The Youth of Maxim
About The Youth of Maxim
On New Year's Eve 1910 the rich of St. Petersburg celebrate while the underground keeps moving, and factory friends Maxim, Dema, and Andrei pull the activist Natasha away from a police informer. Andrei dies in a faulty machine, a funeral becomes a demonstration, and the police break the strike Maxim and Natasha call. Dema kills an officer to defend Maxim, then is shot in prison while the old revolutionary Sedoy shares Maxim's cell and the prisoners sing the Warszawianka. Released, Maxim runs a forest meeting where Sedoy reads an address from Lenin, escapes a raid in a coal tender, and leaves for Nizhny Novgorod as Pavel Agafonovich Malakhanov.
Cast & crew
More about The Youth of Maxim
Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg wrote and directed the first film of their Maxim trilogy at Lenfilm, with Andrei Moskvin photographing and Dmitri Shostakovich scoring. Lenfilm opened it on 27 January 1935. The Return of Maxim followed in 1937.
Themes
Background
The story is set in the reaction after 1905, not at the peak of a revolution. Stalin called that the hard part of the subject.
In film history
It is the first film of the Maxim trilogy. The Return of Maxim followed in 1937.
Making
The Russian production record dates the shooting to 1934. The Commons file of the film carries 1934 in its name. The release year is 1935.
Reviews
Vsevolod Pudovkin repeated Stalin's praise of the New Year prologue and named Moskvin's photography, Shostakovich's music, and the cutting.
Look
Andrei Moskvin shot the New Year streets and the factory, the work Pudovkin singled out.
Music
Dmitri Shostakovich wrote the score. The prisoners sing the revolutionary song Warszawianka. The published concert excerpt of the score is the prologue, built on popular tunes including Black Eyes.
Preservation
Prints circulate, some of them missing the scene in which Maxim is forbidden to live in most European provinces.
Notes
- Boris Chirkov plays Maxim, Valentina Kibardina plays Natasha, Mikhail Tarkhanov plays Polivanov, called Sedoy, Stepan Kayukov plays Dema, and Aleksandr Kulakov plays Andrei.
- A scene of Maxim being barred from most European provinces of the empire is missing from many circulating versions.
- Nikolai Rabinovich conducted the score for the Lenfilm premiere.
- In 1941 Kozintsev, Trauberg, and Chirkov received the Stalin Prize, first class, for the Maxim trilogy.
- Joseph Stalin told the filmmakers he had watched the picture three times.
Awards
- First prize, 1st Soviet Film Festival, Moscow, 1935
Scenes
- Andrei is killed by the factory machine, and a later funeral turns into a demonstration.
- Dema is executed while the prisoners sing Warszawianka.
- Maxim hides in a coal tender after the police break the forest meeting.
Influenced
- The Return of Maxim (1937)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (1934 Юность Максима.webm)
