The Law of Life
About The Law of Life
Medical student Sergey Paromov asks rector Babinov for a farewell evening. He is involved with Babinov’s daughter Natasha. Komsomol secretary Ognerubov walks in and tells the students to take what they need. The party becomes a drunk. Sergey cannot talk them down. Natasha leaves with Ognerubov to watch the sunrise. Sergey writes against him. People call it jealousy. At a Komsomol meeting Natasha’s sister Nina says Ognerubov abandoned her years earlier with a child. The room turns. Sergey speaks on what a Komsomol member’s conduct should be, and in the last scene he is the new secretary.
Cast & crew
More about The Law of Life
Boris Ivanov and Aleksandr Stolper directed Aleksandr Avdeenko’s script, with Sergei Yermolinsky also credited. Sergey Uralov photographed. Nikolay Kryukov wrote the music. Mosfilm released it in early August 1940. A date on record is 7 August. It runs 101 minutes. Daniil Sagal, Oswald Glazunov, and Nina Zorskaya lead the cast. Aleksandr Lukyanov plays Ognerubov. The Russian title is Закон жизни.
Themes
Background
Released in the first week of August 1940 and pulled after the 16 August Pravda piece. The 9 September meeting kept the blame on the screenwriter.
Making
The picture was built as a Komsomol moral: the cynic is exposed by the sister he left, and the student who objected becomes secretary. Pravda treated the drinking scene as the film giving the cynic the floor.
Reviews
Pravda’s unsigned 16 August 1940 article attacked Ognerubov’s speech on free love and the student orgy that follows it, and called the result a rotten philosophy of licentiousness rather than a law of life.
Look
Sergey Uralov shot the institute farewell, the drinking, and the Komsomol meeting where Nina speaks.
Music
Nikolay Kryukov composed the score.
Preservation
A 101-minute print survives, though the 1940 release was withdrawn after a few days.
Notes
- It played only a few days.
- On 16 August 1940 Pravda printed an unsigned attack. Accounts call the piece “Фальшивый фильм” (“A False Film”) and differ on whether V. Kruzhkov wrote it under Andrei Zhdanov or whether Stalin drafted it.
- One line of the attack, as later quoted, says this is not the law of life but a rotten philosophy of licentiousness.
- On 9 September 1940 a Central Committee meeting put Stalin, Zhdanov, and Malenkov in the room with Avdeenko, Stolper, and Ivanov.
- Avdeenko was expelled from the Party and the Writers’ Union and put out of his apartment.
- A Commons copy uses the Russian title.
Scenes
- Ognerubov walks into the farewell and the drinking starts.
- Natasha leaves with him for the sunrise.
- Nina tells the meeting he abandoned her and a child.
- Sergey is the secretary at the end.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (1940 Закон жизни.webm)