I’m currently working on an introduction to a book I’m co-editing on one of the greatest films about communism, The Lives of Others, and I’m wondering what other films there are that portray life under communist oppression that our readers know about. There don’t seem to be that many. Can you recommend any?
What I don’t have in mind: documentaries, 1984-or-Brazil-like stories set in fantasy totalitarian states, or films about fighting communist agents. What I’m after are dramatic stories that are set within communist societies, and which seek to some degree to portray their character—so I’m not interested in films, such as the Decalogue, that are simply set in such societies and only obliquely comment upon them. I am also interested in portrayals of the rulers themselves, but not ones only about their revolutionary days prior to power.
Here are some of the ones that come to my mind, which I’ll list from most accessible to least:
1. Doctor Zhivago And the book is even better!
2. The Tunnel German film from 2001; more about the very great escape than life under communism. Should have been a hit here.
3. Goodbye, Lenin! A “comedy” deceptively “nostalgic” for life in East Germany. Features one of the most ingenious plot-devices ever.
4. I Am David Amazing film about a boy’s escape from a Bulgarian prison camp in the 50s, and his having to learn for the first time to trust people; admittedly, the story would have worked had he come from a Nazi prison camp. A classic meditation on human nature–in that sense sort of the reverse to Elia Kazan’s shattering America, America. And, a quiet celebration of Western liberty.
5. The Killing Fields About the Cambodian genocide. Ashamed to say I don’t remember it all that well.
6. weird but funny allegorical Georgian film about a corpse that people keep digging up(it represents Stalin)…does anyone remember the title of this one? Late 80s or early 90s.
7. The First Circle Not the 1992 film (has anyone seen that?), but the 2006 Russian television mini-series. Many episodes, but difficult to get copies of last time I tried. I only saw the first episode–top-notch, as Solzhenitsyn deserves.
8. The Chekist Russian, from early 90s. Extras stripped for unglamorous nudity shots, and by the hundreds, to portray the daily basement firing-squad executions and the pile-the-bodies-up for disposal scenes that occurred in the earliest days of the Cheka, the Bolshevik security organ. Little plot other than how the various Cheka functionaries deal (or don’t) with the endless executions . Obviously, not for the squeamish–a grim and even self-sacrificial witness made by Russians, at the first moment they could, to the fact that the Bolsheviks had been mass-murderers from the start.
So what are some other good ones? I feel that even with this list, too many are focused either on overt horrors or on dramatic escapes, and not, in the spirit of The Lives of Others, focused on the more day-to-day oppression of communist societies.
June 23rd, 2012 | 6:15 am
There was a decent adaptation of Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” starring Tom Courtenay. It has been a good 20 years since I’ve seen it, but I believe it was a UK production with a German director. Also very difficult to get a copy of today. “The Inner Circle,” starring Tom Hulce of “Amadeus” fame, was also an interesting film — about Stalin’s projectionist, of all things.
June 23rd, 2012 | 7:37 am
“One Day” is the best. Here are some others to look at:
“The Looking Glass War” by Frank Pierson based on the John le Carre novel about a British spy who sends a Polish defector to East Germany to verify missile sites. Being by Le Carre it makes both sides look bad, but guess who really looks worse.
“Ballad of a soldier” by the Moskovskaa kinostudia, a “Mosfilm.” The Criterion Collection has it. It is a romantic story about a soldier who is brave in battle and awarded the rare privilege of leave of help his mother repair her roof. He gets 6 days and sees her for about 5 minutes, so many bad things happen to him. Trying to make the Motherland look good — it looks awful.
“Enemy at the Gates” — Jean Jacques Annaud — about the sniper-hero of the Battle of Stalingrad with a little romance added. Bob Hoskins as Khrushchev is most worth watching — succeed or we shoot you, nobody crosses the Boss (Stalin), stuff like that.
“The Third Man” directed by Carol Reed, I believe, with Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles in post WWII Vienna, a divided city and the divisions and distinctions are very clear.
