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Navigating Treacherous Waters: Soviet Satire, National Identity, and Georgii Daneliia's Films of the 1970s

2009; Routledge; Volume: 29; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01439680903145587

1465-3451

Paula A. Michaels,

Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements I thank Grant Griffin for research assistance and the University of Iowa for an Arts and Humanities Initiative grant in support of research for this article. I presented an earlier version of this work at the 2002 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. I gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of my fellow panelists and the audience. Finishing touches on this article were made in the paradasical environment of the National Humanities Center, at which I was a fellow thanks to the generous funding of an American Council of Learned Societies's Fredrick Burkhardt Fellowship for Recently-Tenured Faculty. I appreciate the suggestions of John Givens and Louis-George Schwartz on a draft of this article. Notes Notes 1. F. T. Ermash, O povyshenii roli kino v kommunisticheskom vospitanii trudiashchikhsia v svete Postanovleniia TsK KPSS ‘O dal’neishem uluchshenii ideologicheskoi politiko-vospitatel’noi raboty’, Iskusstvo kino, 50 (August 1980), 10. 2. Ibid., 38. 3. Anna Lawton notes that under Ermash, Goskino put increasing emphasis on commercial films that had the potential to turn a profit for the state and meet consumer demand for entertainment. See Anna Lawton, Toward a new openness in Soviet cinema, 1976–87, in: Daniel J. Goulding (ed.), Post New Wave Cinema in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (Bloomington, IN, 1989), 4. 4. Elena Stishova, Fil’my smotriat nas, Komsomol'skaia pravda, March 19, 1978, 4. The article reported the results of a reader poll of the best films of 1977. The film Belyi Bim, chernoe ukho [White Bim, Black Ear] (Stalinslav Rostovskii, Gorky Film Studios; USSR, 1977) won the most votes among the 84,000 responses. 5. For a discussion of middle-class pessimism and its roots, see John Bushnell, The ‘New Soviet Man’ turns pessimist, in: Stephen F. Cohen, Alexander Rabinowitch and Robert Sharlet (eds), The Soviet Union since Stalin (Bloomington, IN, 1980), 179–199. 6. Daneliia has recently published two autobiographical books that offer amusing anecdotes about his life in the film industry and a litany of stories about Soviet film luminaries. Written in a breezy style for his Russian fan base, these writings unfortunately have little to say on themes under examination here. See Georgii Daneliia, Bezbiletnyi passazhir (Moscow, 2003), Tostuemyi p’et do dna: malenkie istorii, baiki kinorezhissera (Moscow, 2005). Daneliia republished these two works in one volume as Chito-grito (Moscow, 2006), and promises a new installment in the near future. 7. Born in Tbilisi in 1930, Daneliia belonged to a family with extensive connections to Georgia's already sophisticated film industry. His mother was Mosfilm screenwriter and director Meri Andzaparidze, his uncle was director Mikhail Chiaureli (1894–1974), and his aunt was famed actress Veriko Andzhaparidze. After graduating in Moscow as an architect in 1955, he took advanced courses in directing at the USSR's premier institution for training film-makers, VGIK, the All-Union State Institute of Film Studies. On Daneliia's life and oeuvre, in addition to his autobiographical works cited above, see Liudmila Pustynskaia, Portret rezhissera (Riazan’, 2004), 51–88; Isabelle Pastor and Jean Radvany, Dictionnaire des réalisateurs: Georgij Danelia, in Le Cinema Georgien (Paris, 1988), 159–160. 8. According to a 1976 speech by Ermash, ‘most movie makers have turned their attention to contemporary themes.’ E. Khoreva, Glavnyi geroi—sovremennik, Izvestiia, January 15, 1976, 5. An interview the next year with the head of Mosfilm Studios, N.K. Sizov, asserted that ‘films on contemporary themes and the Soviet way of life make up over half our output this year.’ V. Molchanov, Sovremennik krupnym planom: ‘Mosfilm’ v iubileinom godu, Pravda, March 17, 1977, 6. For a survey of bytoviki during the late 1970s and early 1980s, see Anna Lawton, Toward a new openness, 6–17. 