Parky at the Pictures (DVD 24/11/2011)

In partnership with Leonid Trauberg, Kozintsev formed FEKS, the Factory of the Eccentric Actor, and combined Constructivism and Expressionism in such daring silents as The Overcoat (1926) and The New Babylon (1929), which respectively adapted a Gogol story and satirically re-imagined life in the Paris Commune. The pair proved just as audacious in making experimental use of sound in Alone (1931). But their failure to conform to the tenets of Socialist Realism led to their work being censured and they came into line with a trilogy chronicling the growing political awareness of a naive factory worker. Many critics agree, however, that The Youth of Maxim (1934), The Return of Maxim (1937) and The Vyborg Side (1938) were among the least polemical pictures produced in this period and they are long overdue rediscovery and release on disc.

With the death of Stalin in 1953, Kozintsev was finally able to express himself more freely and he responded with three exemplary works of literary adaptation: Don Quixote (1957 - which is again crying out for a DVD edition), Hamlet (1964) and King Lear (1971). Made in partnership with Iosif Shapiro and boasting translations by Nobel laureate Boris Pasternak and scores by Dmitri Shostakovich, the Shakespearean pictures had their roots in stage productions mounted in 1954 and 1941 respectively. But, as he revealed in his 1966 book, Shakespeare: Time and Conscience, Kozintsev was fascinated by the problems of making the plays relevant for contemporary audiences and his film versions are compelling for the manner in which they temper the Marxist reading of the texts with a sincere humanism that is subtly emphasised by the fluency of the mise-en-scène technique.

Returning to the Danish court at Elsinore for the funeral of his father, Hamlet (Innokenti Smoktunovsky) is appalled to discover that his mother, Gertrude (Elza Radzina), has retained her status as queen by hastily marrying her late husband's brother, Claudius (Mikhail Nazvanov). Informed by the ghost of his father that he was murdered, Hamlet vows vengeance upon his uncle. But he lacks the courage of his convictions and Claudius instructs obsequious courtier Polonius (Yuri Tolubeyev) to keep a close watch on his increasingly erratic behaviour.

Having witnessed Hamlet's discourteous treatment of his daughter, Ophelia (Anastasiya Vertinskaya), Polonius concludes that the prince is mad. But Claudius is convinced by travelling player Grigori Gaj's fratricidal melodrama that Hamlet has uncovered his crime and begins plotting with Rosencrantz (Igor Dmitriyev) and Guildenstern (Vadim Medvedev) to have him killed. Moreover, Polonius's son Laertes (Stepan Oleksenko) has returned to court intent on holding Hamlet to account for his sister's untimely demise.

Keeping Ionas Gritsius's monochrome camera moving sinuously through sets constructed by Yevgeni Yenej inside the Ivangorod fortress on the Russian-Estonian border, Kozintsev turns Elsinore into a prison that symbolises the tyranny of a regime that has reduced the populace to penury. But, in castigating the monarchical system for Denmark's woes, Kozintsev also captures the personal tragedies of the hapless individuals caught up in the dynastic intrigue. His Hamlet is more dynamic than others (a feat achieved by cutting many of his soliloquies), with Innokenti Smoktunovsky opting for muscularity rather than melancholy in his approach. But what is most radical about this supremely controlled feature is the use of silence and the reliance on the visuals rather than the verse to convey key physical, psychological and supernatural action.

The natural world that played such a pivotal role in sustaining the brooding atmosphere of Elsinore is also very much to the fore in the ancient Britain of King Lear, as Kozintsev again denounces royal rule (and, by allegorical association, dictatorship) by demonstrating how the foibles and follies of an all-powerful individual can have calamitous consequences for their subjects. Yet, in stressing the suffering of the lower orders, he also evokes pity for an old man forced to confront his flaws at the very moment that he realises he has failed as a father as well as a sovereign.

Intent on enjoying his dotage without the burden of responsibility, Lear (Yuri Yarvet) decides to divide his kingdom between his three daughters before his death. He demands each declares her love for him in return for her bequest. But, while Goneril (Elza Radzina) and Regan (Galina Volchek) dissemble cynically, their younger sister Cordelia (Valentina Shendrikova) refuses to flatter her father and pays by losing her inheritance and being hurriedly married off to the King of France (Iuozas Budraitis).

