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Commissar (dir. Askoldov, 1967)
It’s
the Civil War and the Reds occupy a small, southern town. During a break between battles, commissar Vavilova
must give birth, for which she is sent to live with the large Jewish family
of a craftsman. The film was made
in 1967 and based on one of Vassily Grossman’s earliest short stories and
which Maxim Gorkii considered one of the best stories about the Civil War. After consideration by the studio’s artistic
council and a mass of objections that the director took under advisement,
the film was banned. The film was
denounced for its pro-Jewish stance at a time when the USSR was trying to
court Arab support in the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
No doubt the less-than-glowing representation of Red Terror and the
graphic depictions of Jewish suffering during the Holocaust motivated censors
to ban the film. This was done despite
testimony by the film’s two famous actors (Nonna Mordiukova [b. 1925] and
Rolan Bykov [1929-1998]) about its importance.
Director Aleksandr Askoldov [b. 1932] lost his job, was kicked out
of the party, and was exiled from Moscow for parasitism under the orders of
Comrade Grishin, head of the Moscow City Party Committee.
He succeeded in making a couple of short documentary films, but never
worked in feature films again. The
film was finally “taken off the shelf” after twenty years, shown at Moscow’s
International Film Festival in 1987, and distributed worldwide in 1988 [based
in part on the description at the “Nashe Kino” website. See http://www.nashekino.ru/data/films.all/2436.html]