Grigori Kozintsev

  • Grigori Kozintsev & Iosif Shapiro – Korol Lir AKA King Lear (1971)

    1961-1970ClassicsDramaGrigori KozintsevIosif ShapiroUSSRWilliam Shakespeare

    King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear’s loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about his faithful son Edgar. Madness and tragedy befall both ill-starred fathers.Read More »

  • Grigori Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg – S.V.D. – Soyuz velikogo dela AKA Union of the Great Cause (1927)

    1921-1930DramaGrigori KozintsevLeonid TraubergSilentUSSR

    (imdb)
    A failed Russian Revolution succeeded magnificently on screen., 3 June 1999
    Author: Theodore J. van Houten from Haamstede, 4328 ZG 1 Netherlands

    S.V.D. was released in August 1927. A beautiful costume drama, it is on the other hand a somewhat expressionistic, poetical fantasy. Its photography and images are more important than its desired political contents. The script, written by the inspiring historian Yuri Tinyanov (director Leonid Trauberg [1901-1990]could speak about Tinyanov for hours) supplied a failed love story, a political intrigue involving two czars, and a traveling circus background. The picture glorifies the 1825 ‘Decembrists’ uprisal: officers in the imperial Russian army are fed up with the new czar’s autocracy. Read More »

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