"Ivan's Childhood"

http://www.amazon.com/Moment-Truth-Novel-Two-Stories/dp/5050016649/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1435521278&sr=1-1&keywords=Bogomolov&pebp=1435521298120&perid=1TY8DT648MKG9CPHTE81
This Criterion Edition of the film is cleaned up with a high definition digital transfer. There is a new subtitle translation. The highlight of the features is the interview with Nicholai (Kolya) Burlyaev, who portrayed Ivan. He reminisces how he was cast at 14 and how the film was made.
Vladimir Bogomolov (1926 - 2003) was a Soviet writer. His early short story "Ivan" was adapted to screen as "Ivan's Childhood" (1962) by Andrei Tarkovsky.

Bogomolov was still in school when the Soviet Union was drawn into World War II. He joined the Army after completing only seven grades. He started the war as a private; when the war was over, he had a company under his command. He was wounded and was awarded several medals during his active duty. He continued his military service until 1950 in the army intelligence in East Germany. Between 1950 and 1951, he spent 13 months in jail without being formally charged; he retired in 1952.

His most famous novel is "In the August of '44" (a.k.a.* "The Moment of Truth"). It tells the story of SMERSH operatives that followed the frontlines, restored order, and eliminated suspected marauders and saboteurs. It is partly told through pseudo-authentic military correspondence and documents: orders, circulars, telegrams, and reports. The novel saw over a hundred editions; it was translated into multiple languages and made into a film twice.
*  ILL ordered

Andrei Tarkovsky, Eduard Abalov http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AECQSKK/ref=dv_web_yvl_list_pr_2

Here is what Tarkovsky said about the picture: I attempted to analyze the condition of a person who is being affected by war. When personality is disintegrating then we have the collapse of the logical development, especially when we are dealing with the personality of a child. I always conceptualized Ivan as a destroyed personality pushed by the war from the normal axis of development. A lot, more than a lot, everything that was appropriate to Ivan's age was gone from his life, and in its place he was bestowed with evil endowments of the destruction that concentrated within him and seized him. The film was based on a striking short story titled "Ivan" by an obscure Russian author named Bogomolov, who himself probably was in SMERSH, a Red Army field recon and counter- intelligence during the war as much dreaded as Stalin's NKVD. Tyhe way the way the story waas written, it was probably inspired by true life experiences. Ivan himself could have been invented, or it might have been based on a real life incident, as there were a number of adolescents and pre-adolescents executed by the Nazis and martyred by the communists after the war. The story provides a lot of details into the running of military intelligence agents, the trench warfare and the role of secret police in totalitarian police in the Red Army during the war. The story takes place in the trenches and gives good detail of the machismo of the Red Army reconnaissance scouts. The story gives a good description of life in a politicized army in a totalitarian country familiar to most older Russians, but not in such detail. None of that background made it on celluloid. The book reads like a personal tragedy for the kid involved, a feeling lost when the story was transferred on film, which was more symbolic. Here is what makes sense in the book, but is not made significant in the film: The two corpses hanging in the no man's land where the two scouts who were supposed to meet ivan at the Dead Tree who were killed in the ambush, mutilated, and hanged by the germans as a warning. The girl who flirts with the recon lieutenant is from a different story by Bogomolov, where an infantry lieutenant survives a frontal attack on the enemy trenches only to find out that his new fiancee was killed in the rear during the action. The Dead Tree to which Ivan runs in his final dream sequence is the extraction point which he didn't make the last time because of the german patrols. Ivan's surname in the movie in Bondarev, probably play on Bond. Were Bond films out in 1962? In the written story Ivan is a lot more human and is corrupted by the affiliation with elite soldiers and better food rations of an intelligence unit he is with. In the book the kid actually talks down on the exhausted infantry lieutenant who initially detains him. In the book are scenes of his adult friends corrupting him with nice clothes and other trinkets, which never made it into the screenplay, nor were there the scene of his handlers coaxing Ivan to go again behind the German lines when he gets scared. In the story, the narrator is the lowly lieutenant guy who tries the rescue the kid, and then learns of his final fate. In the story, incidentally, the kid is turned in to gestapo by a greedy peasant for a few bucks. All in all, the story is realistic and smacks of human tragedy, while the movie is a lot more symbolic. The film gets 5 stars though, because the film is one of the best representations of the mark that the War left on the collective Psyche of the people who lived in the Soviet Russia at the time. 1941 was the first year when the ration stamps were repealed and that spring was the first time in the decade perhaps that the people were looking for a summer of relative peace and prosperity, and then the war happened, interrupting graduations and honeymoons, starting another five years of major hardship. See if V. Bogomolov was translated into English. If he is not available on Amazon, try the Russian store, Four Continents in Washington, DC

By Ermite on September 14, 2007

Format: DVD Verified Purchase

This is a DVD to own. "Ivan's Childhood" is Tarkovsky's first and arguably his most famous film. Based on Vladimir Bogomolov's early novella, "Ivan" (that is, "John") (1957), the film achieved wide acclaim outside Russia. It was produced at the risky time when Premier Khrushchev's era was ending and fundamentalist Marxists were ascendant again, restricting freedom in the arts; it is, as one observer wrote, "one of the harshest, morally complex versions of the war in Soviet film." It won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival. With this debut film, Tarkovsky established an international reputation that has influenced many other filmmakers.

