Bezhin Meadow
Encyclopedia
Bezhin Meadow is a 1937 Soviet
film famous for having been suppressed and believed destroyed before its completion. Directed by Sergei Eisenstein
, it tells the story of a young farm boy whose father attempts to betray the government for political reasons by sabotaging the year's harvest and the son's efforts to stop his own father to protect the Soviet state, culminating in the boy's murder and a social uprising. The film draws its title from a story by Ivan Turgenev
, but is based on the life of Pavlik Morozov
, a young Russian boy who became a political martyr
following his death in 1932, after he denounced his father to Soviet government authorities and subsequently died at the hands of his family. Pavlik Morozov was immortalized in school programs, poetry, music, and in film.
Commissioned by a Communist youth group, the film's production ran from 1935 to 1937, until it was halted by the central Soviet government, which said it contained artistic, social, and political failures. Some, however, blamed the failure of Bezhin Meadow on government interference and policies, extending all the way to Joseph Stalin
himself. In the wake of the film's failure, Eisenstein publicly recanted his work as an error. Individuals were arrested during and after the ensuing debacle.
Bezhin Meadow was long thought lost in the wake of World War II bombings. In the 1960s, however, cuttings and partial prints of the film were found; from these, a reconstruction of Bezhin Meadow, based on the original script, was undertaken. Rich in religious symbolism
, the film and its history became the focus of academic study. The film was extensively discussed both inside and outside of the film industry
for its historical nature, the odd circumstances of its production and failure, and its imagery, which is considered some of the greatest in cinema. In spite of the failure of Bezhin Meadow, Eisenstein would rebound to win Soviet acclaim and awards, and become artistic director of a major film studio.
The most sourced and best-known version focuses on Stepok, a young boy in a collective farming
village, who is a member of the local Young Pioneers Communist organization, as are other local children. His father Samokhin, a farmer, plans to sabotage the village harvest for political reasons by burning down the titular meadow, but Stepok organizes the other Young Pioneer children to guard the crops. Samokhin grows progressively more frustrated by his son's actions and success. Eventually, Stepok reports Samokhin's crimes to the Soviet government authorities, and is in turn slain by his own father for betraying his family. The other Young Pioneers break into the local church, singing songs, and desecrate
it in response to Stepok's death. The visuals of the film shift during the destruction of the church, with the villagers becoming that which they are destroying—the angry villagers, by the end of the set piece, are depicted as Christ-like, angelic, and prophetic figures.
A later re-editing of the film opens with images of orchards and blue sky, showing a stone obelisk
with Turgenev's name on it. It is next revealed that Stepok's mother has been beaten to death by his father. In a dark hut, Samokhin complains that his son has a greater loyalty to the Soviet than his own family, as Stepok enters from the bright day outside. His father quotes from the Bible
: "If the son betrays his father, kill him like a dog!" Samokhin is arrested for arson, and Stepok leaves with a Communist functionary. The other arsonists take refuge in the local church, and are soon arrested. The arsonists are nearly lynched, but are saved from the villagers' wrath by Stepok. The villagers transform the church into a clubhouse, symbolically ridiculing religion or the clergy.
In some versions, the destruction of the church was replaced with a scene of villagers fighting the arsonist's fire. In the film, the fire was started when the arsonists threw dried sunflowers and lit matches into the community's fuel storage area. In some cuts, Stepok overhears his father's planning and sneaks out in the night to inform on him; in others, the local Communist Party functionary breastfeeds Stepok's young sister; in still others, Stepok's father says after shooting his son, "They took you from me, but I did not give you to them. I did not give my own flesh and blood." After Stepok's death, the same aforementioned Communist official carries him off, joined by other children, in a funeral march that was said to evolve into a victory march.
The film, as mentioned by Shumyatsky and Eisenstein, is rich in religious iconography
and the symbolic struggle between good and evil. Additionally, Birgit Beumers writes, "The peasants here are grey-bearded prophets; the young men are broad-shouldered Renaissance
apostles; the fleshy girls are earthly Madonnas
; the peasant wrecking the iconostasis
is a biblical Samson
; the chubby young boy in the shirt, raised high under the cupola towards the slanting sun-ray which turns his locks golden, is the young Jesus Christ ascending to the Heavenly Throne." Bezhin Meadow, in its various unreleased versions, was "Dedicated to the bright memory of Pavlik Morozov, a small hero of our time" (cf. A Hero of Our Time
).
The film was based in part on a story by Ivan Turgenev
, a 19th-century Russian scholar and novelist, but was adapted to incorporate the folk story of Pavlik Morozov
, a supposed Young Pioneer
glorified by Soviet Union propaganda
as a martyr. Turgenev's original short fiction titled "Bezhin Meadow" or "Bezhin Lea" was a story about peasant
boys in the 1850s, in the Oryol
region, discussing supernatural
signs of death, while they spend the night in the Bezhin Meadow with a lost hunter. Eisenstein would later remove any direct references to Turgenev's fiction, aside from the title, from the film. It is a part of A Sportsman's Sketches
, a collection of short stories.
