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The Ascent
Восхождение
1977 · Film · 110 min
Directed by Larisa Shepitko
During a freezing WWII winter, two Soviet partisans on a mission to gather food contend with the temperature, the occupying Germans, and their own psyches.
3 positivefrom 3 commenters
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5 comments on Hacker News
Soy Cuba contains lush and gorgeous B&W cinematography. The film opens up with the camera flying over the waters of Cuba; the reflection of the water is glistening in a way unlike other films. I believe they used an X-ray film strip to achieve this shot.
Mikhail Kalatozov has included another impressive shot at the end of his previous work, "The Cranes Are Flying." (Palme d'Or at Cannes 1958) The camera follows the protagonist, then gets seamlessly lifted up by a crane to depict the entire street parading.
While Soviet-era films does not have much exposure in the English-speaking world, there are so many gems, critically and technically. The filmmakers were acutely aware of great filming techniques.
Also check out:
Walking the Streets of Moscow (1964) - B-roll scenery contains another lush reflection of the Moscow waters
Ivan the Terrible (1944/1958) - Eisenstein is an ardent practitioner of the montage, and prefers to static camera shots. However, his compositions are very imaginative, and there is no shot you want to miss. His film also briefly experiments with color, and he exploits colored lighting to emphasize the characters' psyche.
Anything by Andrei Tarkovsky - Tarkovsky is indisputably a master of Russian cinema after Eisenstein. He often shoots in nature, but no director shoots with such rich texture of the mud. His long shots emphasizes the bleakness inherent in the Russian psyche.
The Ascent (1977) - Set in WWII, the film shows the resistance escaping the Nazis covered in snow and panting in the cold. Great snow photography.
Hard to Be a God (2013) - A sci-fi story on the immigration of humans to a different planet, the colonizers inhabit the inhospitable environment. Like Tarkovsky, the slow dragging in the mud conveys the dreary lives.
These are recommendations I came up off the top of my head relating to cinematography, but there are definitely many more to appreciate.
"The Ascent" is one of the greatest movies I've ever watched, the one with which I even began to somewhat identify myself with. By the way, it is based on a groundbreaking novella "Sotnikov" by Vasily Bykov [0] which is interesting to read in it's own sense.
Leonid Maryagin is "Леонид Марягин" in Russian. Here's his Wikipedia page [1] and here are the torrent links to the "Public enemy - Bukharin" [2] [3].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasil%E2%80%99_Bykaw
[1] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9B%D0%B5%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B4_%D0%9C%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%8F%D0%B3%D0%B8%D0%BD
[2] http://nnm-club.me/forum/viewtopic.php?t=570915
[3] http://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=571151
Thanks for suggesting to watch "I Am Cuba", I definitely will.
"The Cranes Are Flying" is an amazing movie, I totally agree. I think it is a great illustration of an idea that morally-strong and courageous people are the first ones to die in hard times.
If you like "The Ascent", I wonder if you'd also be fond of her other movies, first of all, "Ty i ya" (1971) [1] (The film has it's fair share of problems but I find the main idea behind it really powerful). I'd also recommend you to watch movies made by her husband, Elem Klimov, at least, "Come and See" [2] and "Rasputin" [3].
As about "Come and See", for me it has a somewhat personal theme: when Nazis were exterminating the people of his village near Ula, the grandfather of my ex has survived only by chance. His mother, while holding him, has jumped into the ravine before the bullets hit them.
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067894/
[2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091251/
[3] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081991/
Good list. Yeah, I really like Shepitko's "The Ascent".
Kalatozov is really good. The Cranes Are Flying (Russian: Летят журавли) has really beautiful cinematography.
Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Cuba is outstanding for cinematography. You will probably not enjoy its propaganda message, and Cubans didn't like, but cinematography wise it is a beautiful film.
There are some good Russian movies that are somewhat unknown to the Western public. For example, I wonder if any of you have seen these:
Georgiy Daneliya. "Kin-dza-dza!" (1986) [1]
Larisa Shepitko. "The Ascent" (1977) [2]
Leonid Maryagin. "Public enemy - Bukharin" (1990) [3]
Aleksey German. "Twenty Days Without War" (1977) [4]
Aleksey German. "Khrustalyov, My Car!" (1998) [5]
Stanislav Rostotskiy. "A zori zdes tikhie" (1972) [6]
Mikhail Kalatozov. "True Friends" (1954) [7]
Mikhail Kozakov. "Pokrov Gates" (1982) [8]
Georgiy Daneliya. "Osenniy marafon" (1979) [9]
Elem Klimov. "Come and See" (1985) [10]
Victor Ginzburg. "Generation П" (2011) [11]
Sergei Gerasimov. "The Journalist" (1967) [12]
(this one is Polish) Juliusz Machulski. "Sexmission" (1984) [13]
(also Polish) Krzysztof Kieslowski. "The Decalogue" (1989) [14]
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091341/
[2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075404/
[3] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100891/
[4] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074447/
[5] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0156701/
[6] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068161/
[7] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047650/
[8] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083465/
[9] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079679/
[10] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091251/
[11] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0459748/
[12] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062524/
[13] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088083/
[14] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092337/