It's not long, however, before Goneril and Regan tire of Lear's excesses and he finds himself homeless in the company of his faithful Fool (Oleg Dal) and old retainer Gloucester (Karlis Sebris), who has himself alienated his bastard son Edmund (Regimantas Adomaitis) in openly preferring his half-brother Edgar (Leonhard Merzin). Yet, while Edmund forges an alliance with Goneril, Regan and the latter's husband, Cornwall (Aleksandr Vokach), Goneril's spouse, Albany (Donatas Banionis), and the enduringly loyal Kent (Vladimir Yemelyanov) send envoys across the Channel to urge Cordelia to come to Lear's aid.

Once again designed and photographed with impeccable taste and precision by Yevgeni Yenej and Ionas Gritsius, Kozintsev's final film is a masterpiece. It takes the odd liberty with the source - most notably letting the Fool live to witness his master's passing in the smouldering civil war ruins - but the subtle shifts in emphasis again facilitate a socialist slant that never strays too far from humanist compassion. Moreover, Kozintsev makes evocative use of his setting to reinforce the connection between the Lear's distress, the fury of the storm and the countless elemental allusions in the text.

Also composing for his last feature, Shostakovich uses woodwind instruments to achieve a rich blend of power and poignancy that finds echo in the towering performance of Yuri Yarvet, whose initial arrogance gives way to a touching vulnerability that acquires a regality that is entirely absent from his earlier reckless actions. Indeed, this transformation makes for a fascinating contrast with Nikolai Cherkasov's exceptional display in Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible (1944-58), which is also now available in a new DVD edition.

Prevented from making a trilogy about life in the Central Asian desert, a film about Spain and a history of the Red Army, Eisenstein returned to the theatre in 1939. But, while directing a production of Wagner's Die Walküre for the Bolshoi, he hit upon the concept of synaesthesia and this form of sensory domino effect became his artistic impetus for his ambitious biography of Ivan IV, who overcomes the loss of his wife Anastasia (Ludmila Tselikovskaya) to unite Russia and confound the plans of his aunt, Efrosinia Staritskaya (Serafima Birman), and her warrior ally Prince Kurbsky (Mikhail Nazvanov) to usurp the throne for her simpleton son, Vladimir (Pavel Kadochnikov).

Eisenstein began work on the screenplay in early 1941, but the threat of a Nazi invasion prompted the relocation of Mosfilm to Alma Ata in Kazakhstan and it was here that he completed the task of bending fact into myth. Shooting began during a heatwave in the summer of 1943 and proceeded in strict accordance with the storyboards that also inspired Sergei Prokofiev's score. His longtime cinematographer, Eduard Tissé, was confined to the exteriors, while Andrei Moskvin lit Isaac Shpinel's sumptuous sets and also filmed the director's sole colour sequence, which utilised Agfa stock confiscated from the Germans.

Eisenstein returned to Moscow in the autumn of 1944 to begin shaping his footage. Abandoning montage in favour of functional editing, he focussed on the mise-en-scène, in which the angular and highly expressive attitudes struck by the cast (which the outstanding Nikolai Cherkassov considered demeaning) were as crucial to his audiovisual strategy as the stylised décor.

But while Part One was awarded the Stalin Prize for depicting a Russian ruler driving foreign forces out of the Motherland, it was accused of operatic formalism by some Soviet critics (particularly during the stunning Uspensky Cathedral sequence) and attacked as an apologia for Stalin's tyranny by many abroad. However, Part Two (`The Boyars' Plot') - complete with its climactic colour sequences - was denounced by the Kremlin for the `misrepresentation of historical facts' and it was withheld until 1958, by which times its director had been dead for a decade. Worse still, the four completed reels of Part Three (`Ivan's Struggles') were destroyed. But the surviving epic remains one of the boldest and most exciting experiments conducted within the restraints of Socialist Realism.

Another troubled time is recalled in War and Peace (1966), in which the complex problems of the innocent Natasha Rostov (Ludmila Savelyeva), the arrogant Prince Andrew Bolkonsky (Vyacheslav Tikhonov) and the idealistic Pierre Bezukhov (Sergei Bondarchuk), who is unhappily married to the manipulative Hélène (Irina Skobtseva), are resolved by Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812.

A century and three years later, when Vladimir Gardin and Yakov Protazanov produced a 10-reel version of Leo Tolstoy's 1869 novel, it was hailed as the greatest motion picture ever produced in Russia. Half a century later, Sergei Bondarchuk surpassed their achievement with an epic that was so monumental that it had to be released in four two-hour episodes. It was estimated to have cost between $40-100 million, making it the most expensive film made anywhere to date, and it proved one of the few domestic pictures of the Communist era to excel at the Soviet box office (earning Bondarchuk the Order of Lenin).

