The Commissar

The Commissar (1967)

Комиссар

Klavdia Vavilova, a Red Army cavalry commissar, is waylaid by an unexpected pregnancy. She stays with a Jewish family to give birth and is softened somewhat by the experience of family life.

Date of release
1967-06-06
TMDB
6.5 / 10 (43)
Runtime
1h 50m
Genres
Drama, War
Director
Aleksandr Askoldov

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 1. Including: Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize

Commissar is a 1967 Soviet film directed by Aleksandr Askoldov. The film stars Nonna Mordyukova as Klavdiya Vavilova, a commissar in the Russian Civil War, who falls pregnant and is made to live with the family of a poor Jewish blacksmith.

Production

Askoldov had previously been a student of philology at the Moscow State University and then a bureaucrat at the Ministry of Culture. In 1964, Askoldov left his position at the Ministry of Culture and enrolled in a two-year programme for directors and screenwriters. Commissar was his debut feature.

Askoldov submitted the screenplay for the film to Gorky Studio in 1965 and pitched the film as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The screenplay was approved and passed on to Goskino officials, who demanded revisions. Askoldov revised the screenplay in July 1966.

The then-head of Goskino, Aleksei V. Romanov, privately informed Askoldov that the film could be released if the characters' nationality was changed and the Holocaust sequence removed from the film; Askoldov refused to do so. Romanov also requested changes to Vavilova's characterization; although Askoldov promised to enact the changes, he did not do so.

Filming took place in 1966. Although the story is set in Berdychev, Askoldov chose to shoot the film in Kamianets-Podilskyi, with a few scenes shot in Tsuriupynsk. Askoldov struggled to find Jews willing to participate in the film — the Jews in Kamianets-Podilskyi refused to participate in the shooting of the film, so he searched in the city of Khotyn for Jews who were willing to shoot scenes.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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