Birthday of Vasily Shukshin

The day of July 25 is marked in the history of Russian culture with two events: on this day in 1980, Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky died ... And on this day, in 1929, Vasily Makarovich Shukshin was born. Much will be said about Vladimir Vysotsky today, we will hardly be able to add something new. And with all our love and respect for the popularly beloved poet and actor, his work goes beyond the scope of our channel. Therefore, today we want to say a few words about Vasily Shukshin.

At the end of the 70s of the last century I had a chance to talk with one American graduate student. She worked on her thesis on post-war Soviet literature. So, according to her, in the USA there was an opinion that the personification of Soviet literature of the second half of the 20th century are Yuri Trifonov and Vasily Shukshin. That is, about the same as Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky are considered the personification of Russian pre-revolutionary literature in America. It is possible to relate differently to such an assessment of the significance of Trifonov and Shukshin in Soviet literature. But one thing is certain: Shukshin a writer is known and highly valued in the United States. Well, at least by intellectuals. But now we are talking about Shukshin as a filmmaker.

During his short life, and God measured for Vasily Makarovich only 45 years (!), Shukshin shot only 6 full-length films. And how much was still planned! Three of these 6 films, i.e. every second, are included into the FilmGourmand's Golden Thousand. Thanks to these three films, Vasily Makarovich Shukshin is included in the list of the 100 greatest directors of world cinema, compiled by FilmGourmand.

It happened so that the movie "The Red Snowball Tree" became the crown of Vasily Shukshin's creativity as a director. The film was released on the screens of Soviet cinema about six months before Shukshin’s premature death. In the first year after the release of "The Red Snowball Tree" 62.5 million Soviet movie-goers watched it. Or 25% of the total population of the country, including infants. As they say, it's a matter of degrees. In the same year, 1974, the film “The Godfather. Part Two” was released in the USA. That year, in the USA, this film became the film of the year. 29.4 million American moviegoers watched it in the first year after the release. Or 13.5 percent. As they say, feel the difference.

Well, now a few words about the assessment of Vasily Shukshin's masterpiece. Of course, I was interested in the assessment there, "over the hill". The rating of ordinary movie-goers on IMDB practically coincides with the assessment of Russian-language Kinopoisk users, and the assessment of American movie-goers is almost the same as that of users from Russia and the rest of the world. But the assessment of professional film critics ...

We all understand that a positive review of the film helps to promote the film to the market. Many of us realize that a negative review, as it turns out, also contributes to the popularity of the film. Proof of this can serve the recent "success stories" with "Matilda" by Alexei Uchitel, "Death of Stalin" by Armando Ianucci, "Holiday" by Alexei Krasovsky, and so on. In other words, as marketers say, any information contributes to the growth of the popularity of someone or something. Any, except one - obituary. And to the obituary in this case, you can equate a complete lack of information.

So: Roger Ebert has zero references to Vasily Shukshin in general. In the archives of "The New York Times" - zero references to Vasily Shukshin. There are no reviews on the Rotten Tomatoes website. On the site IMDB - only one review of professional film critic, and that - from Yevgeny Nefedov in Russian. Etc., etc. It is clear that more than 60 million Soviet movie goers - for Americans is an empty sound. It is clear that the literary works of Shukshin in America are known only to intellectuals. But two of the three IMDB users rate "The Red Snowball Tree" with 8 or more, and on the Rotten Tomatoes website the audience scores "The Red Snowball Tree" with 90%. (However, based on the small number of assessments of the American users, it can be assumed that they are mostly people from the republics of the former Soviet Union who watched the film while still in the USSR.) But we can also talk about the high international recognition of the film, at least in Europe, since the film received three awards at the Berlin International Film Festival. And despite all this - in the American film critic zero references!

How can we explain this, to put it mildly, "contradiction"? In my opinion, there are two possible reasons. The first option: the leading film critics of the United States simply did not see Shukshin's films. And this confirms the assumption of the presence of the most severe censorship in the United States. The second option: the leading film critics of the United States saw Shukshin’s films, but ... But they received a most severe ban from "higher uncles" on any mention of Russian film masterpieces. And what kind of freedom of speech, then we can talk?

Someone may explain this "contradiction" by purely economic protectionism, the desire of American film distributors to protect their film market from distant and incomprehensible "newcomers." But it seems to me that the reason is much deeper. When people are deprived of the opportunity to get acquainted with such masterpieces as "The Red Snowball Tree", or "Operation" Y "...", or "Marriage" or... many other Russian masterpiece, it is much easier to sniff to this people the bullshit that all Russians are villains, monsters, and so on, as Hollywood likes to do.

Perhaps someone will accuse me of paranoid conspiracy. Well, reassure me, I would only be glad of it.