Timur and His Team
About Timur and His Team
Zhenya, daughter of Colonel Alexandrov, comes to a summer house with her sister Olga and meets Timur, who leads local pioneers helping old people and the families of Red Army men. Gossip makes Olga take Timur for a hooligan and forbid the friendship. Timur's group is in fact after Kvakin's gang, which raids the gardens at night. When Zhenya misses her train and may not see her father before he leaves for the front, Timur takes his uncle's motorcycle and drives her to Moscow. Olga learns who he is and explains him to the uncle, who had been ready to send the boy back to his mother. The film ends as the uncle leaves for the army.
Cast & crew
More about Timur and His Team
Aleksandr Razumny directed Arkady Gaidar's script at Soyuzdetfilm. Gaidar wrote it in late 1939 and early 1940, before the novella. Timur and Zhenya are named for his son and for a stepdaughter. The first title was Duncan and His Team. In the spring of 1940 the Committee for Cinematography told him a Soviet pioneer could not be called Duncan, and the name was changed. Pyotr Yermolov photographed the film, Ivan Stepanov designed it, and Lev Shvarts wrote the music.
Themes
In film history
Gaidar's story of children doing jobs for soldiers' families gave its name to the Timurite movement.
Look
Pyotr Yermolov shot the dacha, the night raids, and the motorcycle ride into Moscow.
Music
Lev Shvarts composed the score.
Notes
- Liviy Shchipachyov plays Timur. Yekaterina Derevshchikova plays Zhenya and Marina Kovalyova plays Olga.
- Nikolai Annenkov is Colonel Alexandrov. Pyotr Savin is Uncle Georgy Garaev.
- Boris Yasen plays Mishka Kvakin. Lev Potyomkin plays Dr. Kolokolchikov.
- Gaidar's biography, as quoted on the Russian film page, says he took the rejected name Duncan from the Scottish kings and from Macbeth.
Scenes
- Olga forbids Zhenya to see Timur because the neighbors call him a hooligan.
- Timur takes his uncle's motorcycle and gets Zhenya to Moscow before her father's train.
- The uncle leaves for the army.
Influenced by
- Arkady Gaidar
