Simple People
About Simple People
As the Germans near Leningrad, an aircraft factory is evacuated. Workers, many of them older men, women, and teenagers, set up machines in the open in Uzbekistan and are told to build planes within two months. Director Yeremin's wife disappears on the journey, then returns from captivity without her health or her memory. Doctors discharge her on the day the factory finishes its first aircraft. Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg directed.
Cast & crew
More about Simple People
Kozintsev and Trauberg wrote it, Andrei Moskvin and Anatoli Nazarov photographed it, and Dmitri Shostakovich composed the score, for a 74-minute 1945 Lenfilm picture. Andrei Zhdanov attacked it, along with Ivan the Terrible, Part II, and it was banned. Kozintsev later rejected the 1956 recut because he had no part in it.
Themes
Background
The evacuation route in the film runs from a Leningrad aircraft plant to Uzbekistan.
Reviews
Andrei Zhdanov condemned the film. It was banned, and Kozintsev later refused the 1956 recut made without him.
Look
Andrei Moskvin and Anatoli Nazarov photographed the Lenfilm production.
Music
Dmitri Shostakovich composed the score.
Preservation
The 1945 film was banned. A recut circulated in 1956. Kozintsev disowned that version.
Notes
- Yuri Tolubeyev plays Yeremin and Olga Lebzak plays his wife.
- Tatyana Pelttser plays Plaksina.
- Thousands of new recruits join the evacuees at the open-air plant.
- The skilled hands are said to be at the front, which is why the shop floor is teenagers and older workers.
Scenes
- Yeremin's wife, her memory gone after captivity, is discharged on the day the first plane is finished.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (1945. Простые люди.webm)
