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Alexander Dovzhenko
Soviet-Ukrainian filmmaker (1894–1956) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Alexander Petrovich Dovzhenko, also Oleksandr Petrovych Dovzhenko[1] (Russian: Александр Петрович Довженко, Ukrainian: Олександр Петрович Довженко; September 10 [O.S. August 29] 1894 – November 25, 1956), was a Soviet film director and screenwriter of Ukrainian[2] origin.[3][4] He is often cited as one of the most important early Soviet filmmakers, alongside Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, and Vsevolod Pudovkin, as well as being a pioneer of Soviet montage theory.
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Biography
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Early life
Oleksandr Dovzhenko was born in the hamlet of Viunyshche located in the Sosnitsky Uyezd of the Chernihiv Governorate of the Russian Empire (now part of Sosnytsia in Chernihiv Oblast, Ukraine), to Petro Semenovych Dovzhenko and Odarka Yermolayivna Dovzhenko. His paternal ancestors were Chumaks who settled in Sosnytsia in the eighteenth century, coming from the neighbouring province of Poltava. Oleksandr was the seventh of fourteen children born to the couple, but due to the deaths of his siblings he was the oldest child by the time he turned eleven. Ultimately, only Oleksandr and his sister Polina, who later becomes a doctor, survived to adulthood.
Although his parents were uneducated, Dovzhenko's semi-literate grandfather encouraged him to study, leading him to become a teacher at the age of 19. He avoided military service during World War I because of a heart condition, but during the Civil War he may have served for some time in the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic.[5] In November 1918 Dovzhenko, then a student of the Kyiv Commercial Institute, took part in a demonstration against the mobilization of students by the hetman's regime, which was dispersed by government troops, leading to the deaths of several protesters. After the victory of the Anti-hetman revolt, on 19 December 1918, Dovzhenko delivered a speech as a representative of Ukrainian workers during the entry of Directorate troops led by Symon Petliura into Kyiv.[6] In 1919 in Zhytomyr he was taken prisoner and sent to prison on suspicion of spying for the UPR army. At the end of 1919, he was released at the request of Vasyl Ellan-Blakytny. After his release, for some time he taught history and geography at the officers' school of the Red Army. In 1920 Dovzhenko joined the Borotbist party. He served as an assistant to the Ambassador in Warsaw as well as Berlin. Upon his return to USSR in 1923, he began illustrating books and drawing cartoons in Kharkiv. At that time, Dovzhenko was also a member of VAPLITE.
Dovzhenko turned to film in 1926 when he landed in Odessa. His ambitious drive led to the production of his second-ever screenplay, Vasya the Reformer (which he also co-directed). He gained greater success with Zvenigora in 1928, the story of a young adventurer who becomes a bandit and counter-revolutionary and comes to a bad end, while his virtuous brother spends the film fighting for the revolution, which established him as a major filmmaker of his era.[7]
Ukraine Trilogy
Dovzhenko's following "Ukraine Trilogy" (Zvenigora, Arsenal, and Earth), are his most well-known works in the West. The trilogy was produced by the All-Ukrainian Photo-Cinema Administration during the New Economic Policy(NEP) and the 'korenizatsiya'. These provided an interesting environment for the revival of Ukrainian culture in the Soviet Union.