A recent one about East German watchers — title forgotten, but it will turn up.
These are off the top, but I’ll be remembering more now that you’ve started the subject.
June 23rd, 2012 | 8:27 am
Kate, great movie. I’ve got a Russian (Mosin) sniper rifle just like the one used in the movie. It is an excellent weapon. Loved the movie.
I like the movies mentioned above but I really think the movies/pbs tv shows made from LeCarre’s spy novels really, really reflect not only the Soviet Union but Western societies as they respond to the threat.
June 23rd, 2012 | 8:49 am
Burnt by the Sun is one of my faves. Thanks for the list! Many I haven’t seen.
There’s a Kieslowski film about a communist bureaucrat but I can’t recall the name right now (it’s not the Decalogue, Without End, the Trilogy, or the Short Films About…)
June 23rd, 2012 | 8:53 am
The Kieslowski film is “The Scar.”
June 23rd, 2012 | 9:13 am
Ah, yes, the Stalingrad movie! Thanks, Kate for reminding me, and thanks Anthony for yours.
The super-great The Third Man falls into the spy/agent category.
P.S. I avoid le Carre like the plague.
June 23rd, 2012 | 11:25 am
Actually Carl, I quite understand why you would. His later novels sadly expose his cultural/political derailments. However, his early stuff, I think, explains certain aspects of the tension existing between the secret services both in the Eastern Block/Soviet Union and the West in general and MI5 in particular. His character development, though they were secularists to the soul, captured, I think, our Modern Times.
June 23rd, 2012 | 1:20 pm
East/West (1999)
June 23rd, 2012 | 1:34 pm
i’ll also mention the unbearable lightness of being, even though i think the film adaptation is awful (and you asked for “good” ones).
June 23rd, 2012 | 6:26 pm
Aleksandr Sokurov: Taurus
Larisa Shepitko: take your pick; I’ll say Wings as the most directly related
Andrei Tarkovskii: Ivan’s Childhood
And, of course, a whole host of brilliant art animation. Ignorant movie critics ignore it or relegate it to the ghetto, but, because of various historical reasons, they constitute by far the greatest response.
Aleksandr Petrov is the greatest animator ever. He does oil-on-glass adaptations. The best animation ever, The Cow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=borWcaIr7kk (note the nail/hammer and sickle)
Garri Bardin: The Grey Wolf And Red Hood: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lIT1zMFQa8 or Adagio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dIEH8xXaxU
the super-famous The Hand (because it was done by that country’s happy Walt Disney-esque man) Jiri Trnka, The Hand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7T9UPjtfYg
a similar children-to-adult transition, 1 of my favorites, the Christian take on communism by Nina Shorina, Alter Ego: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT4O7zcA0PE
the abstract masterwork, The Glass Harmonica by Andrei Khrzhanovskii: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYz0xck_NYQ and the less abstract, less sinister There Lived Koziavin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLFjrZwoMx0
The Hen, His Wife by Igor Kovalev is so creative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV-QqYHR1Zw
a lot of people’s favorite animation ever, Yuri Norshtein’s Tale Of Tales: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aeuyJ-wrIY
an AMAZING propaganda flick by Nikolai Khodataev, Interplanetary Revolution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXVQYHg_sxk
To reiterate, animation is actually respected in other countries thanks to Pixar dreck and art stuff being segregated, so people actually know these things. They’re only obscure here (and only to non-animation fans). Most, especially in non-European countries, couldn’t do openly hostile work, so these are the ones that made it through. A lot of them came to the United States afterward (you may recognize Igor Kovalev from his Nickelodeon shows).
June 23rd, 2012 | 6:29 pm
And since Region
June 23rd, 2012 | 6:31 pm
And since Region 1 accessibility seems to be an issue (come on, we have region-free players now!), all of those, I believe, are on the 4 Discs Masters Of Russian Animation set. http://www.amazon.com/Red-Cartoons-Animated-Films-Germany/dp/B002SXKR8C is also good, but probably more slice-of-live than you want.
