Anniversary of the "Ivan's Childhood"
On April 6, 1962, the premiere of Andrei Tarkovsky's first full-length film, "Ivan's Childhood", took place in Moscow.
The film is based on the story of Vladimir Bogomolov "Ivan", written in 1957. The novel "Ivan" very quickly became extremely popular, was translated into foreign languages. Due to its popularity, V. Bogomolov's story attracted the attention of the famous playwright Mikhail Papava, who decided to write a script based on it. However, Papava took a fair liberty in handling the material: he changed the ending, turned it into a happy ending, and gave another name to the script - "Second Life". Bogomolov strongly objected to such free treatment of his offspring. But, apparently, thanks to Papava's considerable authority, his script was recommended for production. In the USSR, there was generally a weak idea of copyright.
The production of the film according to the script of M.Papava was entrusted to a young director who graduated from VGIK (All-Union State Institute of Cinematogtaphy) in 1959, Eduard Abalov (Abalyan). It is difficult to say how far Eduard Abalov has progressed in the implementation of the project, but it is known that in November 1960 the work of this director on the film was assessed as unsatisfactory, and in December of the same year the management of the Mosfilm studio issued an order to stop filming and write off the costs incurred. Among the claims made against the unfinished work of E.Abalov, there was also a reproach for departing from the literary source. Apparently, V. Bogomolov's complaints influenced.
Vadim Yusov, who was the cameraman on Andrei Tarkovsky's graduation film "The Steamroller and the Violin", informed Andrei Tarkovsky about the current situation. 29-year-old Tarkovsky, who had just graduated with honors from the VGIK, offered himself as the director of the film based on Bogomolov's novel "Ivan". Exactly on the story of Bogomolov "Ivan", but not the script of Papava "Second Life". Andrei Tarkovsky's teacher at VGIK, Mikhail Romm ("Nine Days of one Year"), warmly supported the candidacy of his student. In June 1961, an order was issued by the Mosfilm film studio to resume work on the film and approve Tarkovsky as the director of this film. Naturally, the first thing Tarkovsky decided to do was to return the script to the original, for which he attracted Bogomolov ("In August of the forty-fourth") himself to create the script, who, of course, was only happy about it. And also his friend and colleague, Andrei Konchalovsky.
However, during the work on the film, there were also considerable friction between Tarkovsky and Bogomolov. Tarkovsky inserted lyrical digressions in the form of Ivan's dreams into the canvas of the picture. This required the replacement of the performer of the role of Ivan. For this role, on the recommendation of Andrei Konchalovsky, Tarkovsky took 14-year-old Kolya Burlyaev. Kolya, who came from an artistic family, by this time already had some cinematic experience: he starred in the main role in Konchalovsky's thesis "The Boy and the Dove", as well as in minor roles in two more films. In addition, he was absolutely suitable for the image conceived by Tarkovsky. Bogomolov did not like all this. He wanted to show the combat exploits of the scouts to a greater extent. The writer even tried to complain to the cinematographic authorities about Tarkovsky's arbitrariness in relation to a literary source. But all these attempts were stopped by the powerful authority of Mikhail Romm.
Tarkovsky managed to carry out the entire filming process in 5 months, ahead of schedule. And thanks to this, 24 thousand rubles were saved from the budget allocated for the production of the picture, even taking into account the expenses incurred by the film crew of E. Abalov. On September 1, 1962, 5 months after the Moscow premiere, Andrei Tarkovsky's debut film "Ivan's Childhood" together with the picture of the venerable film director Sergei Gerasimov "Люди и звери (Men and Beasts)" represented Soviet cinema at the prestigious Venice International Film Festival. The jury of the film festival, chaired by Italian cinematographer Luigi Chiarini, awarded Tarkovsky's film its main prize - the Golden Lion. As well as the film "Cronaca familiare (Family Portrait)" by the Italian film director Valerio Zurlini ("Il deserto dei tartari (The Desert of the Tartars)". And this despite the fact that among the contenders for the main prize there were many very worthy pictures that were considered favorites of the festival, for example, "Mamma Roma" by Pierre Paolo Pasolini or "Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux (My Life to Live)" by Jean-Luc Godard. A little later, in October 1962, the film "Ivan's Childhood" became a participant in the San Francisco International Film Festival, where Andrei Tarkovsky received the award as the Best director.
After such success at international film forums, the cinematographic leadership of the Soviet Union decided in 1963 to nominate the Tarkovsky's picture for the Academy Award in the nomination Best Foreign Language Film. However, the American Film Academy did not consider it possible to include the film "Ivan's Childhood" in the list of nominees for its award. I'm always interested in "what would happen if". So in this case, if "Ivan's Childhood" received an Oscar nomination, then its competitors would be Federico Fellini's "8½", Roman Polanski's "Nóz w wodzie (Knife in the Water)", as well as two films that remained virtually unknown to the Russian-speaking audience: the Spanish "Tarantos" and the Greek "Ta kokkina fanaria (The Red Lanterns)".
Despite the fact that the American Film Academy "rolled" Tarkovsky's film, American, and indeed all Western film critics met "Ivan's Childhood" with universal delight. Even the picky film reviewer of The New York Times, Bosley Crowther, in his review of the film, dispensed with the traditional for him "fly in the ointment", noting:
"A KEENING cry of sadness seems to come from the Russian film, "My Name Is Ivan" (known abroad as "Ivan's Childhood"), which came to the Murray Hill yesterday. It is a cry not so much of sorrow for the agonized 12-year-old lad who is the focal figure in it and the immediate subject of its rising tragedy. It is more a cry of anguish for all youngsters lost in World War II, for the youths whose lives were exhausted in hatred, bloodshed and death. Like "The Ballad of a Soldier" before it, this moving and haunting little film about an orphan boy who serves the army by reconnoitering behind the enemy lines (which, in this case, are in the Pripet Marshes) has an uncommon personal quality, a concentration upon the fate of the individual such as we didn't used to get in Soviet films."
The rental figures of Andrei Tarkovsky's film "Ivan's Childhood" in the USSR were quite average - 16.7 million moviegoers. The figure is significant, but much inferior to the figures of the leaders of the film distribution of that year. Compare: "Человек-амфибия (Amphibian Man)" by Vladimir Chebotarev and Gennady Kazansky - 65.5 million, "Гусарская баллада (Hussar Ballad)" by Eldar Ryazanov - 48.6 million, the above-mentioned "Люди и звери (Men and Beasts)" - 40.3 million. According to Sergey Kudryavtsev, a certain role in this was played by the insufficiently high circulation, which Andrei Tarkovsky's masterpiece was released on the Soviet cinema screen:
""Ivan's Childhood", unlike the story "Ivan", is not so much a narrative about the fate of a boy who was forced to wage his personal war on an equal footing, and sometimes instead of adults, with fascists, taking revenge for the trampled childhood and the abused homeland. Although, perhaps, because of this topic, the picture enjoyed great success in the Soviet film distribution (and, judging by the indicators for one copy, it could well exceed the twenty-million mark of attendance if the circulation was somewhat larger)."
Modern moviegoers all over the world, despite the passage of several decades since the release of the picture on the screens, give it very high marks. 71% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated Andrei Tarkovsky's first feature film from 8 to 10, and 21% of users gave the film the highest rating - 10. Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of Andrei Tarkovsky's first masterpiece in chronological order according to FilmGourmand was 8,627, which allowed it to take 273rd Rank in the Golden Thousand.