Morozov's life and death in the village of Gerasimovka
in the Ural Mountains
, has no connection with Turgenev's literary work. Morozov was a 13-year old boy who denounced his father, a kulak
, to the Soviet government authorities, and was in turn killed by his family. It was a Soviet morality tale: opposing the state was selfish and reactionary, and the state was more important than family. The most popular account of the Morozov story is as follows: born to poor peasants in Gerasimovka, a small village 350 kilometres (217.5 mi) north-east of Sverdlovsk
, Morozov was a dedicated communist
who led the Young Pioneers at his school, and supported Stalin's collectivization of farms
. In 1932, at age 13, Morozov reported his father to the political police (GPU
). Morozov's father, the Chairman of the Village Soviet or Selsoviet
, was alleged to have been "forging documents and selling them to the bandits and enemies of the Soviet State" (as his sentence read). The elder Morozov, Trofim, was sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp
, and later executed. However, Pavlik's family did not approve of the young boy's actions. On September 3 of that year, his uncle, grandfather, grandmother and a cousin murdered him, along with his younger brother. All of them except the uncle were rounded up by the GPU, convicted, and sentenced to "the highest measure of social defense", execution by a firing squad.
The Morozov story was developed into compulsory children's readings, songs, plays, a symphonic poem
, a full-length opera and six biographies. There is very little original evidence related to the story; much of it is hearsay
provided by second-hand witnesses. In Bezhin Meadow, the child is named Stepok, departing from the original historical lore and information. Among the ironies of Bezhin Meadows history were that Pavlik Morozov may not have even been a member of the Young Pioneers. Morozov had been called a "disturbed young boy" who was unaware of the consequences of what he was doing and turned his father in to the authorities for having abandoned his mother for a younger woman, rather than for political reasons.
Before production of the film began, the script by Aleksandr Rzheshevsky was well received by Eisenstein, but there were initial concerns about the quality of the plot and characterization involved. The commission for the production was issued by the Communist Youth League, or Komsomol
, to honor their efforts in supporting collective farm work, and was to focus on "the socialist reconstruction of the countryside". Filming began in the middle of 1935, and in October 1935 the first developed film was presented to the Mosfilm Studio
, which was producing Bezhin Meadow. The studio requested changes, and production continued. In August 1936, with most of the principal filming done, Boris Shumyatsky
, the then-head of the Soviet GUK (Principal Directorate for the Cinema) ordered a halt in production and directed that the film be re-written. The script was again revised, with Eisenstein acknowledging errors in his production after a further version was rejected by the studio. During the creation of Bezhin Meadow, Eisenstein did not widely screen footage of the film for review.
Production on the unreleased film cost 2 million rubles, and spanned two years. When casting the production, Eisenstein had preferred to not use professional actors, instead using people who represented "types" to play a given role. Two thousand young boys were auditioned during the search for the ideal young actor to play the part of Stepok, the renamed Morozov character. Filming took place in many locations, primarily in Moscow studios, and remote locations in the Ukraine
and the Caucasus
. During production, Eisenstein had the foresight to save the edited-out frames from every shot in the film, which allowed for the later reconstruction of Bezhin Meadows in the 1960s, even though the original prints were destroyed.
The Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party required that it screen and approve Bezhin Meadow before its release. Multiple versions of the film were banned by the Committee, which cited them as "inartistic and politically bankrupt", and claimed that Eisenstein "confused the class struggle
with the struggle between good and evil". By an order from the Chief Directorate of Soviet Cinema, production of the film was stopped permanently on March 17, 1937. Shumyatsky complained that Eisenstein had presented the conflicts of the film in somewhat Biblical terms
, rather than placing the conflicts of the film in the context of the socialist class struggle. Eisenstein himself would later say that the murder of Stepok by his father was "reminiscent of Abraham
's sacrifice of Isaac
".
After the film's final rejection, Shumyatsky took responsibility for the failure in the Soviet media, with an essay detailing the film's history in Pravda
. According to Shumyatsky, Bezhin Meadow was a slander against the Soviet countryside, and an example of Formalism
that needed to be eliminated. Shumyatsky went on to say, "[Eisenstein was] making Bezhin Meadow only because it offered him an opportunity to indulge in formalistic exercises. Instead of creating a strong, clear, direct work, Eisenstein detached his work from reality, from the colors and heroism of reality. He consciously reduced the work's ideological content." Shumyatsky would lose his government position two years later, when he was charged with being an English spy, arrested, and shot. One of the reasons Shumyatsky gave for shutting down production of Bezhin Meadow was that Eisenstein was wasting money and resources in producing it; conversely, before his execution, Shumyatsky himself was charged with wasting money and resources by cancelling films such as Bezhin Meadow. The suppression of Bezhin Meadow was also said to be part of an ongoing campaign against the artistic avant-garde
in Joseph Stalin's Russia.
