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IMDbPro

Ivan's Childhood

Original title: Ivanovo detstvo
  • 19621962
  • Not RatedNot Rated
  • 1h 35m
IMDb RATING
8.0/10
37K
YOUR RATING
Nikolay Burlyaev in Ivan's Childhood (1962)
DramaWar
During WWII, Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev strikes up a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers while working as a scout behind the German lines.During WWII, Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev strikes up a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers while working as a scout behind the German lines.During WWII, Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev strikes up a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers while working as a scout behind the German lines.
IMDb RATING
8.0/10
37K
YOUR RATING
    • Andrei Tarkovsky
    • Eduard Abalov(fired)
  • Writers
    • Vladimir Bogomolov(story "Ivan")
    • Mikhail Papava(screenplay)
    • Andrei Tarkovsky(uncredited)
  • Stars
    • Nikolay Burlyaev
    • Valentin Zubkov
    • Evgeniy Zharikov
    • Andrei Tarkovsky
    • Eduard Abalov(fired)
  • Writers
    • Vladimir Bogomolov(story "Ivan")
    • Mikhail Papava(screenplay)
    • Andrei Tarkovsky(uncredited)
  • Stars
    • Nikolay Burlyaev
    • Valentin Zubkov
    • Evgeniy Zharikov
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 90User reviews
    • 96Critic reviews
  • See production, box office & company info
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards

    Photos144

    Nikolay Burlyaev in Ivan's Childhood (1962)
    Nikolay Burlyaev in Ivan's Childhood (1962)
    Nikolay Burlyaev in Ivan's Childhood (1962)
    Nikolay Burlyaev in Ivan's Childhood (1962)
    Vera Miturich in Ivan's Childhood (1962)
    Irina Tarkovskaya in Ivan's Childhood (1962)
    Irina Tarkovskaya in Ivan's Childhood (1962)
    Ivan's Childhood (1962)
    Evgeniy Zharikov in Ivan's Childhood (1962)
    Evgeniy Zharikov in Ivan's Childhood (1962)
    Evgeniy Zharikov and Valentin Zubkov in Ivan's Childhood (1962)
    Nikolay Burlyaev and Evgeniy Zharikov in Ivan's Childhood (1962)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Nikolay Burlyaev
    Nikolay Burlyaev
    • Ivan Bondarev
    • (as Kolya Burlyaev)
    Valentin Zubkov
    Valentin Zubkov
    • Leonid Kholin
    • (as V. Zubkov)
    Evgeniy Zharikov
    Evgeniy Zharikov
    • Galtsev
    • (as Ye. Zharikov)
    Stepan Krylov
    Stepan Krylov
    • Katasonov
    • (as S. Krylov)
    Nikolay Grinko
    Nikolay Grinko
    • Gryaznov
    • (as N. Grinko)
    Dmitri Milyutenko
    Dmitri Milyutenko
    • Old Man
    • (as D. Milyutenko)
    Valentina Malyavina
    Valentina Malyavina
    • Masha
    • (as V. Malyavina)
    Irina Tarkovskaya
    Irina Tarkovskaya
    • Ivan's Mother
    • (as I. Tarkovskaya)
    Andrey Konchalovskiy
    Andrey Konchalovskiy
    • Soldier with glasses
    • (as A. Konchalovskiy)
    Ivan Savkin
    Ivan Savkin
      Vladimir Marenkov
      Vladimir Marenkov
        Vera Miturich
        Vera Miturich
        • Girl
        Nikolay Smorchkov
        Nikolay Smorchkov
        • Starshina
        • (uncredited)
          • Andrei Tarkovsky
          • Eduard Abalov(fired) (uncredited)
        • Writers
          • Vladimir Bogomolov(story "Ivan") (screenplay)
          • Mikhail Papava(screenplay)
          • Andrei Tarkovsky(uncredited)
        • All cast & crew
        • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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        Storyline

        Edit

        Did you know

        Edit
        • Trivia
          Tarkosvky shows real footage of occupied Berlin, including the charred corpse of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of propaganda, and the bodies of his six children murdered by their parents in Berlin on 1 May 1945.
        • Goofs
          In the famous "Well Scene" Ivan's mother says "If A well is too deep you can see a star in it even in the day time". While speaking she is standing on the left hand side of Ivan but when their reflection is shown in water she is standing on the right hand side. Lateral Inversion has not been depicted correctly. Please have a look.
        • Quotes

          Ivan's Mother: If a well is really deep, you can see a star down there even in the middle of a sunny day.

