916), Aelita, the queen of Mars" (1924) and most recently "Father Sergius".

I watched "Father Sergius" after watching "Night sun" (1990, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani), that is an adaptation of the same story by Leo Tolstoy. "Father Sergius" is about a man who tries all his life to become as devout as humanly possible. The exact meaning of the word devout is not exactly clear but it definitely entails getting rid of such things as longing for wealth, status and sexual satisfaction. In order to reach his goal he becomes a hermit. In the end he must conclude that all his attempts have failed.

If I am correct this failure is portrayed differently in the Protazanov and Taviani versions. In the Protazanov version Father Sergius (Ivan Mozzhukhin) sees a farmer's party in a local pub at the end of the film and thinks back at the gala parties at the court of the tsar he attended when he was young. In the Taviani version Father Sergius meets a girl from his former neighbourhood and sees that there is much devoutness in her sober and helpful way of life. In order to become devout one does not need to renounce daily life!

I haven't read the novel of Tolstoy, so I don't know which of the two adaptations is more faithful to this text. I think both endings capture the moral of the story rather well, and except for the ending the two films have more or less the same storyline. All in all the Taviani's remake seems rather superfluous to me.

As said the part of father Sergius is played by Ivan Mozzhukin. He was a big (and wealthy) star in Tsarist Russia, but after the Communist revolution his life was in danger. Under protection of the contra revolutionaries (the White) he fled to Western Europe and continued his film career until his death in 1939.

The way he portrays Father Sergius, especially in the second part of tne movie when Father Sergius is on the brink of madness, has much in common with the way Ivan Cherkasov plays Ivan the Terrible in the two films (1944 but especially 1958) of Sergei Eisenstein. This is remarkable because Ivan the Terrible longed for ever more status and power while Father Sergius on the other hand desperately tried to renounce it.

Moments before Eisenstein

[chaos-rampant · 12 April 2012]

It is my view that we need more efficient ways of documenting film. Emotional response is fine but fickle and, to me, untrustworthy. Film history educates but is really dry and boring. Talking about technique is simple navel-gazing complacency. The point is that film flows from actual life that is immensely complex and inviting. Make no mistake, it is the pinnacle of the arts at this point and for a long time now. We can use it to both invigorate sense of the world and our own reasoning tools.

So I have been surveying the early days of the medium looking for interesting threads that weave together the evolution of entire worlds. One such I have found in Japan, that is documented elsewhere.

The other is right here. And because the technique now seems primitive, and the emotional response is likewise hampered by having refined our own selves and viewing habits further than these films operated on, we can focus on this one aspect; film as forging of soul.

1917 Russia. Civil unrest on-and-off goes back several decades. One-third of the world is at the brink of cataclysmic change.

So at this point comes a film where the czar is portrayed as having an amorous, extra-marital affair. In order to obscure the matter, he frames a young military officer to marry this woman, a brilliant man we're told, save for his rash temper, scion of an aristocratic family and groomed to lead, the future of this ruling elite about to be destroyed we can presume. Our man finds out about the plot and outraged at worldly hypocrisy, he disavows rank and status and becomes a monk.

But this corrupt world catches up with him again in the monastery, it should not be missed that the abbot maintains friendly relations with the military aristocracy, so our man exiles himself even further and becomes a hermit.

All through the film we are treated to very impressive transformations of our character, from young impertinent cadet to old decrepit hermit, on par with anything Lon Chaney accomplished and without any of the caricature. No, we're watching a natural actor at work here, an early Daniel Day-Lewis, one who does not attack the role from outside but rather embodies the sullen, mortified look. He makes even the heavy makeup around of the eyes seem natural and as though it has slowly crept in from decades of bitterness and resentment.

This was going to be Ivan Mozzhukhin's last film in his own country, soon after completion he was going to be forced into exile along with the filmmakers and most of the cast shown here. They would make the next film on the trail, the Ermolief trail leading from Yalta into Paris. He would surface again in the time of the first great French school. He would have the chance to be immortalized as Napoleon in Abel Gance's historic production, but opted instead to be Casanova for Volkoff, one of the filmmakers who filmed him in this.

This is very much what the film is about, an aristocract who no longer has a place in the world and has to disappear. The hermit is gaunt and half-mad in his cabin, but at least safe and far from what he would have nothing to do with. Except temptation visits him one last time.

Another amorous woman, very much like the one he courted and had to flee from, who once again taunts him, promises sex, and the old man now has to cut off his finger to fight the urge. This prompts the local populace to celebrate him as a saint and make pilgrimages to his place to get his blessing.

But this is the thing, the karmic dynamics at work shaping destiny in and out of the film.

This is what I'm talking about. We know that our man was never a spiritual person. We know that he's never, even during his long ascetic years, managed to find a center for himself. Even as a hermit, he has the same rash temper as years ago the cadet and the merest flicker of turbulent life sends him reeling. And he has so many fingers to cut before he succumbs to temptation. In the end, he's merely swept aside by authorities as one more vagabond en route to Siberia.

Nevertheless, the dynamics of this world at the time were such, I assume, that the narrative must have registered in the national heart on the level of tragic Russian hero broken by a lawless, cruel system, and the protagonist who starts off as 'one of them', is eventually washed up in the lowest class and cast out. Religion is shown to offer no shelter. Yet no responsibility over one's own actions is ever really asserted.

