Minin and Pozharsky
About Minin and Pozharsky
In the autumn of 1610 Polish troops hold the Moscow Kremlin and push north. Scattered peasant bands lose to them. In Nizhny Novgorod the merchant Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky raise a people's militia. Aleksandr Khanov plays Minin and Boris Livanov plays Pozharsky. The film follows that levy through the fight to clear the occupation of 1611 and 1612.
Cast & crew
More about Minin and Pozharsky
Vsevolod Pudovkin and Mikhail Doller directed. Viktor Shklovsky wrote it from his novel Russians at the Beginning of the XVII Century. Anatoli Golovnya photographed and Yuri Shaporin composed the score. Mosfilm released it on November 3, 1939. It runs 134 minutes. In 1941 Pudovkin, Doller, Livanov, and Khanov received the Stalin Prize for the film.
Themes
Background
The Time of Troubles and the 1612 militia were already a national story. This 1939 film tells that story with the Polish force as the occupying army.
In film history
It is cited as the first of several major Soviet films that present Poland as an aggressor.
Making
Pudovkin and Doller stage the Time of Troubles as a large historical film, with Minin's money and Pozharsky's command as the two engines of the levy.
Look
Anatoli Golovnya shot the Kremlin, the scattered peasant fights, and the Nizhny Novgorod levy.
Music
Yuri Shaporin composed the score.
Preservation
A print of the feature survives.
Notes
- Boris Chirkov and Lev Sverdlin are in the cast. Mikhail Astangov and Sergei Komarov also appear.
- The English-language note on the film calls it the first of a run of Soviet pictures that cast Poland as the invader.
- The story opens on the sixth year of occupation, with the Kremlin taken in the autumn of 1610.
- Golovnya, Pudovkin's regular cameraman, shot the militia and the Kremlin scenes.
- The Stalin Prize came in 1941, two years after the release.
Awards
- Stalin Prize, 1941, to Vsevolod Pudovkin, Mikhail Doller, Boris Livanov, and Aleksandr Khanov
Scenes
- Polish troops hold the Kremlin and break up scattered peasant detachments.
- Minin and Pozharsky form the Nizhny Novgorod militia.
- The levy moves against the occupation.
Influenced by
- Viktor Shklovsky's novel Russians at the Beginning of the XVII Century