June 23rd, 2012 | 8:05 pm
How about the German film, The Lives of Others by Donnersmarck?
It is follows a Stasi agent spying on artists in East Germany who gets emotionally involved in the life of a playwright and his actress-girlfriend. It’s a great film that really gets you to invest in the characters through great acting and replicating the sad, tense and bureaucratic atmosphere of communist Germany.
June 23rd, 2012 | 9:30 pm
Look back to the post, MPB.
I have just watched “The Lost City” about the revolution in Cuba. A little romantic, but with charming music.
June 23rd, 2012 | 11:40 pm
Largo Desalato. Adaptation of Havel’s play.
June 23rd, 2012 | 11:59 pm
I would like to second Burnt By the Sun. It’s really a great, deeply moving, flick.
June 24th, 2012 | 3:41 am
D’oh, sorry. I read the article when it was posted and then decided to post the next day after Kate made this comment: “A recent one about East German watchers — title forgotten, but it will turn up” which I assumed would be The Lives of Others, and obviously nothing I read stuck in my mind the next day. I will not be so careless the next time.
How about:
1) Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days which is a Romanian film which won the Palme D’or a few years ago. It is about a college girl who helps her friend procure an illegal abortion, and the whole film is said to really capture the atmosphere of life under Ceauşescu, and you feel a general crushing of the main protagonist’s humanity being surrounded by these vapid characters already beaten down (in one way or another) by Communism.
2) Man On A Tightrope by Elia Kazan from the early ’50s. It is about a circus performer who plans on escaping to the West. It’s an often overlooked gem.
3) 12:08 East of Bucharest by Cornelius Proumboiu which is a comedy about a small town in Romania on the day of the overthrow of the Communist government and how they react to and recollect (years later) that event.
June 24th, 2012 | 5:45 am
I suggest “The Inner Circle.” Here is a summary of the plot, from the Wikipedia: “The true story is of Ivan Sanchin, the KGB officer who was Stalin’s private film projectionist from 1939 until Stalin’s death. Told from Sanchin’s view, the sympathetic but tragically flawed hero, squirrel, maintains unwavering faith in his “Master” despite the arrest of his neighbors and his involvement with their daughter, his wife’s affair with the chilling State Security chief Lavrentii Beria and her tragic decline, and the deadly political machinations within the Kremlin he witnesses firsthand.”
Other suggestions: Robert Duvall stars in “Stalin,” an HBO production. “Bitter Sugar” and “Strawberry and Chocolate,” like “Lost City,” are set in Cuba.
June 24th, 2012 | 8:03 am
MPB, exactly, I was sensitive to your error having made my own, “What the heck was the name of that frightening movie?” and remembered later it was the one that was the point of the post. It is a very frightening movie.
Carl’s post here and the responses have launched me in to a summer film fest of the titles offered. I’ve ordered two dozen (probably more) DVDs through my local library. In hunting through the library linked state system, I noted that despite the more international nature of communism, there are far fewer movies about it than about Fascism, Nazism, Hitler and WWII. How has there not been more interest? There is a clear flourishing of films about life in communism after 1989, but for Hollywood, only spy movies really make production.
June 24th, 2012 | 8:40 am
Kate,
Some of the blackout may be due to Hollywood itself.
http://reason.com/archives/2000/06/01/hollywoods-missing-movies
(From pg.2 of the link: )
“But if Comintern fantasies of a Soviet Hollywood were never realized, party functionaries nevertheless played a significant role: They were sometimes able to prevent the production of movies they opposed. The party had not only helped organize the Screen Writers Guild, it had organized the Story Analysts Guild as well. Story analysts judge scripts and film treatments early in the decision making process. A dismissive report often means that a studio will pass on a proposed production. The party was thus well positioned to quash scripts and treatments with anti-Soviet content, along with stories that portrayed business and religion in a favorable light. In The Worker, Dalton Trumbo openly bragged that the following works had not reached the screen: Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon and The Yogi and the Commissar; Victor Kravchenko’s I Chose Freedom; and Bernard Clare by James T. Farrell, also author of Studs Lonigan and vilified by party enforcer Mike Gold as “a vicious, voluble Trotskyite.”
