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King Lear
Script & Director: Grigory Kozintsev.
Music: Dmitry Shostakovich.
Cast: Yuri Yarvet, Elsa Radzinya, Galina Volchek, Valentina Shendrikova, Oleg Dal, Karl Sebris, Leonhard Merzin, Regimantas Adomaitis, Donatas Banionis, Alexei Petrenko, Yuozas Budraitis, Vladimir Yemelyanov, Alexander Vocach.
Lenfilm 1970.
Ruscico (Russian Cinema Council) Collection. DVD-Video. 2-disc set TT 71 min + 69 min.
Sound: Russian (mono), Dolby Digital 5.1: Russian, English, French.
Subtitles: Russian, English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Hebrew, Swedish, Chinese, Arabic, Japanese.
Bonus material: D. Shostakovich's Music, The World of King Lear, Interview with G. Volchek, Biography of W. Shakespeare, Filmographies, Photo album, Future releases.

After the post-war split of legendary Soviet directors Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, the work rate of both former collaborators slowed considerably. Kozintsev made just five more films before his death nearly thirty years later in 1973: two bio-pics, Pirogov (1947) and Belinsky (1950, released 1953), and three literary adaptations, Don Quixote (1957), Hamlet (1964) and King Lear (1970). After considering The Tempest Kozintsev began work on Petersburg Tales, a Gogol project that would be cut short by his death. Shostakovich provided (or was intended to provide) music for all these except Don Quixote, which was scored by Kara Karayev.

King Lear, then, was not envisaged by either Kozintsev or Shostakovich as a last statement. Nevertheless, it does express a sentiment of summation, and deals with themes that had always been important to both men, but that with age grew increasingly urgent: duty, civic responsibility, reputation and redemption.

Just as Kozintsev turned to long-term collaborator Shostakovich as composer, so the set designer was Yevgeny Yenei with whom the director had worked since the 1920s. Yenei's elemental designs reinforce the film's unforgiving atmosphere: the interiors all stone and rough-hewn wood, the exteriors grey, damp and clammy or barren and oppressively hot. It is a world without fresh, clean air. FEKS's and Kozintsev's regular cameraman Andrei Moskvin had died in 1961 but he was replaced on Hamlet and Lear by his occasional assistant Jonas Gritsius. Both films are marked by mobile camerawork and unusual angles and lighting effects. We sit beside God as Edmund squints up into a shaft of light and throws a bitter stone at his creator. Among the most exciting scenes here is that of Lear assembling his hundred knights, his horses, dogs and (unwilling to completely divest himself of kingly accoutrements) eagles, as the camera rushes backwards and the rapid cuts move us past the dogs' stalls while we hear The Beginning of the Catastrophe. This is just one of the scenes where images and music reflect or counterpoint each other to great effect: in the storm we are again high in the clouds as Lear and the fool stagger across a barren landscape, thrashed by the wind and rain and Shostakovich's music. Yet none of these effects feels forced, rather they subtly add to the atmosphere.

On the other hand, most of the actors had not worked with Kozintsev before, and the casting of Lear caused particular problems. The choice fell on the Estonian Yuri Yarvet. He was only fifty at the time, and indeed looked even younger a couple of years later when he appeared in Tarkovsky's Solaris with his Lithuanian Lear co-star Donatas Banionis. Shot on the Estonian coast, Lear has several other Baltic contributors, including Regimantas Adomaitis (Edmund), Karl Sebris (Gloucester) and Yumas Budraitis (the King of France).

Kozintsev's lifetime contributions often illustrate how he inspired those who worked with him. Yarvet's career had been almost exclusively in his native Estonia and he even had to improve his Russian to gain the part, which he willingly did, though some lines still defeated him and for these he was filmed with his back to the camera to avoid lip-synch problems.

Meanwhile, despite his increasingly debilitating illnesses, Shostakovich found the prospect of working on another Shakespeare project with Kozintsev irresistible, and committed himself to it far more deeply than on certain of his other films. He intended to visit the set regularly, and although illness prevented his travelling, he was able to make it to the recording sessions, making a few last minute alterations that now throw up a few discrepancies between the published score and what we hear in the film. Despite (or perhaps because of) his separation from the production, he wrote about twice as much music as made it into the film; a complete recording of the 70 or so numbers could prove illuminating. Echoing Yenei's designs, it is one of his most granitic scores; curt and trenchant, it seems not to care if we warm to it, concentrating instead on stating said the vital. Ironically, this apparent indifference is often more fascinating and attractive than something that appears too eager to please. In this respect, the most overtly emotional movement is, unsurprisingly, the choral lament with its pre-echo of the Thirteenth String Quartet. Though Shostakovich did not intend Lear to be his last film score, it is a brilliant sign off to an often troubled cinema career.

Outside the home country, Russian and Soviet films have not always been easy to obtain on video or DVD. Apart from films by Eisenstein and Tarkovsky (often in differing transfers from more than one company) less famous works have often proved elusive, usually being tied to successful cinema releases rather than launching untested films on the audience, implicitly denying access to older films. Fortunately Ruscico – the Russian Cinema Council – has started an extensive programme of releases of both obscure and well-known titles: fairy tales such as Barbara the Fair with the Silken Hair sit alongside a blockbuster edition of War and Peace. Still, it is surprising that such a well-known film as King Lear, though it has been available on video, has had to wait so long for a DVD release.