Except for this novella, Bogomolov is not widely known outside Russia. However, it was translated and anthologized widely around the world. Look for Bernard Isaac's translation into British English. It has the atmosphere of reality. It is punctuated it with references to real places, the Dnieper River, the town Gomel, where Ivan was born, and the Trostyanets death camp; even official Red Army and SS documents have an authentic flavor.

The novella is told in the first person narrative of a Red Army lieutenant. Ivan is about 12 and a "scout", or reconnaissance spy, sneaking across the swampy Dnieper River into the night and behind German lines. The war made him an orphan and filled him with maddening hatred and desperation for revenge. He has been with partisans, in a death camp, and wounded by friendly fire returning from a mission one night. The soldiers are amazed he's been through so much.

There is the pun, of course: Ivan's last name is Bondarev, Ivan Bondarev, that is, John Bond. In the story, it's an intelligence cover name. However, Ian Flemming's first James Bond novels appeared in the early fifties before "Ivan" was published. It may be coincidental, and probably only of interest to Western readers.

Writers often insert their own lives and experiences into their writings, and Bogomolov served in the Red Army in World War II and in intelligence. I do not know if Bogomolov based Ivan on any real person that he may have met or learned about. I guess we can only speculate about Ivan, yet a child working as a war-time spy seems plausible to me. After all, in the desperate chaos at the close of the war, Germany mobilized the Hitler Youth and insurgent units called Werewolves. There is plenty of historical evidence pointing to child combatants throughout history as well as in current events. We recall that Baden-Powell, who created the Boy Scouts, was a former soldier and spy, and the crafts of scouting are important reconnoitering skills used in war. The world is as morally conflicted as ever.

Though he argued with Tarkovsky about the way his story was filmed, like all authors, I think Tarkovsky's approach was correct, considering the demands and possibilities of the cinemagraphic medium. This Criterion Edition of the film is cleaned up with a high definition digital transfer. There is a new subtitle translation. The highlight of the features is the interview with Nicholai (Kolya) Burlyaev, who portrayed Ivan. He reminisces how he was cast at 14 and how the film was made.

The film follows the novella closely, though it takes a more objective viewpoint and enters Ivan's troubled dreams, which make striking imagery. It is tragic poetry whereas the novella is matter-of-fact. Here, Ivan is somewhat bratty and hot tempered. Though he is a child scout, I think the film suggests that he may not be the only one. He knows his trade-craft and takes it very seriously. Still, no one seems overly concerned (in either film or story) that a child is a war-time spy. Frankly, he insists on doing it. Ivan's only friends are the soldiers who want to care for him (after the war)or send him to school but do not object to his missions.

The film, shot on location at the Dnieper River, is pregnant with dramatic, almost heavy-handed imagery and symbolism. There is the first metaphor of crossing the river. Then there is the metaphor of the dead tree. It's his extraction point where Sgt. Katasonov waits for him to bring him ashore to safety. But, Ivan misses the rendezvous because of German patrols and must swim further away. Here, one metaphor abuts another. At the end, following Ivan's last mission, Tarkovsky re-introduces the dead tree metaphor as Ivan races laughing on a beach, perhaps in whatever kind of dream that may have come for him. There are other interpretations, and this one satisfies me now. At the end of the day, we have Bogomolov's poignant story enhanced by Tarkovsky's uncompromising, haunting vision.