June 24th, 2012 | 10:41 am
Kate, why do you think our friends in Hollywood have failed to cover life in a commie state to the same degree as they have, say, Nazi Germany? I think MBP has provided an excellent beginning. Your response might make for a decent blog?
June 24th, 2012 | 10:54 am
It falls to someone to write a post that summarizes the results of this excellent investigation.
June 24th, 2012 | 3:10 pm
Thanks all for the great recommendations…I’ve definitely got some viewing to do.
I’m sure many of you are noticing what I am, however, that Netflix often doesn’t have the lesser-known titles here. That’s not an ideological thing with Netflix, as you see this dearth of lesser-known titles across the board, but it nonetheless reflects the continued resistance of certain elites in Western and post-communist nations to such films getting made and getting publicity.
There probably are many more films than we’ve mentioned here that at least touch upon the subject–that is, I suspect that experts on Eastern European cinema prior to 1989, or on Chinese cinema to this day, could likely point out many films that contain sly comments upon, or esoteric critiques of, communist ideology/society. One of the weirder animated films GhaleonQ links to above, for example, seems to be presenting a humanistic critique of communist totalitarianism under the guise of this critique being against capitalism/fascism. In less-tricky and more allegorical spirit, one might also recall the haunting balloon scene from the stunning Soviet film Andrei Rublev. I’m sure there are other instances along these lines, although I’d hope to find some less arty and ambiguous.
Peter, the full exploration of what we’re touching upon here, i.e., 1) the overall pattern(s) of films about communism, 2) the comparison with films about Nazism/fascism, and 3) the reasons for the lesser number (and public prominence) of the former, would be another book or two.
But I am going to link to that invaluable Reason article MPB linked to in a regular post.
June 25th, 2012 | 9:08 am
The Thief
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0124207/
July 1st, 2012 | 11:29 am
It must be noted that 1984 is not a film, or a book, against Communism. It is a book against Stalinism, which is a completely different thing.
Also Cambodja is not often considered to be a Communist Country. They were destroyed by the Vietnamese and helped by the Americans. Not a very Communist thing to do.
July 11th, 2012 | 9:58 am
[...] addition, in response to Carl Scott’s post on movies about Communism, I’ve been watching some, including A Woman in Berlin, which is based on a journal that might [...]
July 11th, 2012 | 12:49 pm
The Trial (1955) Starring Glenn Ford
It’s about Communist manipultion of civil right in order to take away said rights.
December 20th, 2012 | 4:57 pm
The Inner Circle I feel is one that should be on your list Directed by Andrey Konchalovskiy. With Tom Hulce, Lolita Davidovich, Bob Hoskins, Aleksandr Zbruev. The true story of Ivan Sanchin
January 11th, 2013 | 11:28 am
One of the best:
The Lives of Others (2006)
This are not in the best list but are good.
Tales from the Golden Age 2009
Guantanamera – Cuba – (1995) -
April 24th, 2013 | 4:22 pm
How heartening and discouraging to see so many people here sharing the same interest and the same data, even the Reason article…. I put the movies in a list at IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/list/UG4xS0LZra0/
One that I had that others did not mention was Andrzej Wajda’s 2007 movie Katyn; it was shown on Russian television after the plane went down with the current generation of the Polish intelligentsia on the way to the Katyn memorial ceremony.
April 24th, 2013 | 5:14 pm
That’s wonderful. I watched every one of the movies I could find through our state library system. I am a Mikhalkov fan now; some of the movies were so good that it was inevitable to watch everything by those directors. This post and thread provoked so much interesting viewing.
April 25th, 2013 | 11:30 am
Has anyone seen “The Joke” by Milan Kundera? The plot summary looks good, but one never knows.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065241/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl
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