At 137 minutes Lear would easily have fitted on a single disc but it is split over two of about equal length. Though it is slightly annoying to have to change discs halfway through (a flashback to LPs!), at least it does reflect Kozintsev's two-part structure. The discs are well chaptered with sixteen on the first disc and fifteen on the second, and the interactive menus are in Russian, English and French.

For the film itself there are four sound options: the most preferable being the original mono track. However those who prefer more modern sound can choose Dolby 5.1. To create this surround-sound version, Ruscico's sound editors supplemented the restored mono soundtrack with various other sounds, such clanking armour and burning torches. Hollywood sound libraries were used for some of these ambient noises; the sound editors improvised others themselves. Alongside this are dubbed English and French versions though they use a slightly disinterested lone male voice for all the parts with the Russian audible beneath. Sadly the English occasionally goes astray from what is actually being said. As well as being able to watch the film dubbed, viewers can choose from subtitles in thirteen languages (where known, the translator is in brackets): Russian, English, French (Hélène Karkovski), German (Gerald Böhm), Dutch, Spanish (Pablo Enrique López Rodríguez), Italian (Eleonora Volpe), Portuguese (Alexandre Bazine), Japanese, Hebrew, Chinese, Arabic and Swedish (Carl August Hagberg). None translate the complete credits. I'm not equipped to comment on most of these options, but for the English I do question the use of Shakespeare's original text. Kozintsev employed Pasternak's translation, which used more modern language while maintaining much of the imagery: returning to Shakespeare, while familiar to English-speaking audiences, removes any discontinuity that Soviet audiences may have felt between the historical visuals and the modern language. A preface might have been helpful to explain the decision to viewers.

Divided between the two discs are approximately 45 minutes of moving image extras and some text of varying degrees of interest. There are trailers for six Ruscico DVDs though all have faults including being in the wrong aspect ratio. With this caveat Ashik Kerib (2:06) and Andrei Rublev (3:42) are the best presented. War and Peace (4:34) and A Cruel Romance (2:36) add English commentaries. Anna Karenina (3:03), scored by Shchedrin and featuring his wife Maya Plisetskaya has a Russian commentary but French onscreen titles with English subtitles. For Agony (2:50) we are subjected to a trailer with an English track and almost illegible Spanish subtitles, though we still hear some of Schnittke's masterful score. While these trailers are welcome, it is strange that Ruscico could not locate better materials and transfer them in the correct ratio as they did with the films.

There is a brief text biography of Shakespeare, with Soviet film adaptations of some of the plays noted (though Arnshtam's Romeo and Juliet is from Prokofiev's ballet). There are also text biographies of major cast and crew, again with omissions and occasional slips: Shostakovich did not score Messengers [or Envoys] of Eternity. Each disc has a brief slide show Photo Album; the first is a selection of rehearsal photographs and posters for the film (the quality of some of them betraying their origin in books), the second being stills from the film. The World of King Lear (1:42) is a slideshow of stills from various (mainly Russian) stage productions and paintings based on the work. Mikhoels features, as does a photograph of Shostakovich, Kozintsev and some cast members from the 1941 stage production. Backed by the Romance from The Gadfly, D. Shostakovich's Music (3:01) is a collection of photographs (mostly well-known to devotees) with a Russian commentary and English subtitles uncontroversially outlining his life. Unfortunately the photographs are not captioned and text and image rarely coincide: mention of Dunayevsky brings a photograph of Mravinsky, while Ermler and Tsekhanovsky are not identified. Chronologically the photographs race ahead of the text and we read about Aphorisms as we see a photograph of the premiere of From Jewish Folk Poetry. Finally, his birth-date is slightly confusingly given in Old Style (12 September 1906).

The highlight of the extras is an undated but obviously recently filmed interview with Galina Volchek, who played Regan (19:17), which reveals her immense admiration for Kozintsev. After describing her childhood meeting with him – her father was a cameraman who, along with Kozintsev and many other cinema workers was evacuated to Alma-Ata during the war – she explains how she came to be cast in Don Quixote, the less-than-satisfying career that followed and her role in King Lear. Typecast as a secondary character actress, some, including Volchek herself, doubted Kozintsev's choice. Questions were even raised about the appropriateness of her nose! Kozintsev quelled these doubts, even going as far as screen-testing another actress before calmly returning to his original decision from which, one feels, he had never wavered. She also explains the predatory significance of her costume and tells how the scene where she kisses her dead husband Cornwall was originally shot in a much more sensual way even though everyone knew that censorship would mean it couldn't be used. It would have been good to see some alternate scenes (the storm was another one that was shot twice) but perhaps they no longer exist.

The transfer of both the visuals and the soundtrack is good (there are many good prints of the films, which must have made the job a little easier). The disc is available in both PAL and NTSC versions. The PAL version is visually superior, with a sharper picture and better contrast, while the NTSC suffers from ghosting on rapid movement. However, there is a minor problem that – like all PAL material – it runs at 25 frames per second, 4% faster than the original film. However, no one – even those with perfect pitch - is likely to notice and if you have the choice, as with all Ruscico material, get the PAL version for its better quality.

Obviously this is a mandatory purchase for all Shostakovichians and the good news is that Ruscico is due to release Hamlet on January 24th in PAL and February 4th in NTSC. It might be too much to hope that all Shostakovich-scored films might appear in DVD but several have been released on videotape and would warrant an upgrade to the newer medium.

John Riley
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DSCH No. 22.
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