Shors
About Shors
In 1919 Nikolai Shchors, played by Yevgeny Samoylov, leads peasants and Red troops across a Ukraine broken up by civil war. They take Kiev from Symon Petliura, and other towns fall after the capital. The fight around Berdychiv costs them heavily, and they hold. When Polish forces under General Dragomirov move on Kiev, Shchors pulls the units together for a counter-attack.
Cast & crew
More about Shors
Oleksandr Dovzhenko wrote the script and directed with Yuliya Solntseva. Yuri Goldabenko and Yuriy Yekelchik photographed it. O. Skripnik edited. Dmitri Kabalevsky wrote the music. Kiev Film Studio released it in January 1939, in Russian, at 92 minutes. The script was rewritten more than once, and episodes already shot were discarded.
Themes
Background
Stalin commissioned the film. Elena Monastireva-Ansdell has described the 1935 order as a request for a Ukrainian Chapayev.
Look
Yuri Goldabenko and Yuriy Yekelchik shot the advance on Kiev and the fighting around Berdychiv.
Music
Dmitri Kabalevsky wrote the score.
Preservation
A digital copy is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- The Russian title is Щорс. Ukrainian sources spell the commander Mykola Shchors.
- Petro Kralyuk wrote in 2020 that Stalin ordered the picture so Shchors would be treated as a mythic hero.
- Many of the historical Shchors's comrades were executed in the Great Purge while the film was in production.
- The spoken language is Russian.
Scenes
- Shchors's troops take Kiev from Petliura.
- After the costly fight at Berdychiv he turns the line around to meet Dragomirov.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (1939 Щорс.webm)
