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Commissar Streaming.
Movie Title: Commissar Commissar is available for streaming or downloading. |
Based on the legend “In The Town Of Berdichev” by the stout Ukrainian Jewish writer Vasily Grossman (author of “Life And Fate”), this film was originally shot in 1967. It was “shelved” for over 20 years by being denied funds for its completion, finally coming to light in the Glasnost era.
It concerns a woman commissar (military political officer) named Vavilova in a Red Army cavalry unit during the Russian Civil War of 1918-20. She finds herself pregnant to a fellow officer who has recently been killed, and is billeted with a terrible Jewish tinker, Magazannik, his wife and six kids. From her initial hostility to her current surroundings, she eventually becomes alive to in the life of the family, before giving birth to her child - and then disappearing to join the first Red Army unit that passes her blueprint.
It’s not difficult to understand why the Soviet authorities didn’t want this film to be seen. Besides the fact that Grossman wrote the recent fable (he died in 1964 after falling from favour when he submitted “Life And Fate” for publication in 1960), the ambivalence between her roles as agent of the Revolution and mother of her child would have been more than the Soviet censors could have tolerated.
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This is one of the most spellbinding war films that I have ever seen.
Komissar is a movie very dear to me. I watched this for the first time in my life in November 1989, in Romania. I was quite young, Ceaucescu had his last Communist Party Congress - he was to topple with a (literal) bang soon, in December 1989. I smooth remember how timorous I was that the Communist censors allowed this wonderful anti-Communist movie into the cinemas… it must have been ignorance rather than courage.
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This 1967 movie was banned during its possess time, the director Askoldov never made a movie again, his very life was in disaster for a while. Even as behind as 1987, in full-blown perestroika, he had troubles to salvage his movie out of the censors’ hands. Finally he could do it, and the movie was a triumph with international critics and audiences.
If you contain this is an passe, half-boring movie, the main quality of which would be that it was audacious for its believe time, contemplate again. This is a poetic masterpiece which endures fantastically well the test of time. If you only like American movies, avoid this. If you’re reasonably cultivated movies-wise, if you like Dreyer, Fellini, Carne, Kadar, and the like, by all means, do not allow yourselves to die before watching this movie. Askoldov, the director of one and only serious movie, is on the same level with the ones named above. Apologies for the apparently shrill sale pitch, but yes, this is a one-of-a-kind masterwork. It is deep, tragic, subtle, it deals with the ethics and chaos of war, without the gore nor the guts. I would space this movie on the same pedestal as I region Kadar’s (also novel) The Shop on Main Street.
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A few words about this particular edition, which made me throw the ancient, worn-out VHS tape to the garbage: it is amazing as well. Everything is ideal. (OK, the English translation could have been better, perhaps.) The transfer, both in its video and audio aspects (terrific soundtrack from a young Schnittke!!) made me experience this, on a plasma TV, like I was wait on in the cinema.
What was even more unexpectedly fine and noble was the second DVD, containing special features. I have never seen, not even in my many beloved Criterion DVDs, such a qualified, relevant, well-made bunch of interviews - with priceless historical context, contemporary documentation and the like. Watching the special features was almost as riveting as re-watching the movie itself.
Do not seize this in any other edition. This is cinema at its factual best, offered in an ideal packaging.
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