Following the order to stop production of the film from the Soviet government and Shumyatsky, Eisenstein contracted smallpox
, followed afterwards by influenza
, and the film was destined to remain unfinished. He worked further on the story with the Soviet author Isaac Babel
, but no material was ever published or released from their collaboration, and the production of Bezhin Meadow came to an end. The unfinished and unreleased film reels were destroyed during a World War II bombing raid in 1941. In a later published response to Shumyatsky titled "The Mistakes of Bezhin Meadow", Eisenstein pledged he would "rid myself of the last anarchistic traits of individualism
in my outlook and creative method". Eisenstein finally wrote, "What caused catastrophe to overtake the picture I had worked on for two years? What was the mistaken viewpoint which, despite honesty of feelings and devotion to work, brought the production to a perversion of reality, making it politically insubstantial and consequently inartistic?"
", and faulted Eisenstein for presenting enemies in a possibly favorable light. According to Nikolai Otten, Eisenstein's failure was due to filming an emotional scenario, thinking it freed him from studio control. Boris Babitsky, the chief of Mosfilm Studio (the producers of the film), took responsibility for the production's failure, and for not controlling Eisenstein's work or halting filming earlier; Babitsky was later arrested for this. Ivan Pyryev
felt that Eisenstein did not want to be a "Soviet person", giving this as a reason for the failure of the film. David Maryan, another director, blamed Eisenstein for looking down on others, taking no pleasure in the achievements of others, and for being a loner. Eisenstein's political status came under attack as well due to the film. G. Zeldovich, of the Principal Directorate for the Cinema, questioned whether Eisenstein should be free to work with film students due to his political unreliability.
Not all of the commentary and examination of Bezhin Meadow was overtly negative, however. In the years after the film closed its production, studios and film organizations in major Russian cities including Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev held seminars to examine the lessons of the film, with some of the sessions lasting days. A former student of Eisenstein, Peotr Pavlenko, defended Eisenstein's work in the wake of Bezhin Meadow. Grigori Alexandrov, a filmmaker Eisenstein had worked with previously, was denounced for "raising himself above the community" because he did not speak out against his associate. Esfir Shub suggested that as Eisenstein was not present in the USSR during the First Five-Year Plan
, he was unable to correctly present modern political lessons. The set-piece in Bezhin Meadow where the villagers desecrate the village church in response to Stepok's death, which was removed in later versions of the film, has been called "one of the great set-pieces in cinema", and a further demonstration of the Biblical imagery featured in the film. Among such visuals from the desecration sequence were an image of a girl in a mirror, framed as the Virgin Mary, and a statue of a crucified Christ held as if it were in a pietà
. Ivor Montagu
likened Eisenstein's struggles with the film to Galileo's conflict with the Inquisition
. In spite of the heavy criticisms he faced, Eisenstein was allowed by the politburo
to continue his career, and he created and released the film Alexander Nevsky
in 1938
.
In the 1960s, it was learned that Eisenstein's wife, Pera Attasheva, had saved splices of film from the editing table that was used for Bezhin Meadow. Starting in 1964, a reconstruction of the film was created and set to a musical score by Sergei Prokofiev
by Russian film director Sergei Yutkevich
with Eisenstein scholar Naum Kleiman. The film was edited to the original script, to preserve the original cutting continuity; new intertitles were also created from the script, and a new spoken introduction was added. The film now exists as a 35-minute "silent film
slide show". In 1988, the filming of Bezhin Meadow was the focus of a retrospective at the Tisch School of the Arts
in New York City. Entitled "Jay Leyda
: A Life's Work", it focused on Leyda, a professor at the school and the lone American to have studied with Eisenstein at the Moscow State Film Institute; Leyda had been apprentice director and still photographer on the set. Of the Soviet films from the 1920s and 1930s, Bezhin Meadow is the one that may be most cited in academic works related to film study.
Though production of Bezhin Meadow was never completed, and a full version was never distributed, the film was later considered a celebration of Soviet political purposes and informants. In spite of the problems that Bezhin Meadow faced, Eisenstein would receive the Order of Lenin
in 1939 due to the wild success of Alexander Nevsky
. In 1941, he became the artistic director of Mosfilm Studios.
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
film famous for having been suppressed and believed destroyed before its completion. Directed by Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
, it tells the story of a young farm boy whose father attempts to betray the government for political reasons by sabotaging the year's harvest and the son's efforts to stop his own father to protect the Soviet state, culminating in the boy's murder and a social uprising. The film draws its title from a story by Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...