9. On the work of two of these directors in the 1960s, see Alexander Prokhorov, Cinema of attraction versus narrative cinema: Leonid Gaidai's comedies and El’dar Riazanaov's satires of the 1960s, Slavic Review, 62 (Fall 2003), 455–472. A brief discussion of Daneliia's oeuvre with a focus on Kin-dza-dza (Mosfilm Studios; USSR, 1986) is found in Nicholas Galichenko, Glasnost—Soviet Cinema Responds (Austin, TX, 1991), 65–67. For a detailed examination of Riazanov's work, see David MacFadyen, The Sad Comedy of El’dar Riazanov: an introduction to Russia's most popular filmmaker (Montreal, 2003). Most scholarship to date on Soviet film in the Brezhnev era has focused on the work of art house mavericks such as Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) and Sergei Parajanov (1924–1990). See, for example, Vida T. Johnson, The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: a visual fugue (Bloomington, IN, 1994); Vlada Petric, Tarkovsky's dream imagery, Film Quarterly, 43 (Winter 1989–1990), 28–34; James Steffen, Parajanov's playful poetics: on the ‘director's cut’ of The Color of Pomegranates, Journal of Film and Video, 47 (Winter 1995–1996), 17–32; Valery Fomin, Kino i vlast’: sovetskoe kino, 1965–1985 gody (Moscow, 1996). Among English-language studies, the writings of Anna Lawton, Valery Golovskoy, and John Givens have explored popular Soviet cinema in the 1970s, with Lawton's survey of Soviet film from 1976 to 1986 being a particularly helpful foundation for the present study. John Givens, Vasilii Shukshin and the ‘audience of millions’: Kalina krasnaia and the power of popular cinema, The Russian Review, 58 (April 1999), 268–285; Valery S. Golovskoy, Behind the Soviet Screen: the motion picture industry in the USSR, 1972–82 (Ann Arbor, MI, 1986); Lawton, Toward a new openness. Russian students of film have paid considerably more attention to popular cinema of the 1970s, including comedies. See, for example, N. Zorkaia and E. Stishova, Sine ira et studio: rekviem staromu kino, Iskusstvo kino, 68 (April 1998), 103–111. Particularly vibrant during the 1960s and 1970s, Georgian cinema has received some scholarly attention. See Irine Kučuxidze, Ouvertures et débats: les années soixante à quatre-vingt, in Le Cinema Georgien, 77–81. 10. Afonia (Georgii Daneliia, Mosfilm; USSR, 1975). 11. Despite his enormous success at home, Daneliia remains almost unknown in the West. Only one of his films is available with English subtitles; Osenii marafon (Mosfilm Studios; USSR, 1979) came to the United States as part of a Soviet film festival that traveled to New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, after winning the Grand Prize at the 1979 Chamrousse Festival of Film Comedies and, more importantly, top honors at Thirteenth All-Union Film Festival in Frunze (present-day Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan). See Pravda, April 17, 1980, 6; David Ansen, Soviet films today, Newsweek, November 26, 1979, 106; Radvany, Le Cinema Georgien, 160. El’dar Riazanov is somewhat more well-known than Daneliia, as his Zabytaia melodiia dlia fleta [Forgotten Tune for the Flute] (Mosfilm Studios; USSR, 1988) enjoyed fairly wide release in the US. Until recently, Leonid Gaidai's work has been unheard of outside scholarly and émigré circles, but the release on DVD of subtitled versions of Operatsiia ‘Y’ i drugie prikliuchenii Shurkia [Operation ‘Y’ and Other Adventures of Shurik] (Mosfilm Studios; USSR, 1965), Kavkazskaia plennitsa, ili novye prikliucheniia Shurika [Prisoner of the Caucasus, or The New Adventures of Shurik] (Mosfilm Studios; USSR, 1966), Brilliantovaia ruka [Diamond Arm] (Mosfilm Studios; USSR, 1968), and Ivan Vasilevich meniaet professiiu [Ivan Vasilevich Changes His Profession] (Mosfilm Studios; USSR, 1973) may rectify that situation. 12. Information on ticket sales gathered from individual pages devoted to these 12 films on http://www.nashekino.ru (accessed March 13, 2009). These statistics only cover theatrical ticket sales and do not take into account the many millions of viewers who saw El’dar Riazanov's Ironiia sudby, ili s lekim parom (Mosfilm Studios; USSR, 1976) when it premiered on television. It was an enormous hit, selling 7 million tickets after tens of millions of viewers had already been seen on television. 