THE OVERCOAT Movie Review

The Cloak
Shinel

A meek little clerk named Akaky Akakyevich (Roland Bykov), who is the tiniest of cogs in the huge wheel of a Dickensian 19th-century St. Petersburg, believes there will be a change in the heartless world in which he lives once he finally attains the magnificent new overcoat of which he has long dreamed. Bykov's performance as the pathetic little man tossed about in a sea of bureaucratic heartlessness is quite amazing; for years after seeing this nearly perfect, 73-minute adaptation of Gogol's story, Bykov's rubbery, brilliantly expressive face will be clearly visible whenever the story is referred to or remembered. This haunting, quietly disturbing little movie was directed by the gifted and versatile Alexei Batalov, who himself starred that same year in another extraordinary Soviet adaptation of a literary classic, director Josef Heifitz’ film of Chekhov's The Lady with the Dog. The Overcoat was filmed many times before, including a silent version in 1926 by Grigori Kozintsev and a 1951 short starring Marcel Marceau, but Batalov's 1959 film remains the most moving and vivid of them all.

NEXT STOP… The Lady with the Dog, The Cranes Are Flying, Oliver Twist (1948)

1959 93m/B RU Rolan Bykov, Yuri Tolubeyev; D: Alexei Batalov; W: L. Solovyov; C: Heinrich Marandzhjan; M: N. Sidelnikov. VHS HTV