Foundling's Birthday
On January 27, 1940, Tatyana Lukashevich’s film “The Foundling” was released on the screens of Soviet cinemas.
The film became one of the leaders of the Soviet film distribution, collecting more than 16 million moviegoers in cinemas (the seventh result among Soviet films released in 1940).
For a foreign film viewer, the film remained almost unknown, which is understandable: WWII. Accordingly, no festivals and film awards.
A huge number of articles and other materials were published about this film, then, in 1940, and in the following decades. These publications can easily be found on the Internet. Naturally, we are not going to retell these publications. We just want to pay attention to the change in the evaluations of the film made "then" and "today."
Two days before the premiere and immediately after it, the most central mass media of the USSR — the newspapers Pravda, Izvestia, Literaturnaya Gazeta — published reviews of the film, which generally appreciated the film very favorably, but also contained some criticisms. Curiously, the most critical arrows were fired at Rina Zelyonaya, supposedly "a silly housekeeper falling out of the general outline of the film." And, meanwhile, the image created by this great actress subsequently became one of the favorite among Soviet viewers. And her remark about the loss of the “piano”, in general, has become one of the most cited among the people.
The most complaints were raised by both pre-war critics and Russian critics, the images of teenagers and the work of the director with young actors. According to some critics, the film allegedly reproduces “a model of the relations of party political workers with their attributes, handshakes and protocols.” However, it is likely that such an impression of the game and the images created by the young actors is formed as a result of the most striking and absolutely direct playing of the leading woman - five-year-old Veronika Lebedeva. Her image is that, then, in 1940, which today, is perceived absolutely "with a bang."
Similarly, “with a bang”, the images created by the great Faina Ranevskaya and Rostislav Plyatt were perceived and are perceived now.
In general, the film was then described by critics as "full of exceptional charm".
And today, along with benevolent reviews, such as that of respectful Sergei Kudryavtsev, you can find reviews of critics who see the film primarily and only as propaganda and varnishing reality. For example, Vsevolod Korshunov and Aleksandra Selivanova write: "In this film, the future theory of conflict-freeness is already ripening in practice, which will become the main tool for varnishing reality a decade later. A lulling reflection lullaby for an infantile audience of a totalitarian society."
But for FilmGourmand the most important criterion for the quality of a film is the evaluation of the film production by those for whom it was created - the audience. 71% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave this film a rating of 8 or higher.
Taking into account the audience’s assessment, the rating of “The Foundling” according to FilmGourmand is 8,070, and this allowed this film to take 625th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