Andrei Tarkovsky's THE MIRROR (1974)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002RPJ7U0/ref=atv_feed_catalog?ref_=imdbref_tt_pv_vi_aiv_1&tag=imdbtag_tt_pv_vi_aiv-20
Andrei Tarkovsky's THE MIRROR (1974) is his most personal and artistically daring film--and to me, ultimately his most moving.
A semi-autobiographical work, it interweaves poems, dramatic scenes, dreams and newsreels to evoke the inner symbolic world of the protagonist, his nostalgia for the past and his troubled relationships with his wife and mother in the present. At the same time it is a meditation on the nature of Russia, from the nation's role as mediator between the East and West to specific historical events such as the Stalinist purges of the mid-to-late 1930s and World War II. Indeed, few works of art say more about the Russian people with such economy.
The cinematography, by Georgii Rerberg, is so richly detailed that it frequently takes your breath away. Many of the shots are deliberately reminiscent of paintings by Breughel and Leonardo da Vinci. The soundtrack is equally beautiful, layered with natural sounds, electronic music, classical music (by composers such as Bach and Pergolesi) and poems (written and recited by the director's father Arsenii Tarkovsky, a noted Russian poet).
The film undoubtedly benefits from its superb cast, which includes many popular and highly respected Russian actors. The voice of the Narrator is played by Innokenty Smoktunovsky; Margarita Terekhova plays both the Mother and the Wife. Other actors make indelible impressions in smaller roles: Anatoly Solonitsyn (the Doctor), Oleg Yankovsky (the Father), Alla Demidova and Nikolai Grinko (the mother's colleagues at the printing factory). For those who speak Russian, it's a pleasure just to hear their finely tuned dialogue.
Although the film was widely criticized for being too difficult to follow, it was also praised by many Russian critics for capturing the spirit of an entire generation. It may not be to the taste of everyone, since it is constructed more like a poem than a conventional film narrative. However, for those who are willing to make the leap of faith, it is uniquely rewarding.
Kino on Video's new DVD looks absolutely stunning. Having seen the film a number of times in various less-than-ideal incarnations on video, I was impressed at the way the DVD captures the richness of the film's cinemtography. The film is above all a sensuous experience, so every extra bit of detail in the image and sound helps add to its overall emotional impact. Kino has used the same transfer for their new VHS edition, but the DVD is clearly preferable and it's the same price. It doesn't have any special features, unlike Kino's new release of Tarkovky's THE SACRIFICE, which includes a making-of documentary. However, it's hard to complain when the film itself and the video transfer are so satisfying. In summation, I can hardly recommend this particular title more highly.

Be sure to read Vlad's review of the shoddy quality of this DVD. As a non-Russian speaker, I am essentially spared the awful knowledge of just what has been done to this film.
At first viewing, unless you are an incredibly perspicacious viewer, this movie will be utterly baffling, partly because Tarkovsky has gone to such lengths to blur past and present. The same actress plays the protagonist's ex-wife in the present and mother in the past and the same actor plays the protagonist's son in the present and himself in the past. Sometimes the present is in color, the past in black & white; having established this expectation, Tarkovsky then reverses it on you later. Yet other times, dreams are in color and reality is in that tantalizing shade of sepia-color-black & white that Tarkovsky has used elsewhere (especially in "Stalker").
In fact, I was so baffled when I first saw the film that I simply gave up trying to follow the narrative and basked in the intense beauty of the film work. The dream sequence of the mother washing her hair, for instance, is utterly mesmerizing. The long shot that carries us from a table out to witness a burning building is breathtaking in all of the various reflections and reversals of angles it uses along the way. The final shot of an old women and two children walking into a field as the camera pulls slowly into deeper and deeper woods until finally the people are completely concealed by the trees often chokes me up, and I couldn't tell you why. Even the opening scene, simply a conversation on a fence by a field, is an exquisitely choreographed ballet of cinematography.
This most personal of Tarkovsky's intensely personal body of work is essentially biographical, but no self-respecting member of the Russian intelligentsia, at least not one of Tarkovsky's disposition, could ever justify such a self-indulgence as mere biography. Consequently, we never see the protagonist, save for his hand when he is ill and overhearing his voice. This erasure of his adult self, and the inclusion of newsreel footage of key historical moments during the protagonist's life, aim at creating a generalized biography for all of Russia. An especially striking moment shows news footage of Russian soldiers slogging muddily through a bog. As soon as one has the full impression that this is human life in a thoroughly degraded condition, a voiceover of one of Tarkovsky's father's poems talks of immortality, sublime beauty, the very loftiest of human sentiments on spirituality. The contrast is deliberate, but not ironic, and illustrates a triumph of the human spirit in even the most unlikely of places and times. Elsewhere, Tarkovsky makes a religion of elevating the mundane. In his book on his work, he admits that one of his techniques (he denies there is anything symbolic in his work) is to focus on an object for so long that the viewer inevitably begins to wonder at, and thereby increase the significance of it.
Perhaps if the subtitles were better, I'd better understand the film. As it is, the sheer intensity of the films gorgeousness never ceases to amaze me. The dream sequences alone are simply amazing. There have been other movies that might here or there exceed the Mirror in beauty for a moment or two ("Picnic at Hanging Rock" comes to mind), but I've never found one that can even come close to matching its consistency throughout. This is without question, the most visually moving film I have ever seen.