Despite being cut to 373 and then 170 minutes for its dubbed English-language version, it dwarfed King Vidor's 1956 adaptation, with Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn, and deservedly won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Yet, War and Peace is never ranked among the master works of world cinema. It is regarded simply as an exercise in cultural propaganda, whose statistics are more impressive than its cinematic credentials.

It's worth repeating that 30 stars and 120,000 extras populated the 158 separate scenes that were played out against 272 sets, especially as the paintings, furnishings and props were borrowed from the country's finest museums to ensure the same authenticity that went into the making of the 6,000 military and 2,000 civilian costumes and the 60 French and Russian cannon.

However, Bondarchuk was less concerned with the scope and scale of the picture - even though the Battle of Borodino and the burning of Moscow were exemplars in movie logistics that were given additional visceral impact by the use of helicopter panoramas and dizzying subjective views. The director and his co-scenarist Vassili Soloviev were more interested in capturing the vibrant realism of Tolstoy's characters and his `thoughts, emotions, philosophy and ideas'.

They succeeded largely through Bondarchuk's delicate handling of the human aspects of the drama and his accessible treatment of its complex politics. Some of the performances are deficient, but Bonadarchuk makes a solid Pierre and ballerina Ludmila Savelyeva is simply exquisite as Natasha. Moreover, Anatoly Petritsky and Dmitri Korzhikin's photography, Mikhail Bogdanov and Gennady Myasnikov's production design, the costumes produced by Vladimir Burmeister's team and Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov's score are also outstanding and it is perhaps time that this laudable attempt to bring Tolstoy's ideals to the screen, as well as his narrative, was given its critical due.

By contrast, Mikhail Kalatazov's The Cranes Are Flying (1957) was hailed as a major work on its release, with Tatiana Samoilova winning the Best Actress prize at the same Cannes Film Festival that awarded this moving Home Front drama the Palme d'Or. Adapted by Viktor Rozov from his own play and seen as symbolic of the sea change that many hoped new Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev would bring about after three decades of pitiless totalitarianism, the story of a bourgeois family awaiting news of their son during the Great Patriotic War broke with the Socialist Realist tradition that had dominated domestic cinema since its imposition by Boris Shumyatsky in the early 1930s and came closer to the neo-realist style that had become common in `problem pictures' around the world since its emergence in postwar Italy. Moreover, it allowed Kalatazov to use the gliding and occasionally Expressionist camerawork of Sergei Urusevsky and the intellectual montage of Mariya Timofeyeva to capture emotion as well as sensation with a visual ingenuity that had not been seen in Soviet pictures since the silent era.

Factory worker Alexei Batalov is a model employee. He lives with surgeon father Vasily Merkuryev, grandmother Antonina Bogdanova, elderly aunt Svetlana Kharitonova and musician cousin Alexander Shvorin, but has hardly been home since falling for fellow Muscovite Tatiana Samoilova. When the Wehrmacht launches Operation Barbarossa in the summer of 1941, however, Batalov volunteers to do his duty and is so worried about telling Samoilova about his imminent departure that he only breaks the news at the last minute and a series of misfortunes prevents her from saying goodbye at home or seeing him off from the embarkation point - where the care package she has bought for him is smashed and trampled underfoot in the melee.

Unable to write for strategic reasons, Batalov goes to the frontline and is quickly killed in a swamp while trying to save a comrade. But Samoilova learns nothing of his fate and frets that she has received no correspondence from him for many months. When the Luftwaffe begins attacking the city, her parents refuse to go into air-raid shelter and are killed and Merkuryev offers her sanctuary. However, this brings her closer to Shvorin, who has managed to dodge the draft by using his uncle's papers and reveals the full extent of his dastardliness by raping Samoilova during another bombardment and feels so ashamed of her surrender that she agrees to marry him, despite still loving Batalov.

Determined to atone for what she guiltily feels is her treachery, Samoilova becomes a nurse at the hospital run by Batalov's sister Svetlana Kharitonova when the family is evacuated to the east and throws herself into her work to avoid spending time with the increasingly dissolute Shvorin. One afternoon, she overhears him consoling a soldier who had just received a Dear John letter and is wounded by his assertion that any woman who cannot wait for her sweetheart to return from service is a disgrace to the nation. His cruelty is compounded by the discovery of his perfidy at the recruiting office and Merkuryev disowns him and forgives Samoilov for her perceived betrayal of his son.

Alone again, Samoilova meets the man Batalov had rescued from the swamp. But she refuses to believe her beloved has perished and it's only when best friend Valentin Zubkov confirms the story that she accepts his loss. Having adopted an orphan with the same name, she vows to honour Batalov's memory by living to the full and serving the country he had sacrificed everything to defend - and which he had seen flashing before his eyes and out of his reach in the stirring reverie he had experienced as he felt his life slowly slipping away.