, but is based on the life of Pavlik Morozov
Pavlik Morozov
Pavel Trofimovich Morozov , better known by the diminutive Pavlik, was a Soviet youth praised by the Soviet press as a martyr. His story, dated to 1932, is that of a 13-year old boy who denounced his father to the authorities and was in turn killed by his family. His story was a subject of reading,...
, a young Russian boy who became a political martyr
Martyr
A martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce, or accept, a belief or cause, usually religious.-Meaning:...
following his death in 1932, after he denounced his father to Soviet government authorities and subsequently died at the hands of his family. Pavlik Morozov was immortalized in school programs, poetry, music, and in film.
Commissioned by a Communist youth group, the film's production ran from 1935 to 1937, until it was halted by the central Soviet government, which said it contained artistic, social, and political failures. Some, however, blamed the failure of Bezhin Meadow on government interference and policies, extending all the way to Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
himself. In the wake of the film's failure, Eisenstein publicly recanted his work as an error. Individuals were arrested during and after the ensuing debacle.
Bezhin Meadow was long thought lost in the wake of World War II bombings. In the 1960s, however, cuttings and partial prints of the film were found; from these, a reconstruction of Bezhin Meadow, based on the original script, was undertaken. Rich in religious symbolism
Religious symbolism
Religious symbolism is the use of symbols, including archetypes, acts, artwork, events, or natural phenomena, by a religion. Religions view religious texts, rituals, and works of art as symbols of compelling ideas or ideals...
, the film and its history became the focus of academic study. The film was extensively discussed both inside and outside of the film industry
Film industry
The film industry consists of the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking: i.e. film production companies, film studios, cinematography, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, post production, film festivals, distribution; and actors, film directors and other film crew...
for its historical nature, the odd circumstances of its production and failure, and its imagery, which is considered some of the greatest in cinema. In spite of the failure of Bezhin Meadow, Eisenstein would rebound to win Soviet acclaim and awards, and become artistic director of a major film studio.
Plot
Because Bezhin Meadow was repeatedly edited, re-shot, and changed to satisfy the Soviet government authorities, several versions of the film were created.The most sourced and best-known version focuses on Stepok, a young boy in a collective farming
Collective farming
Collective farming and communal farming are types of agricultural production in which the holdings of several farmers are run as a joint enterprise...
village, who is a member of the local Young Pioneers Communist organization, as are other local children. His father Samokhin, a farmer, plans to sabotage the village harvest for political reasons by burning down the titular meadow, but Stepok organizes the other Young Pioneer children to guard the crops. Samokhin grows progressively more frustrated by his son's actions and success. Eventually, Stepok reports Samokhin's crimes to the Soviet government authorities, and is in turn slain by his own father for betraying his family. The other Young Pioneers break into the local church, singing songs, and desecrate
Desecration
Desecration is the act of depriving something of its sacred character, or the disrespectful or contemptuous treatment of that which is held to be sacred or holy by a group or individual.-Detail:...
it in response to Stepok's death. The visuals of the film shift during the destruction of the church, with the villagers becoming that which they are destroying—the angry villagers, by the end of the set piece, are depicted as Christ-like, angelic, and prophetic figures.
A later re-editing of the film opens with images of orchards and blue sky, showing a stone obelisk
Obelisk
An obelisk is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape at the top, and is said to resemble a petrified ray of the sun-disk. A pair of obelisks usually stood in front of a pylon...
with Turgenev's name on it. It is next revealed that Stepok's mother has been beaten to death by his father. In a dark hut, Samokhin complains that his son has a greater loyalty to the Soviet than his own family, as Stepok enters from the bright day outside. His father quotes from the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
: "If the son betrays his father, kill him like a dog!" Samokhin is arrested for arson, and Stepok leaves with a Communist functionary. The other arsonists take refuge in the local church, and are soon arrested. The arsonists are nearly lynched, but are saved from the villagers' wrath by Stepok. The villagers transform the church into a clubhouse, symbolically ridiculing religion or the clergy.
In some versions, the destruction of the church was replaced with a scene of villagers fighting the arsonist's fire. In the film, the fire was started when the arsonists threw dried sunflowers and lit matches into the community's fuel storage area. In some cuts, Stepok overhears his father's planning and sneaks out in the night to inform on him; in others, the local Communist Party functionary breastfeeds Stepok's young sister; in still others, Stepok's father says after shooting his son, "They took you from me, but I did not give you to them. I did not give my own flesh and blood." After Stepok's death, the same aforementioned Communist official carries him off, joined by other children, in a funeral march that was said to evolve into a victory march.