So of course these dynamics would erupt in violent revolution against the characters portrayed here, that same year, but see, including the actual actors, Mozzhukhin most notably, why else, because they had been unlucky to be celebrated by the populace and amass a fortune.

Father Sergiy, blind to the mechanisms that control his suffering and constantly fleeing from himself, really is Russian soul at the crossroads.

A great film that tweaks Leo Tolstoy's short story towards the end

[JuguAbraham · 8/10 · 7 February 2021]

A very good film more than a century old. Actor Ivan Mozzhukin is riveting. No wonder he was the star of European cinema. One of the wealthiest actors of his day, he died in penury. Great cinematography. Good screenplay. Unfortunately stops when Father Sergius is taken to Siberia as a vagrant. The written work describes Father Sergius in Siberia--which is a crucial element of the short story. But the film succeeds, even when it cut short the story. Two other films have been made of the same story: a 1978 version from Russia and the 1990 Italian film adaptation by the famous Taviani brothers called " The Sun Also Shines at Night." I suspect that Sergei Eisenstein and his cinematographer Eduard Tisse built on visual ideas from this film when they made the classic "Ivan the Terrible, Parts I and II" and even actor Nikolai Cherkasov's portrayal of Ivan was built on on Mozzhukin's portrayal of Father Sergius.

A Tolstoy Story

[maria_isabee · 5/10 · 5 September 2015]

This Tolstoy story follows Prince Kossotski and his journey of joining the army and falling in love with Countess Korotbova who is the emperors mistress. In his discovering of this it shocks him to such an extent that he decides to enter the monastery. His entering the monastery shows his despised of everything that seemed important to others. Especially towards his family, as it was his father's dying wish to pursue a career in the army. It's a bit ironic how this man who was characterized from the gecko as having a violent temperament, which can clearly been seen when he is arguing about the pork chops being inedible to his superior. Can suddenly decide to resign and become a monk. The portraying of priesthood in this film is entirely controversial. After watching this film one can clearly tell why it wasn't shown to the public until May 1918 even though production was completed months before the October Revolution. Tolstoy's novel is challenging what the church stands for and proclaiming that even something that is seen as the most brilliant position of high society is influenced by corruption and human weakness. Mosjoukine does a terrific job in portraying Father Sergius as a distraught persona caught in between duty and passion. Sergius is constantly battling temptation, his desire to return to the army and his desire of wanting to be with a woman. In order to avoid temptations he becomes a hermit in a desert, but is still constantly struggling and in the end is seduced. A frank denunciation of the official church.

Second Chance

[Cineanalyst · 1/10 · 15 June 2005]

This is the second time I've watched this film, "Father Sergius", which seems rather rare. I remember being very bored. Viewing it a second time causes one to face such questions as: am I a masochist? Am I trying to avert myself of cinema? Perhaps, I'm just too thorough in viewing these old silent films.

It's based on the Tolstoy novella, but literature and cinema are very different media, so that's no guarantee of any success. The story of Prince Stepán Kasátsky discovering his fiancée was the mistress of the Czar, so he then becomes a monk--eventually Father Sergius is faithful, but I don't consider that enough or even necessarily important in an adaptation. Co-director Yakov Protazanov was a prolific filmmaker not of the montage school, who made the curious communist sci-fi film "Aelita: Queen of Mars" (1924). Ivan Mozzhukhin was probably the major Russian actor of the day. As well, the settings of "Father Sergius" are lavish enough.

The major problem is that the film consists of static, long takes. The camera placement and film technique are common for the day, although prosaic, but the pacing is too ponderous. The bad acting and theatricality certainly don't make up for it. The scenes that remained in my mind over the years before seeing it again were those of Father Sergius's seclusion and his torment over lust. I didn't remember the finger incident, just the dullness. I've given the film a second chance, only to add nearly two more hours of boredom to my life.

Father Sergius (1917) d. Protazanov

[dkwootton · 4 September 2015]

As a contemporary audience, we often approach silent films with an attitude of condescension. This initial sentiment lowers expectations but draws our attention to the everyday grammar of film language that we take for granted. Suddenly the glance object cut, the pan right and tilt down showing the elaborate ornamentation in the cathedral and the sparsely used close-ups become all the more impressive because we hold it to the standard of a silent film. While Father Sergius still suffers from the silent film dilemma of having the dominant influence of other mediums (such as theater and literature) it is exciting to see modern day film techniques in the infantile stage. Father Sergius is a silent film epic detailing the life of Prince Kasatsky from his years in school to his eventual position as a budding young officer. After discovering the woman he loves is the mistress to the Czar, the prince pursues a lifestyle devoid of succumbing to any and all earthly temptation as he transforms himself into the "saintly" Father Sergius. In a startling special effects sequence, Kasatsky regrets his decision longing for his former lover as she enters the frame as a ghostly spirit. Regardless of any standard preconceived silent film notions, the coordination, blocking and deep focus photography in the crowd scenes are remarkable. Also astonishing is the controversial acknowledgement of extra marital affairs within the royal family as well as the message of the film that seems to promote the excessive bourgeois lifestyle over the life of a clergyman. The regret that endures in Father Sergius suggests a longing for a life of excess, power and respect. Although arriving at a period where films were still testing the capacity of cinema, Father Sergius is an enjoyable experience of Russian cinema finding its footing.