The Brave Seven
About The Brave Seven
In May of a 1930s year, Komsomol member Ilya Letnikov publishes a letter calling for a winter camp at Joyful Bay. Hundreds volunteer. Six are chosen and put ashore in August. After the ship leaves they unpack and find a stowaway, Petya Moliboga, hidden in the cargo. The six become seven and spend the winter cut off from the mainland except by an unreliable radio. The tests of the ice fall on the whole group, not on one hero.
Cast & crew
More about The Brave Seven
Sergei Gerasimov directed and co-wrote the script with Yuri German. The opening titles dedicate the film to the 10th Congress of the Komsomol. The Soviet premiere was 4 March 1936. Yevgeni Velichko photographed it and Venedikt Pushkov wrote the music.
Themes
Background
The wintering is fictionalized from the first permanent Soviet polar station, Tikhaya Bay, and moved into the Komsomol years of the 1930s.
Making
Gerasimov shot Arctic exteriors on the Kola coast, including the Rybachy Peninsula, Kildin, and the Khibiny.
Look
Yevgeni Velichko shot the winter camp on location in Murmansk Oblast as well as the staged interiors.
Music
Venedikt Pushkov wrote the score.
Preservation
The film survives and is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- Nikolai Bogolyubov plays expedition leader Ilya Letnikov, Tamara Makarova plays doctor Zhenya Okhrimenko, and Ivan Novoseltsev plays pilot Bogun.
- Oleg Zhakov plays radio operator Kurt Shefer, Andrei Apsolon plays meteorologist Osya Korfunkel, and Ivan Kuznetsov plays mechanic Sasha Rybnikov.
- Pyotr Aleynikov plays Petya Moliboga. He was sixteen and had come to the workshop from an orphanage.
- The story uses the 30 August 1929 opening of the Tikhaya Bay polar station on Hooker Island in Franz Josef Land, where seven men raised the Soviet flag and sent the first radiogram.
- The Russian title is Семеро смелых.
Scenes
- The six unpack and find Moliboga in a crate after the ship has gone.
- The opening titles dedicate the wintering to the 10th Komsomol congress.
Influenced by
- The 1929 Tikhaya Bay polar station on Hooker Island
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (1936. Семеро смелых.webm)
