The Return of Maxim
About The Return of Maxim
A prologue shows Maxim, already a practiced revolutionary, escaping custody twice. In St. Petersburg in 1914 he works under the name Fyodor. The Bolshevik Turaev meets the courier Natasha, and they agitate in a workers' district. Maxim leads a tavern strike and refuses the Mensheviks' softer demands. After they win the trust of a drunk accountant, Platon Dymba, a military contract is quietly moved to the Northern Factory. The Bolsheviks strike there, put up barricades, and are broken by the gendarmes in late July. Dymba attacks Maxim. On August 1, 1914, Russia enters the war, and the party sends Maxim to the front as a soldier to keep agitating.
Cast & crew
More about The Return of Maxim
Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg directed the second film of the Maxim trilogy. Lev Slavin wrote it. Andrei Moskvin photographed it. Dmitri Shostakovich wrote the music. Lenfilm released it on May 23, 1937. It runs 112 minutes. Boris Chirkov plays Maxim. It follows The Youth of Maxim (1935) and precedes The Vyborg Side (1939). The Russian title is Возвращение Максима.
Themes
Background
The July 1914 strikes in St. Petersburg and the August 1 declaration of war are the dates the plot uses. The film opened in May 1937, during the second year of the public trials.
In film history
It is the middle film of the trilogy that made Chirkov's Maxim the screen face of a Bolshevik worker, between The Youth of Maxim and The Vyborg Side.
Making
Kozintsev and Trauberg kept Chirkov, Moskvin, and Shostakovich from the first Maxim film and set this one in the July and August of 1914.
Look
Andrei Moskvin photographed the Petersburg strikes, the factory, and the July barricades.
Music
Dmitri Shostakovich composed the score.
Notes
- Valentina Kibardina plays Natasha. Mikhail Zharov plays Platon Dymba. Anatoli Kuznetsov plays Turaev.
- Maxim's cover name in the city is Fyodor.
- The Northern Factory gets the military contract after Dymba is drunk enough to be used.
- The July barricades fail. The assignment to the front comes on the day Russia enters the war.
- Wikidata also lists November 1, 1937, among the publication dates.
- Shostakovich scored all three Maxim films.
Scenes
- Maxim escapes custody twice in the prologue.
- He rejects the Menshevik demands and calls the tavern strike.
- Dymba attacks him after the July barricades fail.
- The party sends him to the front on August 1, 1914.
Influenced
- The Vyborg Side (1939)