Zvenigora (Zvenyhora)
The first film of the trilogy presents a historical panorama of Ukrainian history, showing a carnival-like sequence of various peoples and cultures inhabiting the country, from Scythian tribes to opryshky and the author's contemporaries, and putting in question the very concepts of time and space. At the same time, the film promotes typical Socialist realist topics of victory over the nature and defeat of the individuality by collectivism.[8]
Arsenal
Dovzhenko was said to have taken part in the suppression of the Kyiv Arsenal Uprising in 1918 as a supporter of the Ukrainian People's Republic. Ten years later, in 1928, his eponymous movie showed a perspective on the event from the opposite side of the barricades, creating what is widely seen as a propaganda film.[8] Arsenal was poorly received by the communist authorities in Ukraine, who began harassing Dovzhenko - but, fortunately for him, Stalin watched the film and liked it.[9]
Earth
Dovzhenko's Earth has been praised as one of the greatest silent movies ever made. The British film director Karel Reisz was asked in 2002 by the British Film Institute to rank the greatest films ever made, and he put Earth second. The film portrayed collectivization in a positive light. Its plot revolved around a landowner's attempt to ruin a successful collective farm as it took delivery of its first tractor, though it opened with a long close-up of an elderly, dying man taking intense pleasure in the taste of an apple - a scene with no obvious political message, but with some aspect of autobiography. The film was panned by the Soviet authorities. The poet, Demyan Bedny, attacked the film's "defeatism" over three columns of the newspaper Izvestia, and Dovzhenko was forced to re-edit it.[10]
The filming of the movie took only 9 months, with its premiere taking place on 8 April 1930, soon after Stalin's "Dizzy with Success" speech. However, only nine days later Soviet authorities ordered Earth to be removed from cinema schedules. Nevertheless, during the summer of the same year Dovzhenko embarked on a tour around Europe, demonstrating the film as part of a campaign advertising Soviet achievements abroad. Inside of the Soviet Union critics panned Earth for allegedly taking a pro-kulak position and lacking ideological clarity, and condemned its "biologism". One of the few positive evaluations of Dovzhenko's film was presented by Ukrainian author Mykola Bazhan.[11]
Appeal to Stalin
Dovzhenko's next film, Ivan, portrayed a Dneprostroi construction worker and his reactions to industrialization, and was summarily denounced for promoting fascism and pantheism. Fearing arrest, Dovzhenko personally appealed to Stalin. One day later, he was invited to the Kremlin, where he read the script of his next project, Aerograd, about the defence of a newly constructed city from Japanese infiltrators, to an audience of four of the most powerful men in the country - Stalin, Molotov, Kirov and Voroshilov. Stalin approved the project but 'suggested' that Dovzhenko's next project, after Aerograd, should be dramatized biography of the Ukrainian-born communist guerrilla fighter, Mykola Shchors.
In January 1935, the Soviet film industry celebrated its fifteenth anniversary with a major festival, during which the country's most renowned director Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein, who was in trouble with the authorities, and had not been allowed to complete a film for several years, gave a rambling speech that jumped from one esoteric topic to another. Dovzhenko joined in the criticism, raising a laugh pleading: "Sergei Mikhailovich, if you do not produce a film at least within a year, then please do not produce one at all... All this talk about Polynesian females, I will gladly exchange all your unfinished scenarios for one of your films." At the end of the conference, Stalin presented Dovzhenko with the Order of Lenin.[12]
Later, Dovzhenko was summoned to the Kremlin again, and told by Stalin that he was a "free man", who was not under "any obligation" to make the film about Shchors. He took the hint, and paused work on Aerograd to follow Stalin's 'suggestion', and sent the dictator a draft of the screenplay for Schors. He was then summoned in front of the boss of the Soviet film industry Boris Shumyatsky to be told that the script contained serious political errors.[13] His request for another meeting with Stalin was ignored, so he wrote to the dictator on 26 November 1936, pleading: "This is my life, and if I am doing it wrong, then it is due to a shortage of talent or development, not malice. I bear your refusal to see me as a great sorrow."[14] Stalin's response was a brief note to Shumyatsky, in December, listing five things that were wrong with the script, including that "Shchors came out too crude and uncouth."[15]
Work for Soviet propaganda: Shchors and Liberation
Dovzhenko completed Aerograd in 1935. Before its release in November, Dovzhenko had begun work on Shchors. According to Jay Leyda, who was employed in the Soviet cinema industry at the time:
Shchors taught him the new difficulties of executing a suggestion from Stalin. In the three years before its release, Dovchenko had to submit every decision and every episode to a seemingly endless series of people 'who knew what Stalin wanted'. There were nightmare interviews, some bitter, with the Leader himself, who was beginning to show signs of megalomania and infallibility...Dovzhenko later told friends about one frightening arrival in Stalin's office, when he refused to speak to him, and Beria accused him of joining a nationalist conspiracy.[16]
Several of Dovzhenko's colleagues were shot or sent to labour camps during the Great Purge, in 1937–38, including his favourite cameraman, Danylo Demutsky, who worked with him on Earth.[17] But when, at last, he had completed Shchors, which was released in January 1939, he was paid a huge fee - 100,000 rubles[18] - and awarded the Stalin Prize (1941).
