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The Commissar (Komissar)
Script and Director: Alexander Askoldov
Music: Alfred Schnittke
Cast: Nonna Mordiukova (Klavdia Vavilova [The Commissar]), Rolan
Bykov (Yefim Magazannik), Raisa Nedashkovskaya (Maria Magazannik), Liudmila
Volynskaya (Grandmother), Vassily Shukshin (The Commandant), Lyuba Kats,
Pavlik Levin, Dima Kleiman, Marta Bratkova, Igor Fishman, Sergei Nikonenko,
Otar Kobaridze, Leonid Reutov, Viktor Shakhov.
Gorky Film Studios 1967.
Ruscico (Russian Cinema Council) Collection. 2-DVD set, Region 0, PAL
or NTSC, B&W, aspect ratio: 16:9. 104 minutes (PAL) + disc of bonus
materials.
Sound: Russian (mono), Russian, English and French Dolby 5.1.
Subtitles: Russian, English, French, German, Spanish, Italian.
Bonus materials: Interviews with Askoldov, Mordiukova, Nedashkovskaya
and Bykov. Photo Albums, biography of Grossman, filmographies, press reviews,
documents and letters relating to the ban.
When perestroika exploded, the cinema industry was in the vanguard, sweeping aside its supine leadership and forming a Conflict Commission to review decades of bans. The Commissar was the most notorious case. For his first film, arts administrator and Bulgakov-expert Alexander Askoldov adapted Vasily Grossman's In the Town of Berdichev, in which a pregnant Civil War Red Army officer lives with a Jewish family. Though made (with much intervention) between 1965 and 1967, it was only released 21 years later.
One scene has been highlighted as problematic: the pregnant and delirious commissar's premonition of the Holocaust. Clutching her baby, she follows a procession of Jews (including 'her' family) into a building filled with people in concentration camp uniforms. She turns back. Without that scene, it was said, the film could be released. Askoldov refused.
The authorities' response was emblematic of the Soviet attitude to Jews, hardening with the Six Day War, which coincided with the film's production. The sympathetic, but by no means romanticised Jewish family (changing Grossman's 1934 story) was a provocation, especially the father's comment: "When a new regime comes, it says everything will be all right. Then it says it will be much worse. And then it says we have to find the guilty ones. And who is guilty? I'm asking you - Who is to blame?" His unwitting potted history of the Soviet Union and the resoundingly ironic use of the eternal Russian question 'Who is to blame?' (from the mouth of a Jew!) probably made this another candidate for the cutting-room floor.
Schnittke's electronic effects and near-musique concrète may not have helped either, but for those who really listen, the most controversial musical aspect is his mingling of Christian and Jewish music in his typically polystylistic way. Catholic bells and Jewish fiddle music are layered; Russian and Jewish lullabies interweave; Catholic organ and Jewish chant sit side by side. The two cultures are explicitly equalised, only for equality to be undercut at the very end. To a plangent solo trumpet's Internationale, the commissar abandons her baby to the Jewish family, rejoining her comrades in battle and implied death: two eternally positive Soviet archetypes - the self-sacrificing soldier and the loving Russian mother - are made mutually incompatible. "What kind of people are they?" asks the father. For all the understanding, there is no understanding.
Perhaps discussing anti-Semitism set alarm bells ringing, but the fractured narrative form may have also been problematic. The hallucinogenic dream-memories provide some of the film's most unforgettable moments. Accompanied by bells, the commissar passionately kisses a fellow officer and a nightmare battalion bizarrely scythes the desert sands; the officer dies in Pekinpah-ish slow-motion, his death cry supplied by agonised horns, unleashing a stampede of horses with baying brass, garbled voices and a melange of war sounds. Still, socialist realism was not as backward with regard to such things as is often portrayed: for example, Shchedrin's Second Symphony (1962-65), with its aleatoric sequences, was initially accepted before falling into disfavour.
Unsurprisingly, Askoldov was accused of 'parasitism' and portraying the Revolution as "a blind and unrestrained force, depriving man of hope, ideals, happiness"- a fair assessment of the film. He was expelled from the Party and sacked; The Commissar is commonly described as his only film, although he went on to make two documentaries.
When the ban was upheld by the Conflict Commission, Askoldov held an impromptu press conference and in July 1987 the Party agreed to release it. Mordiukova (who, incidentally, began her career in the Shostakovich-scored The Young Guard, 1948) was refused a Nika (a Russian Oscar), though Bykov, Nedashkovskaya and Schnittke were awarded the prize. Overseas the film was widely hailed, deservedly receiving many prizes.
Askoldov left the USSR for Sweden, where he still lives, apparently planning a new film.
The Commissar is a key film of perestroika, and is handsomely presented on one disc by Ruscico, with a host of extras (outlined above) spilling onto a second.
Particularly valuable are the interviews. In a 39:22 interview post-dating Klimov's death in 2003, Askoldov talks about his life (he was a purge-orphan, and the Jewish family that took him in were killed at Babi Yar), the film's history, how he feels about it today and how he wants people to receive it.
Askoldov talks about Mordiukova's explosiveness, so it's not such a surprise to find her, in an extraordinarily passionate 4:39 excerpt from an unidentified black and white television programme, castigating him for not fighting back and not having made any more films!
Raisa Nedashkovskaya is interviewed twice (3:31 and 12:51). In the first she considers his fate more sympathetically and reminisces about the lullaby scene, though the second veers off into spiritual matters and her view that Askoldov hoped to save the world through the film.
Rolan Bykov discusses Askoldov, the film and some of his favourite scenes as well as his experience of playing Jews in other films (28:29). Some of the interviews are on fairly poor video (Bykov died in 1998) but the sound is fine and the content fascinating.
Ruscico provide their usual selection of sound and subtitle options, through the English translation is poorly spoken by a rather apathetic Russian man.
Perhaps tangential to Shostakovich's career (is there any record of his knowledge or reaction to the fate of Askoldov and his film?), this disc is an excellent presentation of a central and shattering film.
John Riley
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DSCH No. 23.
Copyright © 2005 DSCH Journal.
All Rights Reserved.
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