Dovzhenko Alexander Petrovich had a huge impact on Soviet cinema. His name is called a film production studio. But he was not only a director and playwright. In his homeland, in Ukraine, he is also known as a writer, poet and publicist. Dovzhenko tried his hand at the visual arts. But he achieved the greatest success in the field of film dramaturgy. He wrote plays, short stories and novels in the style of socialist realism.
Alexander Dovzhenko had a difficult fate, which we will talk about in this article. Caressed by the Soviet regime, a laureate of two Stalin Prizes and People's Artist of the RSFSR, he had in the past experience in fighting on the other side of the barricades with the Red Guards. Few knew about this fact. But the majority of educated people in the Ukrainian SSR read his "opus magnum" - "Enchanted Desna." And his most landmark work in the field of cinema was the film "Earth."
Childhood
According to the record in the metric book of the Trinity Cathedral of the town of Sosnitsa (now it is the district center of the Chernihiv region, Ukraine), Alexander Dovzhenko was born on Vyunishche farm on August 29, 1894. According to the new style, this corresponds to September 10th.
Father and mother were illiterate peasants. The father of the future director, Pyotr Semenovich, was a descendant of the Poltava Chumaks who settled in Sosnitsa around the middle of the eighteenth century. The genealogical roots of the Dovzhenko clan can be traced back to the 1760s. It is known that the great-grandfather of the writer, Taras Grigorievich, was an excellent storyteller. This gift was inherited by little Sashko.
The family owned a large land allotment, but lived poorly, because the soil was barren. Of the fourteen children born to working age, only three survived: Sashko himself, his brother Trifon and sister Polina. Frequent deaths struck the director’s memory. “We always had funerals and cries in our house,” he later wrote. And about his mother’s poetic soul, he said: “She was born for songs, but she cried all her life, seeing her off forever.”
Training
At the elementary school in Sosnitsa, Alexander Dovzhenko showed excellent results and a thirst for knowledge. Therefore, the father decided to continue his son's education. He sold the seventh of his land so that Sashko could get an education in elementary school, and then in 1911 enter the pedagogical institute in Glukhov. Young Dovzhenko chose this university not because he wanted to become a teacher, but because they gave a scholarship of one hundred and twenty rubles a year. At the institute, the future writer got acquainted with Ukrainian literature, which was banned in this Russified part of the empire. After graduation, Dovzhenko was sent to Zhytomyr to teach.
Writer and his time
The beginning of the First World War, Alexander Dovzhenko, whose brief biography is described in this article, was perceived as a patriot. He enthusiastically threw flowers on the soldiers marching to the war and only a few years later began to look at those who returned from the front "with shame and longing." In the same period, Dovzhenko was approaching the Ukrainian national liberation movement.
He also takes the February Revolution of 1917 very enthusiastically. He later describes the disappointment in it succinctly: "I entered the wrong door into the revolution." When the civil war broke out, Dovzhenko volunteered for the UNR army, and together with the Third Serdyutsky Regiment stormed the Kiev Arsenal. After eleven years, the director will depict these events in the film, ignoring the fact that he himself took part in them from the Black Gaydamaks. With the coming to power of Skoropadsky, Dovzhenko retreats to Zhytomyr. Returning to Kiev, he becomes a student of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts.
"Red" biography period
Already in the twenties, Alexander Dovzhenko became disillusioned with national-bourgeois ideas. Acquaintance with the writer Vasily Blakytny led him to the world of Marxism. At least, as the director himself wrote in his autobiography from 1939. He joined the ranks of the Borotbists. The members of this party then joined the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine. This political affiliation allowed Dovzhenko to occupy prominent posts: Secretary of the Kiev Department of Education, head of the Department of Arts. He worked at the Plenipotentiary Representation of the Ukrainian SSR in Poland (1921) and the Trade Representation of the Ukrainian Republic in Germany. Artist Dovzhenko used his stay in Berlin to take lessons from expressionist Willy Haeckel. In Germany, the artist-diplomat married Varvara Krylova. But, as it turned out, being a borotbist was a black mark for the new government. Dovzhenko is recalled to Ukraine and deprived of a membership card.
World of cinema
Since 1923, Dovzhenko settled in Kharkov - the first capital of Soviet Ukraine. With the help of V. Blakytny, he gets a job as a cartoonist in the newspaper Vesti VUTsVK, and also illustrates books (in particular, The Blue Echelons of Peter Panch). During this period, he closely converged with the literary circle "Garth", which was focused on the cinema.
Alexander Dovzhenko, whose films will find admirers much later, had neither education nor experience in directing. Nevertheless, he begins to work at a film factory in Odessa. One of his first works was the outspoken propaganda "Red Army" and the painting "Beyond the Forest."
Dovzhenko tries herself as a screenwriter. In this field, he creates a play for children called "Vasya the Reformer."
On the set of “Berries of Love” Dovzhenko meets Danila Demutsky, and this director’s tandem with the cameraman is set for many years. Together they create many interesting tapes.
Dovzhenko: filmography
The first work to be recognized was Zvenigora. In this 1928 painting, the master combined lyrics and satire with a revolutionary epic. The film "Earth" (1930) almost immediately after the release was withdrawn from the box office.
But the picture "Ivan" (1932) brought him closer to Stalin. They correspond, a little later the director receives an audience with the dictator. In 1939, Dovzhenko, at the direct order of Stalin, removed the “custom-made” film “Shchors”. For this tape, the director immediately received the highest award.
Since 1934, Dovzhenko settled in Moscow and pays much attention to literary work. During the Second World War, he shot several documentaries, wrote essays and articles.
Opal
The proximity to power (especially to Stalin) has a downside. In 1943, Dovzhenko wrote the script for the film "Ukraine on Fire." However, quite unexpectedly, at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (B.), This work was subjected to defamation. The script received extremely negative feedback from Stalin.
In 1944, director Alexander Dovzhenko conceived the lyrical film Life in Bloom. As if mixed up, the authorities demanded that he redo the picture for the sake of ideological requirements. Dovzhenko tried as best he could. As a result, a frankly weak film called “Michurin,” full of propaganda patterns, was released.
An even more sad fate befell the last work of the director. State order "Farewell America!" was conceived based on the work of the deserter from the United States to the USSR Annabella Bucur. When the shooting was approaching the final stage, an order came from the Kremlin to stop work on the picture.
Death in a foreign land
The first heart attack Alexander Dovzhenko received during the creation of "Michurin." Toward the end of his life, he taught at VGIK. He dreamed of returning to Ukraine, but the authorities did not give him permission to do so.
Dovzhenko conceived a landmark work - to write the Golden Gate novel. He also had a creative plan to write a script for the painting “A Poem about the Sea”. On the first shooting day of this film, he died of a heart attack. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.