13. Ermash, O povyshenii roli, 27. 14. Quote from Georgii Daneliia, Ego Velichestvo fil’m, Kinopanorama, 1 (1975), 285; Ia shagaiu po Moskve (Georgii Daneliia, Mosfilm Studios; USSR, 1963) won the best cinematography award and the Komsomol Award at the All-Union Film Festival held in Leningrad (present-day St. Petersburg) in 1964. It also won prizes at festivals in Milan, Rome, and Prague. Though in terms of viewers Daneliia would have to wait until Afonia to surpass the success of Serezha, with respect to critical acclaim Ia shagaiu po Moskve was Daneliia's biggest hit of the 1960s. See http://www.nashekino.ru/data.movies?id=6311 (accessed March 16, 2009). 15. On the positive hero in Stalinist literature, see Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: history as ritual (Chicago, 1981). 16. Geroi i ego zhiznennaia pozitsiia, Iskusstvo kino, 49 (April 1979), 37. Specifically, Sheshukov referred to the growing materialism among young people. He speaks quite directly to the argument at the heart of Bushnell's article on the growing pessimism in the Soviet middle class, when stating that ‘we have an enormous country, a huge population, which materially lives better and better, but a large portion of society still does not enjoy those luxuries, which have become fixtures in our films.’ To extend Bushnell's argument, not only were Soviet citizens increasingly comparing their material conditions unfavorably to those in the West and especially in Eastern Europe, but also to that which they saw on their own film screens. For the crux of Bushnell's assessments of the roots of popular discontent in the USSR, see Bushnell, The ‘New Soviet Man’, 179–180. 17. For figures on 1975 and 1978, see Ermash, O povyshenii roli, 20, 21. On 1981, see Valery S. Golovskoy, Cinema Art: portrait of a journal, Studies in Comparative Communism, 27 (Fall/Winter 1984), 222. 18. Boris Pavlenok, Vgliadyvaias’ v zhizn’, Iskusstvo kino, 50 (February 1980), 20. 19. Golovskoy, Cinema Art, 222; Moskva slezam ne verit (Vladimir Menshov, Mosfilm Studios; USSR, 1979). 20. Za vysokii uroven’ kinoiskusstva! Sovetskaia kul’tura, August 1, 1975, 1. It is this organization of film production according to thematic concerns that, as mentioned above, Tarkovsky criticized at the 1980 film-makers’ conference. 21. Ermash, O povyshenii roli, 13. 22. For an overview of socialist realism's introduction into the film industry, see Peter Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society from the Revolution to the Death of Stalin (New York, 2001), 143–164. As stated at the 1934 All-Union Congress of Soviet writers, socialist realism demands ‘the truthful, historically concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary development. Moreover, the truthfulness and historical concreteness of the artistic representation of reality must be linked with the task of ideological transformation and education of workers in the spirit of socialism.’ Quoted in Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, 143. 23. Pavlenok, Vgliadyvaias’ v zhizn’, 20. 24. Galina Kozhukhova, Ulybka nadezhdy, Literaturnaia gazeta, October 29, 1975, p. 8. 25. La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, Riama Film; Italy, 1960); 8½ (Federico Fellini, Cineriz; Italy, 1963). 26. For the comments of both Daneliia and Riazanov on the influence of Italian neorealism, see, respectively, ‘Novaia volna’–sorok let spustia, Iskusstvo kino, 69 (May 1999), 104–105, 118. On Daneliia's attraction to Fellini's works, see Daneliia, Ego Velichestvo fil’m, 290–292; Georgii Daneliia, Posle ‘Afoni’, Iskusstvo kino, 46 (January 1976), 89. 27. Zorkaia and Stishova, Sine ira et studio, 104. 28. Kozhukhova outlines the similarities between the protagonists in Kalina krasnaia (Vasilii Shukshin, Mosfilm Studios; USSR, 1973) and Afonia, released the following year. Kozhukhova, Ulybka nadezhdy, 8. This connection is discussed in detail in the next section. 29. Ignat’eva highlights the feeling of sadness that accompanies such laughs when directed at the sweet Katia. In such emotional juxtapositions lies the essence of Daneliia's lyric sensibility. See N. Ignat’eva, Na kraiu bedy, Iskusstvo kino, 45 (October 1975), 47. 