In late October 1939, soon after the Soviet occupation of Western Ukraine, Dovzhenko arrived to Galicia , where he worked as an operator and "political worker", creating a documentary on the "liberation" of the region by the Red Army. After filming in Lviv and the Carpathians, Dovzhenko accompanied the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine Nikita Khrushchev, who had ordered him to create the movie, on a visit to Przemysl together with Semen Timoshenko, commander of the Ukrainian Front. Later Dovzhenko took part in the People's Congress of Western Ukraine, which legitimized the Soviet annexation of the territory, delivering a speech with an appraisal of Stalin. Part of the material filmed at the congress was also included into the documentary film, which premiered in summer 1940 under the title Liberation.[19]
WWII
When the Soviet Union was invaded by Germany in June, 1941, the Kiev Studio was evacuated to the Urals and then to Ashgabat in Central Asia. Dovzhenko's elderly father was beaten to death during the German occupation. With the Soviet film industry in disarray, Dovzhenko was sent to the front as a war correspondent, writing articles and leaflets to be dropped by planes in the occupied Ukrainian territory. Witnessing the horrors of the Nazi invasion, Dovzhenko resolved himself to pay tribute through art to the suffering and strength of his fellow Ukrainians.[20] He wrote to his wife, Julia:
I have made a firm decision. [...] I will write about the sufferings, heroism, and tragedy of my nation. I have thought and planned much, and I shall undoubtedly be able to accomplish something before I die.[20]
Due to the chaos of the war, Dovzhenko spent more time writing than directing, including penning a few dozen short stories largely about Ukraine's wartime suffering. The writings of the period include a new genre of ‘film novels’ such as Ukraïna v ohni (Ukraine in Flames, 1943).[21]
Ukraine in Flames was denounced for its alleged 'veiled nationalistic moods'. There are two versions of who was behind the denunciation. Nikita Khrushchev, who was head of the Ukrainian Communist party at the time, paid tribute to Dovzhenko in his memoirs as a "brilliant director", and described the denunciation of Ukraine in Flames as a "disgraceful affair" initiated by the head of the political administration of the Red Army, Aleksandr Shcherbakov, who "was obviously trying hard to fan Stalin's anger by harping on the charge that the film scenario was extremely nationalistic."[22] Dovzhenko had read the scenario aloud to Khrushchev, but he claimed not to have paid much attention to it because he was focused on the war.
But a police report sent at the time by the head of the NKVD Vsevolod Merkulov to the party secretary in charge of culture, Andrei Zhdanov, said that Dovzhenko greatly resented the behaviour of Khrushchev, and leaders of the Ukrainian Writers' Union, who had praised the scenario on first reading, but then denounced on orders from above. Dovzhenko was quoted as saying "I don't hold anything against Stalin. I hold something against .. people who throw malicious slogans at me after all their admiration of the screenplay - these people cannot guide the war and the people. This is trash."[23]
Although most of his time was spent writing, Dovzhenko requested to work as a documentary filmmaker for the Central Newsreel Studio, resulting in two documentary films.[20] During the war, Dovzhenko also wrote Povist’ polum’ianykh lit (Chronicle of Flaming Years, 1945), which was later adapted into an award-winning 1961 film directed by Yuliya Solntseva.[21] Earlier, Solntseva adapted another Dovzhenko work: Poem of the Sea.
Later life
After being hauled in front of the Central Committee, Dovzhenko was excluded from various official organisations, cut himself off from fellow artists, wrote novels, and applied himself to writing a screenplay about the biologist, Michurin. The film Michurin earned him another Stalin prize, in 1949, although it was revised so many times, in order to get political approval, that according to one historian, "a large part of the final version was made without him."[24]
Khrushchev claimed that with his rise to power after the death of Stalin and the execution of the police chief Lavrentiy Beria, the persecution of Dovzhenko ended, and he was able to "live a useful active life" again.[25] He embarked on two projects: a film adaption of the novella Taras Bulba by Gogol; and Poem About a Sea, dedicated to the construction of Kakhovka Reservoir on the Dnieper.[26] Neither of the works had been finished before Dovzhenko died of a heart attack on November 25, 1956, in his dacha in Peredelkino - though the latter was completed by his widow Yulia Solntseva.[27] Over a 20-year career, Dovzhenko personally directed only seven films.