The film, as mentioned by Shumyatsky and Eisenstein, is rich in religious iconography
Iconography
Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek "image" and "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons in the...
and the symbolic struggle between good and evil. Additionally, Birgit Beumers writes, "The peasants here are grey-bearded prophets; the young men are broad-shouldered Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
apostles; the fleshy girls are earthly Madonnas
Madonna (art)
Images of the Madonna and the Madonna and Child or Virgin and Child are pictorial or sculptured representations of Mary, Mother of Jesus, either alone, or more frequently, with the infant Jesus. These images are central icons of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity where Mary remains...
; the peasant wrecking the iconostasis
Iconostasis
In Eastern Christianity an iconostasis is a wall of icons and religious paintings, separating the nave from the sanctuary in a church. Iconostasis also refers to a portable icon stand that can be placed anywhere within a church...
is a biblical Samson
Samson
Samson, Shimshon ; Shamshoun or Sampson is the third to last of the Judges of the ancient Israelites mentioned in the Tanakh ....
; the chubby young boy in the shirt, raised high under the cupola towards the slanting sun-ray which turns his locks golden, is the young Jesus Christ ascending to the Heavenly Throne." Bezhin Meadow, in its various unreleased versions, was "Dedicated to the bright memory of Pavlik Morozov, a small hero of our time" (cf. A Hero of Our Time
A Hero of Our Time
A Hero of Our Time is a novel by Mikhail Lermontov, written in 1839 and revised in 1841. It is an example of the superfluous man novel, noted for its compelling Byronic hero Pechorin and for the beautiful descriptions of the Caucasus...
).
Original Turgenev story and Pavlik Morozov
Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...
, a 19th-century Russian scholar and novelist, but was adapted to incorporate the folk story of Pavlik Morozov
Pavlik Morozov
Pavel Trofimovich Morozov , better known by the diminutive Pavlik, was a Soviet youth praised by the Soviet press as a martyr. His story, dated to 1932, is that of a 13-year old boy who denounced his father to the authorities and was in turn killed by his family. His story was a subject of reading,...
, a supposed Young Pioneer
Young Pioneer organization of the Soviet Union
The Young Pioneer Organization of the Soviet Union, also Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization The Young Pioneer Organization of the Soviet Union, also Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization The Young Pioneer Organization of the Soviet Union, also Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer...
glorified by Soviet Union propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
as a martyr. Turgenev's original short fiction titled "Bezhin Meadow" or "Bezhin Lea" was a story about peasant
Peasant
A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...
boys in the 1850s, in the Oryol
Oryol
Oryol or Orel is a city and the administrative center of Oryol Oblast, Russia, located on the Oka River, approximately south-southwest of Moscow...
region, discussing supernatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...
signs of death, while they spend the night in the Bezhin Meadow with a lost hunter. Eisenstein would later remove any direct references to Turgenev's fiction, aside from the title, from the film. It is a part of A Sportsman's Sketches
A Sportsman's Sketches
A Sportsman's Sketches was an 1852 collection of short stories by Ivan Turgenev. It was the first major writing that gained him recognition...
, a collection of short stories.
Gerasimovka, Sverdlovsk Oblast
Gerasimovka is rural locality in Tavdinsky District of Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia.The village is notable as the place of Pavlik Morozov's life and murder...
in the Ural Mountains
Ural Mountains
The Ural Mountains , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the Ural River and northwestern Kazakhstan. Their eastern side is usually considered the natural boundary between Europe and Asia...
, has no connection with Turgenev's literary work. Morozov was a 13-year old boy who denounced his father, a kulak
Kulak
Kulaks were a category of relatively affluent peasants in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union...
, to the Soviet government authorities, and was in turn killed by his family. It was a Soviet morality tale: opposing the state was selfish and reactionary, and the state was more important than family. The most popular account of the Morozov story is as follows: born to poor peasants in Gerasimovka, a small village 350 kilometres (217.5 mi) north-east of Sverdlovsk
Yekaterinburg
Yekaterinburg is a major city in the central part of Russia, the administrative center of Sverdlovsk Oblast. Situated on the eastern side of the Ural mountain range, it is the main industrial and cultural center of the Urals Federal District with a population of 1,350,136 , making it Russia's...
, Morozov was a dedicated communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
who led the Young Pioneers at his school, and supported Stalin's collectivization of farms
Collectivisation in the USSR
Collectivization in the Soviet Union was a policy pursued under Stalin between 1928 and 1940. The goal of this policy was to consolidate individual land and labour into collective farms...
. In 1932, at age 13, Morozov reported his father to the political police (GPU
State Political Directorate
The State Political Directorate was the secret police of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1934...
). Morozov's father, the Chairman of the Village Soviet or Selsoviet
Selsoviet
Selsoviet is a shortened name for a rural council. The full names for the term are, in , , . Selsoviets were the lowest level of administrative division in rural areas in the Soviet Union...