30. Ironiia sudby, ili s lekim parom (El’dar Riazanov, Mosfilm Studios; USSR, 1976). 31. For the quote from Riazanov, see Troe smeiushchikhsia muzhchin, Literaturnaia gazeta, January 1, 1976, 8. For a review of Ironiia sudby that draws attention to the critique of modern architecture, but rightly emphasizes stark contrast between the uniformity of the setting and the individuality of the characters and their lives, see Evgenii Sergeev, Kakaia zhe eto komediia? Literaturnaia rossiia, January 16, 1976, 20. 32. Garazh (El’dar Riazanov, Mosfilm Studios; USSR, 1979). 33. Mimino (Georgii Daneliia, Mosfilm Studios, Gruzfilm Studios; USSR, 1977). 34. While here I emphasize the links that hold Daneliia's body of work together, he himself repeatedly stressed his efforts to avoid repetition. Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive. Using a variety of themes and settings, each work is unique, but a bittersweet tone and moral ambiguities thread their way through most of his films. On his own dread of repetition, see Daneliia, Ego Velichestvo fil’m, 280; Daneliia, Posle ‘Afoni’, 90. His desire not to repeat himself led him, after four films in the 1960s on contemporary themes, to make Ne goriui! (Mosfilm Studios; USSR, 1969), based on Claude Tillier's (1801–1844) Mon oncle Benjamin, and Sovsem propashchii (Mosfilm Studios; USSR, 1973), an adaptation of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Unlike Ne goriui!, which relocated the French tale to turn-of-the-century Georgia, Sovsem propashchii kept Twain's original mid-19th-century American setting, distancing Daneliia in both time and space from his earlier bytoviki. Given Twain's own ability to tell even the saddest stories with humor, it is not surprising that Daneliia was drawn to his work. For his specific remarks on his motivations in departing from the bytovik genre and his attraction to Mark Twain, see Daneliia, Ego Velichestvo fil’m, 302, 304. On the 1976 All-Union Film Festival, see V. Oliyanchuk, and Yu. Cherepanov, Do vstrechi v 10-om festivale, Izvestiia, April 27, 1976, 5. 35. Daneliia, Posle ‘Afoni’, 79, 82, 85. On Daneliia's creative processes, see Daneliia, Ego Velichestvo fil’m, 306. The quote comes from Daneliia, Ego Velichestvo fil’m, 315. 36. M. Istiushina, Georgii Daneliia: eshche odna kinokomediia, Trud, June 22, 1975, 4. 37. On Daneliia's creation of a world of his own imagination, see Daneliia, Posle ‘Afoni’, 84. Elsewhere, Daneliia elaborated on his lack of interest in the faithful recreation of the real world, saying that while it would be foolish not to take advantage of viewer interest in films about contemporary, everyday family life, the recreation of real world details cannot be a goal unto itself, existing ‘outside the artistic mission.’ See Daneliia, Ego Velichestvo fil’m, 295. For Daneliia's remarks on Afonia as an antihero and Afonia's profession, see Daneliia, Posle ‘Afoni’, 86. On the problem of alcoholism in Soviet society under Brezhnev, see Vladimir Treml, Alcohol in the USSR: a statistical study (Durham, NC, 1982). 38. Serezha (Georgii Daneliia and Igor Talankin, Mosfilm Studios; USSR, 1960). Starring famous actor and director Sergei Bondarchuk (1920–1994), Serezha won the Sovetskii ekran poll for best film of 1960 and was shown at the Cannes Film Festival. See http://www.nashekino.ru/data.movies?id=4894. 39. Oleg Aronson, Tsenzura: kinosimptomatika, Iskusstvo kino, 71 (August 2001), 78. 40. On Mimino and Osenii marafon, see, respectively, Pavlenok, Vgliadyvaias’ v zhizn’, 25, 26. 41. While most critics evaluated Afonia favorably, a critical review in Pravda spoke directly to the film's political implications. The author credited the film for denouncing the indifference of those around Afonia, but argued that the film-makers were too quick to forgive Afonia his weaknesses. See E. Gromov, Oblichaia bezdukhovnost’, Pravda, January 7, 1976, 6. 42. Iurii Bogomolov, K voprosu o vseobshchei kommunikabel’nosti, Sovetskii ekran, 19 (November 1975), 2, 3. Elsewhere, Bogomolov's conservative politics were made even clearer when he virulently denounced Georgian cinema as derivative and irrelevant. This opening shot of what was meant to be a campaign to reign in Georgia's notoriously independent film-makers set off a tidal wave of protests from Georgian artists that received the backing of the First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party, Eduard Shevardnadze. On this scandal, see Golovskoy, Cinema Art, 222–223. 