Ivan Lapikov Movies

This patriotic story is set in 1941 at harvest time in a bucolic Russian village -- someone is in the process of setting up a pole to support the loudspeaker that will transmit radio broadcasts, another is making plans for the coming spring, and a family of father, mother (pregnant with her third child), and elderly grandmother are taking care of their modest farm. The next thing anyone knows, a man on horseback arrives to announce that the Germans have invaded the Soviet Union, and before dreams of the future can be realized, the men of the village have been drafted and are heading out to battle. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Tormented by his many high ideals and equally numerous failures to live up to them, an elderly Russian nobleman reminisces about his life while travelling on a ferryboat, as he listens to his fellow passengers telling stories about their religious faith. When he was a boy, he attended a military academy. He was so filled with high ideals and belief in the sacred person of the Tsar even then that he slapped a superior officer who, in his view, had betrayed those ideals. As a man, his troubled conscience led him to follow the monastic ideal and become a priest. However, his sexual urges were so overwhelming, even though they did not cause public trouble, that he shaved his beard and pretended that he never took holy orders. When an affair with a childhood girlfriend offers nothing in the way of consolation, he heads for Siberia, where he serves the peasantry as a teacher and a doctor. This film, commemorating the 150th year after the birth of Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), is based on his last short story. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The desperate battles of Soviet troops during the German invasion of Russia are chronicled in this epic film. The effort to defend the country is shown to unify the people and the soldiers, quelling their doubts about the regime. This film won the State Prize of the Russian Federation in 1977. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi