COMMISSAR Movie Review

Komissar

Filmed in 1967 but suppressed until 1988, Soviet director Alexander Askoldov's film is an unexpected thunderbolt. Set during the 1922 civil war. Commissar is the story of a Red Army officer whose pregnancy forces her to go into hiding with a Jewish family until the birth of her child. Coming to acknowledge the family as human despite the virulent anti-Semitism that is the norm is but one side of what the film shows us; at the same time, her disguising as part of the family forces her to understand what being the object of racial hatred feels like. Photographed in a series of powerful, widescreen images that are at once epic and claustrophobic, Commissar's narrative flow moves in fits and starts, and at times declares its humanist intentions a bit too overtly; nevertheless, a film this potent on this subject from a Soviet director in 1967 is in and of itself a true rarity. Apparently the authorities wanted to keep it that way; in addition to keeping Commissar under wraps for more than two decades, director Askoldov was stopped after this promising and brave piece of work.

NEXT STOP … Bitter Harvest, The Boat Is Full, The Ascent

1968 105m/B RU Nonna Mordyukova, Rolan Bykov, Raisa Nedashkovskaya, Vasily Shukshin, Pavlik Levin, Ludmilla Volinskaya; D: Alexander Askoldov; W: Alexander Askoldov; C: Valery Ginsberg; M: Alfred Schnittke. VHS KIV