43. While critics took Daneliia to task for making Katia too naïve and sweet, others found in her echoes of heroines in classic Russian literature. See Natal’ia Babochkina, Zhil na svete rytsar’ bednyi … Sovetskaia kul’tura, October 28, 1975, 4. 44. Kozhukhova, Ulybka nadezhdy, 8. 45. Konstantin Rudnitskii, Chastitsy bytiia, Iskusstvo kino, 50 (March 1980), 31–32. 46. In his review of Mimino, critic A. Troshin underscores the fairy tale qualities of the story. See A. Troshin, Mezhdu zemlei i nebom, Iskusstvo kino, 47 (December 1977), 21–23. This was, as noted above, nothing new in Daneliia's work. He himself saw precursors in his Ne goriui!, Tridtsat’ tri (Mosfilm Studios; USSR, 1965), and even Ia shagaiu po Moskve. See Daneliia, Ego Velichestvo fil’m, 313. In his review of Afonia, critic Bogomolov captured the overlap of fairy tales and comedies, writing ‘everything ends like in a fairy tale or a film comedy—happily.’ Bogomolov, K voprosu, 2. On fable and fairy tale themes and techniques in Georgian cinema, see Isabelle Pastor, La parabole, in Le Cinema Georgien, 87–91. Of course, though magical realism was a relatively favored technique in the Georgian school of film-making, in Soviet cinema Georgians by no means monopolized it. An obvious use of magical realism in Russian cinema during the Brezhnev era is Ironiia sudby, ili s lekim parom, the magical qualities of which were noted by critics at the time. See, for example, Sergeev, Kakaia zhe eto komediia? 20. 47. Troshin, Mezhdu zemlei i nebom, 31. 48. The literature on the evolution of Soviet nationality policy is vast, but some of the most useful works are Lowell Tillett, The Great Friendship: Soviet historians on the non-Russian nationalities (Chapel Hill, NC, 1969); Helene Carrere d’Encausse, The Nationality Question in the Soviet Union and Russia (Cambridge, MA, 1995); Ronald Grigor Suny, Revenge of the Past: nationalism, revolution, and the collapse of the Soviet Union (Stanford, CA, 1993); Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations: ethnographic knowledge and the making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca, NY, 2005); Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: nations and nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–39 (Ithaca, NY, 2001). 49. Rudnitskii, Chastitsy bytiia, 34. In his evaluation of the journal Iskusstvo kino, Golovskoy credits Rudnitskii's review with being one of only a handful of insightful contributions to the journal during the late 1970s and early 1980s. See Golovskoy, Cinema Art, 224. 50. Lawton, Toward a new openness, 12. 51. Rudnitskii, Chastitsy bytiia, 43. An American observer of the Soviet film scene also failed to recognize the indirect, but clear political implications of Osenii marafon, describing it as ‘rigorously apolitical.’ See Ansen, Soviet films today, 106. 52. Zorkaia and Stishova, Sine ira et studio, 110. 53. On the Iaroslavl premier, see Daneliia, Posle ‘Afoni’, 84. According to Sovetskii ekran, 82.7% of the poll's respondents were under age 30, with more than half of them in the range of ages 18 to 24. Konkurs ‘75, Sovetskii ekran, 20 (May 1976), 19. 54. Piotr Shepotinnik, V rozovom oreole liriki, Iskusstvo kino, 46 (April 1976), 67. 55. In his recent memoir Daneliia sheds light on the process by which this unclear ending emerged. Daneliia never liked Afonia's original, relentlessly dreary ending. In that version, a policeman asks Afonia for his documents and sees, along with the viewer, Afonia's smiling, carefree visage on the passport photo. Looking up, he is faced with the empty, deadened eyes of a much-changed man. Daneliia wanted to bring Katia into the film's conclusion, but felt that to have them simply meet would ‘destroy the narration's logic with a banal happy ending.’ By having them meet in Afonia's imagination, Daneliia preserved something of the original ending's darkness, but left the protagonist on a humanizing, hopeful note. Daneliia, Chito-grito, 555. 56. Georgii Daneliia, Kto zhe takoi Afonia, Sovetskii ekran, 20 (June 1976), 9. 