, was alleged to have been "forging documents and selling them to the bandits and enemies of the Soviet State" (as his sentence read). The elder Morozov, Trofim, was sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
, and later executed. However, Pavlik's family did not approve of the young boy's actions. On September 3 of that year, his uncle, grandfather, grandmother and a cousin murdered him, along with his younger brother. All of them except the uncle were rounded up by the GPU, convicted, and sentenced to "the highest measure of social defense", execution by a firing squad.
The Morozov story was developed into compulsory children's readings, songs, plays, a symphonic poem
Symphonic poem
A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music in a single continuous section in which the content of a poem, a story or novel, a painting, a landscape or another source is illustrated or evoked. The term was first applied by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt to his 13 works in this vein...
, a full-length opera and six biographies. There is very little original evidence related to the story; much of it is hearsay
Hearsay
Hearsay is information gathered by one person from another person concerning some event, condition, or thing of which the first person had no direct experience. When submitted as evidence, such statements are called hearsay evidence. As a legal term, "hearsay" can also have the narrower meaning of...
provided by second-hand witnesses. In Bezhin Meadow, the child is named Stepok, departing from the original historical lore and information. Among the ironies of Bezhin Meadows history were that Pavlik Morozov may not have even been a member of the Young Pioneers. Morozov had been called a "disturbed young boy" who was unaware of the consequences of what he was doing and turned his father in to the authorities for having abandoned his mother for a younger woman, rather than for political reasons.
Production
Herbert Marshall argued that by 1931, government interference in Soviet artistic work was already well established, in various forms: from peers of the artists, guided by 'above'; from "the different circles competent to judge it"; and ultimately from the Communist Party and Stalin himself. This all led to the failed production of Bezhin Meadow.Komsomol
The Communist Union of Youth , usually known as Komsomol , was the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban centers in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Communist Union of...
, to honor their efforts in supporting collective farm work, and was to focus on "the socialist reconstruction of the countryside". Filming began in the middle of 1935, and in October 1935 the first developed film was presented to the Mosfilm Studio
Mosfilm
Mosfilm is a film studio, which is often described as the largest and oldest in Russia and in Europe. Its output includes most of the more widely-acclaimed Soviet films, ranging from works by Tarkovsky and Eisenstein , to Red Westerns, to the Akira Kurosawa co-production and the epic Война и Мир...
, which was producing Bezhin Meadow. The studio requested changes, and production continued. In August 1936, with most of the principal filming done, Boris Shumyatsky
Boris Shumyatsky
Boris Zakharovich Shumyatsky was the de facto executive producer for the Soviet film monopoly from 1930 to 1937...
, the then-head of the Soviet GUK (Principal Directorate for the Cinema) ordered a halt in production and directed that the film be re-written. The script was again revised, with Eisenstein acknowledging errors in his production after a further version was rejected by the studio. During the creation of Bezhin Meadow, Eisenstein did not widely screen footage of the film for review.
Production on the unreleased film cost 2 million rubles, and spanned two years. When casting the production, Eisenstein had preferred to not use professional actors, instead using people who represented "types" to play a given role. Two thousand young boys were auditioned during the search for the ideal young actor to play the part of Stepok, the renamed Morozov character. Filming took place in many locations, primarily in Moscow studios, and remote locations in the Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
and the Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
. During production, Eisenstein had the foresight to save the edited-out frames from every shot in the film, which allowed for the later reconstruction of Bezhin Meadows in the 1960s, even though the original prints were destroyed.
The Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party required that it screen and approve Bezhin Meadow before its release. Multiple versions of the film were banned by the Committee, which cited them as "inartistic and politically bankrupt", and claimed that Eisenstein "confused the class struggle
Class struggle
Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....
with the struggle between good and evil". By an order from the Chief Directorate of Soviet Cinema, production of the film was stopped permanently on March 17, 1937. Shumyatsky complained that Eisenstein had presented the conflicts of the film in somewhat Biblical terms
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, rather than placing the conflicts of the film in the context of the socialist class struggle. Eisenstein himself would later say that the murder of Stepok by his father was "reminiscent of Abraham
Abraham
Abraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...
's sacrifice of Isaac
Isaac
Isaac as described in the Hebrew Bible, was the only son Abraham had with his wife Sarah, and was the father of Jacob and Esau. Isaac was one of the three patriarchs of the Israelites...
".
After the film's final rejection, Shumyatsky took responsibility for the failure in the Soviet media, with an essay detailing the film's history in Pravda
Pravda
Pravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....
. According to Shumyatsky, Bezhin Meadow was a slander against the Soviet countryside, and an example of Formalism
Formalism (art)
In art theory, formalism is the concept that a work's artistic value is entirely determined by its form--the way it is made, its purely visual aspects, and its medium. Formalism emphasizes compositional elements such as color, line, shape and texture rather than realism, context, and content...
that needed to be eliminated. Shumyatsky went on to say, "
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
in Joseph Stalin's Russia.