        • Connections
          Edited into Moskovskaya elegiya (1990)
        • Soundtracks
          Ne velyat Mashe
          [Song played on the gramophone. English translation: "Masha is not allowed beyond the river".]

        User reviews90

        Review
        Review
        Featured review
        9/10
        a powerful piece of poetic film-making for the disillusionment, and disorientation, surrounding young Ivan
        Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Tarkovsky's first substantial feature as director (he previously made a short of the Killers, and a 45 minute student film), is a near-masterpiece of adolescence shredded to pieces in subjective perception. It's set in world war 2, with 12 year old Ivan's family killed by the Nazis and his alliance with the Russian soldiers as a scout able to sneak past into small spaces more to do with vengeance than real patriotism. By the time we see him he's a torn figure, someone who at 12 looks and acts like he's already come of age, by force, and that this deep down has left him in a disparaging state of mind, pushing it away through temper (he won't go to military school, he tells his superiors), and only with the slightest escape through dreams.

        But in these dreams he's also tormented by his past, in fragments that hint to the psychological trauma through abstractions, of a splash of water hitting across the dead body of his mother while Ivan is at the bottom of a well, or in the natural and happy surroundings of a truck carrying fruits. One sees in this the only spots of innocence left in Ivan's life, the pinnacle (and one of Tarkovsky's most breathtaking scenes ever filmed) the final dream on the beach with Ivan and his sister running along the sand. In this nature, smiling faces, the filtering of the background of the forest, Ivan's Childhood is starkly incredible.

        The 'real' world as depicted, to be sure, is jagged, torn apart, in dark marshes and forests and with trenches dug for a long while and flares and cannon fire always in the air. It seems almost not to be entirely real, or as real as should be 100% truthful to battlefronts. But it's also, for the most part (sometimes it shifts to the adult soldiers like Kholin and Galtzev), through Ivan's point of view, and so this world around him that is ripped to shreds and bullet-strewn and deadened is amplified a little.

        There's a curious, evocative scene where Ivan, left alone in a dark floor of a house with a flashlight, goes around looking at the messages scribbled frantically as final notes from partisans, and it veers in-between dream and reality, where it could go either way depending on Ivan's mental state, as fragile as his physical condition. He finally bursts into tears, exhausted. It's this wild meddling with what Ivan sees or experiences or thinks and secretly fears through his would-be tough exterior that makes him so compelling and heartbreaking, as played by Kolya Burlyayev with a sharp level of bravery- not even Jean-Pierre Leaud was this absorbing, albeit on different dramatic terrain.

        It's a given that it was not Tarkovsky's project to start with, and, ala Kubrick and Spartacus, came in after a director had been let go to finish the picture. While it is remarkable to see how Tarkovsky does make it his vision, and quite an ambitious one considering how expansive the production design gets and the technical daring taken with his director of photography Vadim Yusov, and how there's a fresh and often original (eg dream scenes, placement of the camera, the scene in the post-war house looking at the records of the departed) perspective that no one else would have given it, there are small parts of the story that could have been dealt with a little better, edited, or cut out altogether.

        The character of Masha (played practically with one expression- practically cause of the moment after she is kissed- on her face) is a little unnecessary, or rather more of a means for Tarkovsky to practice some technical ideas in the forest scene, which really leads nowhere, and how her reemergence later in the film also doesn't serve much of a purpose. Maybe there's a point to be made about women in the army at the time, as she's an object of desire less much of an effective nurse, but when seeing her scenes (which aren't bad exactly) one wants to get back to Ivan and the central plot.

        But, as mentioned, one has to know that as a Tarkovsky picture what doesn't work doesn't matter so much as what does, and Ivan's Childhood is often staggering in its depiction of the brutality on the mind and consciousness, not just through Ivan but through his adult counterparts, and about how in a time when life can be taken away in an instant, almost without a sound, clinging to a past, however surreal, is all that can matter. There's truths reached about the devastation of war on the young, and those who care for them, that wouldn't be in a more naturalistic setting, and it's Tarkovsky's triumph that he steers it into the realm of a consistent, poetic nightmare narrative.
        helpful•35
        6
        • Quinoa1984
        • Aug 23, 2007

        Details

        Edit
        • Release date
          • June 27, 1963 (United States)
          • Soviet Union
          • Russian
          • German
        • Also known as
          • Dnieper River, Kanev, Ukraine
        • Production companies
          • Mosfilm
          • Trete Tvorcheskoe Obedinenie
        • See more company credits at IMDbPro

        Box office

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        See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

        Technical specs

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        • 1 hour 35 minutes
          • Black and White
          • Mono

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