57. Daneliia, Ego Velichestvo fil’m, 315, Ignat’eva, Na kraiu bedy, 48, Shepotinnik, V rozovom oreole, 67. Prior to the release of Afonia, interviewer L. Gurevich framed his conversation with Daneliia with a description of the lyrical tone that unified Daneliia's films as full of ‘warmth, softness, sincerity,’ qualities that one finds in Afonia's Katia, but certainly not in Afonia himself. See Daneliia, Ego Velichestvo fil’m, 286. 58. Rudnitskii, Chastitsy bytiia, 34. 59. Pustynskaia, Portret rezhissera, 4. That Pustynskaia notes what in the U.S. would be called Daneliia's ‘hyphenated’ identity suggests recognition of the rich, hybridized ethnic dimension of his work, yet she does not foreground this theme in her subsequent analysis. 60. Daneliia, Ego Velichestvo fil’m, 296–301. 61. Daneliia stated that, in particular, he admired Khabarda [Out of the Way] (Mikhail Chiaureli, Sakhkinmretsvi Studios; USSR, 1931) and Poteriannyi rai [Lost Heaven] (Davit Rondeli, Sakhkinmretsvi Studios; USSR, 1937). He greatly respected the Russian film Okraina [Outskirts] (Boris Barnet, Mezhrabpromfil’m Studios; USSR, 1933), his favorite film. See Troe smeiushchikhsia muzhchin, 8; Pustynskaia, Portret rezhissera, 56. On Barnet, see Denise J. Youngblood, Movies for the Masses: popular cinema and Soviet society in the 1920s (New York, 1992), 125–138. On Chiaureli and Rondeli, see Daneliia, Ego Velichestvo fil’m, 290. On contemporary Georgian influences, see Daneliia, Ego Velichestvo fil’m, 296. At the 1980 All-Union Conference of Filmmakers, Daneliia drew attention to Melodii Veriiskogo kvartala [Melody of Veriiskii Quarter] (Georgii Shengelaia, Qartuli Pilmi; USSR, 1973), one of very few films to carry on the great tradition of Soviet musical comedies in the vein of the beloved Volga Volga (Grigori Aleksandrov, Mosfilm Studios; USSR, 1938). See F.T. Ermash, O povyshenii roli, 30. 62. Put’ k prichalu (Georgii Daneliia, Mosfilm Studios; USSR, 1962). 63. Daneliia, Ego Velichestvo fil’m, 299. 64. With reference to Katia, this idea is suggested in Babochkina, Zhil na svete, 4. 65. The quote comes from Daneliia, Posle ‘Afoni’, 89. For Kozhukhova, the difference between Kalina krasnaia's protagonist Egor Prokudin and Afanasii Borshchov was that the latter was ‘not a rich and sharp personality. More accurately, he still had no personality.’ Both films, however, explore issues of social alienation and the potential for redemption with the help of a patient, loving woman able to see the good in a troubled man. See Kozhukhova, Ulybka nadezhdy, 8. On Daneliia's admiration of Shukshin as a humorist, see Troe smeiushchikhsia muzhchin, 8. Shukshin's influence was far-reaching, having a profound effect on many film-makers besides Daneliia. See, for example, remarks by Sergei Bodrov in Geroi i ego zhiznennaia pozitsiia, 43. On Kalina krasnaia, see Givens, Vasilii Shukshin. 66. Chiaureli's mark is on that film not by the example of his work, but through ‘his stories about the bazaar, which he grew up adjacent to, about his father and mother, and about the lavish events in his own life.’ Daneliia, Ego Velichestvo fil’m, 290. 67. Of course, love of one's homeland is not uniquely Georgian and his emphasis on home as a haven may be part of Shukshin's influence on Daneliia. In describing Kalina krasnaia, Pavlenok observed that ‘love for that little piece of land on which one is born awakens deep feelings of patriotism, cleanses the soul, and makes a person stronger. Shukshin revealed this wonderfully.’ These words could just have easily been written to describe Mimino. While the patriotism to which Pavlenok refers was in his eyes of a Soviet stripe, in the case of Shukshin and Daneliia, their orientation to Russia and Georgia respectively perhaps suggests otherwise. For Pavlenok's remarks, see Pavlenok, Vgliadyvaias’ v zhizn’, 23. 68. On Kavkazskaia plennitsa, see Paula A. Michaels, Prisoners of the Caucasus: from colonial to post-colonial narrative, Russian Studies in Literature, 40 (Spring 2004), 52–77. 69. Daneliia, Posle ‘Afoni’, 85. 70. On the mutual impact of Italian neorealism and ethnographic film, see Anna Grimshaw, The Ethnographer's Eye: ways of seeing in modern anthropology (New York, 2001), 71–78ff.