Following the order to stop production of the film from the Soviet government and Shumyatsky, Eisenstein contracted smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
, followed afterwards by influenza
Influenza
Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...
, and the film was destined to remain unfinished. He worked further on the story with the Soviet author Isaac Babel
Isaac Babel
Isaak Emmanuilovich Babel was a Russian language journalist, playwright, literary translator, and short story writer. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry, Story of My Dovecote, and Tales of Odessa, all of which are considered masterpieces of Russian literature...
, but no material was ever published or released from their collaboration, and the production of Bezhin Meadow came to an end. The unfinished and unreleased film reels were destroyed during a World War II bombing raid in 1941. In a later published response to Shumyatsky titled "The Mistakes of Bezhin Meadow", Eisenstein pledged he would "rid myself of the last anarchistic traits of individualism
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
in my outlook and creative method". Eisenstein finally wrote, "What caused catastrophe to overtake the picture I had worked on for two years? What was the mistaken viewpoint which, despite honesty of feelings and devotion to work, brought the production to a perversion of reality, making it politically insubstantial and consequently inartistic?"
Reactions and legacy
Eisenstein's Bezhin Meadow has had a rich legacy of responses and criticism since its original production. In the wake of Shumyatsky's statements in Pravda, which diminished Eisenstein's reputation in the Soviet Union to the lowest point in his career, others soon weighed in. Some criticism of the film was that it was too abstract or formalist, echoing Shumyatsky's views. Ilya Vaisfeld called the film and Eisenstein's methods "profoundly hostile to socialismSocialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
", and faulted Eisenstein for presenting enemies in a possibly favorable light. According to Nikolai Otten, Eisenstein's failure was due to filming an emotional scenario, thinking it freed him from studio control. Boris Babitsky, the chief of Mosfilm Studio (the producers of the film), took responsibility for the production's failure, and for not controlling Eisenstein's work or halting filming earlier; Babitsky was later arrested for this. Ivan Pyryev
Ivan Pyryev
Ivan Aleksandrovich Pyryev , served as Director of the Mosfilm studios and was, for a time, the most influential man in the Soviet motion picture industry.Pyryev was born in Kamen-na-Obi, now Altai Krai, Russia...
felt that Eisenstein did not want to be a "Soviet person", giving this as a reason for the failure of the film. David Maryan, another director, blamed Eisenstein for looking down on others, taking no pleasure in the achievements of others, and for being a loner. Eisenstein's political status came under attack as well due to the film. G. Zeldovich, of the Principal Directorate for the Cinema, questioned whether Eisenstein should be free to work with film students due to his political unreliability.
Not all of the commentary and examination of Bezhin Meadow was overtly negative, however. In the years after the film closed its production, studios and film organizations in major Russian cities including Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev held seminars to examine the lessons of the film, with some of the sessions lasting days. A former student of Eisenstein, Peotr Pavlenko, defended Eisenstein's work in the wake of Bezhin Meadow. Grigori Alexandrov, a filmmaker Eisenstein had worked with previously, was denounced for "raising himself above the community" because he did not speak out against his associate. Esfir Shub suggested that as Eisenstein was not present in the USSR during the First Five-Year Plan
First Five-Year Plan
The First Five-Year Plan, or 1st Five-Year Plan, of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a list of economic goals that was designed to strengthen the country's economy between 1928 and 1932, making the nation both militarily and industrially self-sufficient. "We are fifty or a hundred...
, he was unable to correctly present modern political lessons. The set-piece in Bezhin Meadow where the villagers desecrate the village church in response to Stepok's death, which was removed in later versions of the film, has been called "one of the great set-pieces in cinema", and a further demonstration of the Biblical imagery featured in the film. Among such visuals from the desecration sequence were an image of a girl in a mirror, framed as the Virgin Mary, and a statue of a crucified Christ held as if it were in a pietà
Pietà
The Pietà is a subject in Christian art depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus, most often found in sculpture. As such, it is a particular form of the Lamentation of Christ, a scene from the Passion of Christ found in cycles of the Life of Christ...
. Ivor Montagu
Ivor Montagu
The Honorable Ivor Goldsmid Samuel Montagu was a British filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, film critic, writer, table tennis player and apparent Soviet spy...
likened Eisenstein's struggles with the film to Galileo's conflict with the Inquisition
Inquisition
The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...