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Legacy
Olexandr Dovzhenko (NBU coin), 2004 issue
Dovzhenko was a mentor to the young Soviet Ukrainian filmmakers Larisa Shepitko and Sergei Parajanov.
The Dovzhenko Film Studios in Kyiv were named in his honour following the director's death.
In 2016, after the Ukrainian government had announced a programme of 'decommunisation' of place names, Karl Liebknecht Street in Melitopol was renamed Oleksandr Dovzhenko Street. On 30 January 2023, after Melitopol had been occupied by the Russian army during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Melitopol's Russian-installed Mayor, Galina Danilchenko announced that the street would be given back its previous name.[28]
Dovzhenko Centre
Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre in Kyiv is Ukraine's largest film archive, which was launched in 1994 on the base of a film printing factory. Since 2015 an art cluster has been functioning as part of the centre, making it a popular platform for modern art.[29]
Film award
A film award called the Oleksandr Dovzhenko State Prize was named after him for his great contributions in the film sphere.[30]
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Filmography
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- Love's Berries (Russian: Ягoдки Любви, romanized: Yagodki lyubvi, Ukrainian: Ягідки кохання, romanized: Yahidky kokhannya), 1926
- Vasya the Reformer (Russian: Вася – реформатор, romanized: Vasya – reformator, Ukrainian: Вася – реформатор, romanized: Vasya – reformator), 1926
- The Diplomatic Pouch (Russian: Сумка дипкурьера, romanized: Sumka dipkuryera, Ukrainian: Сумка дипкур'єра, romanized: Sumka dypkuryera), 1927
- Zvenigora (Russian: Звенигора, romanized: Zvenigora, Ukrainian: Звенигора, romanized: Zvenyhora), 1928
- Arsenal (Russian: Арсенал, Ukrainian: Арсенал), 1929
- Earth (Russian: Зeмля, romanized: Zemlya, Ukrainian: Зeмля, romanized: Zemlia), 1930
- Ivan (Russian: Иван, Ukrainian: Iвaн), 1932
- Aerograd (Russian: Аэроград, Ukrainian: Аероград, romanized: Aerohrad), 1935
- Bukovina: a Ukrainian Land (Russian: Буковина, земля Украинская, romanized: Bukovina, zemlya Ukrainskaya, Ukrainian: Буковина, зeмля Українськa, romanized: Bukovyna, zemlia Ukrayinska), 1939
- Shchors* (Russian: Щорс, Ukrainian: Щорс), 1939
- Liberation (Russian: Освобождение, Ukrainian: Визволення, 1940
- Battle for Soviet Ukraine* (Russian: Битва за нашу Советскую Украину, romanized: Bitva za nashu Sovetskuyu Ukrainu, Ukrainian: Битва за нашу Радянську Україну, romanized: Bytva za nashu Radiansku Ukrayinu), 1943
- Soviet Earth (Russian: Cтpaнa poднaя, romanized: Strana rodnaya, Ukrainian: Країна pідна, romanized: Krayina ridna), 1945
- Victory in the Ukraine and the Expulsion of the Germans from the Boundaries of the Ukrainian Soviet Earth (Russian: Победа на Правобережной Украине и изгнание немецких захватчиков за пределы украинских советских земель, romanized: Pobeda na Pravoberezhnoi Ukraine i izgnaniye nemetsikh zakhvatchikov za predeli Ukrainskikh sovietskikh zemel, Ukrainian: Перемога на Правобережній Україні, romanized: Peremoha na Pravoberezhniy Ukrayini), 1945
- Michurin (Russian: Мичурин, Ukrainian: Мічурін), 1948
- Farewell, America (Russian: Прощай, Америкa, romanized: Proshchay, Amerika, Ukrainian: Прощавай, Америко, romanized: Proshchavay, Ameryko), 1949
- Poem of the Sea* (Russian: Поэма о море, romanized: Poema o more, Ukrainian: Поема про море, romanized: Poema pro more), 1959
*codirected by Yuliya Solntseva
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