Despite its somewhat melodramatic storyline, this is a sensitively played and beautifully photographed film. Unlike the majority of other war movies produced behind the Iron Curtain at the time, it eschewed patriotic heroism to examine the realities that were still fresh in many minds and the discussion of cowardice, sexual assault and black marketeering was considered boldly frank. Yet it was the doomed romance aspect that most affected audiences and this Soviet equivalent of Frank Launder's Millions Like Us (1943) or Sidney Gilliat's Waterloo Road (1945) remains popular over half a century later.

There was nothing so cosily nostalgic about Elem Klimov's Come and See (1985). Produced to mark the 40th anniversary of the defeat of Nazism, this harrowing recreation of an actual event that occurred in Byelorussia during the Second World War proved to be the last film Klimov directed, as he reportedly had nothing else he wished to say on screen once he had concluded a seven-year struggle to persuade executives at Goskino to show the full horror of what ordinary citizens had endured at the hands of not just the SS, but also the supposedly more chivalrous Wehrmacht.

In 1943, 11 year-old Aleksey Kravchenko goes searching for a rifle with his friend so they can join the partisans fighting the occupying German army. The next day, local commander Liubomiras Lauciavicius comes to recruit Kravchenko, whose mother is distraught that she and her daughters will be defenceless without a male to protect them. But the boy is left behind in camp when the unit goes on patrol and he finds himself having to console the frightened Olga Mironova after a parachute assault on the forest leaves the resistance scattered and Kravchenko deaf from the cacophony of gunfire and explosions.

Once he is convinced the enemy has gone, Kravchenko takes Mironova home, only to find the cottage deserted. Flies are buzzing everywhere, but the oven is still warm and the pair tuck into the food they find inside. But, as they head off to the island where Kravchenko is sure his family is hiding, Mironova turns to see a stack of naked corpses piled against a wall. The lad becomes hysterical, but they still manage to cross the swamp and find shelter on the island with Vladas Bagdonas, who convinces Kravchenko that his mother and sisters have perished by showing him some of the survivors of the brutal Nazi assault.

Bagdonas takes a shine to Kravchenko and takes him on a mission to liberate supplies from a German food store. The boy narrowly escapes death when he accidentally strays into a minefield and when Bagdonas is gunned down after stealing a cow. But Kravchenko is taken in by a sympathetic farmer, who accompanies him to the nearby village of Perekhody to obtain some forged identity papers. However, a commando unit encircles the settlement and locks the entire population in the small wooden church. The sneering commander offers freedom to anyone willing to climb out of the window and Kravchenko accepts the challenge. But a mother trying to save her child is led away to be gang-raped and her infant tossed back into the building before it is torched by troops who congratulate each other on a job well done and even take souvenir photographs of the blaze.

Horrified by what he has seen, Kravchenko goes to retrieve his rifle and finds a can of petrol, which he offers to the head of the partisan brigade that has captured the Germans responsible for the Perekhody atrocity and the local collaborators who assisted them. The commander pleads that he is a decent man who was carried away by the exigencies of combat. But his deputy sneers at his pusillanimity and refuses to show his fear as he and his fellow prisoners are doused in petrol. However, the onlookers prefer to shoot the captives rather than let them share the fate of their lost neighbours and Kravchenko again stands by in grim amazement.

As he walks away, however, he sees a portrait of Hitler lying in a puddle. He shoots the picture and Klimov presents a series of montages reversing back through the Führer's life and, at each break, Kravchenko fires another bullet into the frame. But he desists on seeing an image of Hitler as a baby in his mother's arms, thus proving the mocking German's earlier contention that children should be the first killed in any genocide, as they are the trouble of the future.

Ending with Kravchenko disappearing into the distance with his comrades, this shocking reconstruction leaves viewers with the indelible impression of the physical toll that the youth's rite of passage has taken on his once innocently trusting face. Klimov achieved the transformation by restricting Kravchenko's food intake during the nine-month shoot and by working him long hours and even subjecting him to live ammunition during certain key sequences. Few will condone such extreme tactics, but there is no denying the power and potency of the debutant's performance. Klimov could also be accused of embellishing the war crimes for dramatic effect and the same baroque intensity informs Oleg Yanchenko's score. But how else could anyone be persuaded of the savagery of the acts perpetrated by supposedly civilised men and Klimov employs Aleksei Rodionov's unflinching cinematography, Viktor Mors's nightmare-inducing sound design and Valeriya Belova's relentless editing to force the audience to witness humanity at its most barbaric.