. In spite of the heavy criticisms he faced, Eisenstein was allowed by the politburo
Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Politburo , known as the Presidium from 1952 to 1966, functioned as the central policymaking and governing body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.-Duties and responsibilities:The...
to continue his career, and he created and released the film Alexander Nevsky
Alexander Nevsky (film)
Alexander Nevsky is a 1938 historical drama film directed by Sergei Eisenstein, in association with Dmitri Vasilyev and a script co-written with Pyotr Pavlenko, who were assigned to ensure Eisenstein did not stray into "formalism" and to facilitate shooting on a reasonable timetable...
in 1938
1938 in film
The year 1938 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*January — MGM announces that Judy Garland would be cast in the role of "Dorothy" in the upcoming Wizard of Oz motion picture. Ray Bolger is cast as the "Tinman" and Buddy Ebsen is cast as the "Scarecrow". At Bolger's insistence,...
.
In the 1960s, it was learned that Eisenstein's wife, Pera Attasheva, had saved splices of film from the editing table that was used for Bezhin Meadow. Starting in 1964, a reconstruction of the film was created and set to a musical score by Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
by Russian film director Sergei Yutkevich
Sergei Yutkevich
Sergei Iosifovich Yutkevich was an award-winning Soviet film director and screenwriter.-Life and career:He began work as a teen doing puppet shows. Later he helped found the Factory of the Eccentric Actor , which was primarily concerned with circus and music hall acts. He entered films in the...
with Eisenstein scholar Naum Kleiman. The film was edited to the original script, to preserve the original cutting continuity; new intertitles were also created from the script, and a new spoken introduction was added. The film now exists as a 35-minute "silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
slide show". In 1988, the filming of Bezhin Meadow was the focus of a retrospective at the Tisch School of the Arts
Tisch School of the Arts
Tisch School of the Arts is one of the 15 schools that make up New York University ....
in New York City. Entitled "Jay Leyda
Jay Leyda
Jay Leyda was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film historian, noted for his work on U.S, Soviet and Chinese Cinema. His The Melville Log was a day to day compilation of documents which he had painstakingly collected on the life of Herman Melville. He was a member of the Workers Film and...
: A Life's Work", it focused on Leyda, a professor at the school and the lone American to have studied with Eisenstein at the Moscow State Film Institute; Leyda had been apprentice director and still photographer on the set. Of the Soviet films from the 1920s and 1930s, Bezhin Meadow is the one that may be most cited in academic works related to film study.
Though production of Bezhin Meadow was never completed, and a full version was never distributed, the film was later considered a celebration of Soviet political purposes and informants. In spite of the problems that Bezhin Meadow faced, Eisenstein would receive the Order of Lenin
Order of Lenin
The Order of Lenin , named after the leader of the Russian October Revolution, was the highest decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union...
in 1939 due to the wild success of Alexander Nevsky
Alexander Nevsky (film)
Alexander Nevsky is a 1938 historical drama film directed by Sergei Eisenstein, in association with Dmitri Vasilyev and a script co-written with Pyotr Pavlenko, who were assigned to ensure Eisenstein did not stray into "formalism" and to facilitate shooting on a reasonable timetable...
. In 1941, he became the artistic director of Mosfilm Studios.
See also
- 1930s in film1930s in filmThe decade of the 1930s in film involved many significant films. 1939 was one of the biggest years in Hollywood.----Contents# Events# List of films: # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z....
- Cinema of the Russian Empire
- Cinema of the Soviet UnionCinema of the Soviet UnionThe cinema of the Soviet Union, not to be confused with "Cinema of Russia" despite Russian language films being predominant in both genres, includes several film contributions of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union reflecting elements of their pre-Soviet culture, language and history,...
- List of lost films
- Russian cultureRussian cultureRussian culture is associated with the country of Russia and, sometimes, specifically with ethnic Russians. It has a rich history and can boast a long tradition of excellence in every aspect of the arts, especially when it comes to literature and philosophy, classical music and ballet, architecture...
- Soviet artSoviet artSoviet art was the visual art produced in the Soviet Union.-Early years:During the Russian Revolution a movement was initiated to put all arts to service of the dictatorship of the proletariat...
Further reading
- Beyond the Stars: The Memoirs of Sergei Eisenstein, by Sergeı̆ Eı̆zenshteı̆n and Richard Taylor. British Film Institute, 1996, ISBN 978-0-85170-460-9
- Eisenstein and Stalin: When art and politics clash (EIS), 1999 television documentary
External links
- David Ehrenstein writing about Bezhin Meadow in Senses of CinemaSenses of CinemaSenses of Cinema is a quarterly online film magazine founded in 1999 by filmmaker Bill Mousoulis. Based in Melbourne, Australia, Senses of Cinema publishes work by film critics from all over the world, including critical essays, career overviews of the works of key directors, and coverage of many...
(Archive page from June 22, 2008) - Full text of Bezhin Meadow story by Ivan TurgenevIvan TurgenevIvan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...
- Full length film at arjlover.net