Andrei Smirnov Movies

Director Valery Todorovsky's somber drama stars Oleg Yankovsky as Mitya, a middle-aged university professor whose wife dies suddenly. In the course of going through her possessions, he comes upon letters proving that she has been having an affair with another man (Sergei Garmash) for the past 15 years. Consumed with grief and jealousy, Mitya seeks out and confronts his wife's former lover, and in the process of coming to grips with his wife's infidelity, nearly destroys himself and his relationship with his teenage son. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie Guide

During the 1920s, Russian ballerina Olga Spesivtseva created the definitive version of Giselle. This Russian biopic tells her story. Though she was once one of the most famous ballerinas in the world, Spesivtseva, died alone and forgotten in a U.S. mental institution in 1991 at the age of 96. Olga began her illustrious career as a teenager. While in ballet school she became the lover of an important arts journalist. He was much older and after a few years she took a new lover. Unfortunately, Olga was unlucky in love and was frequently attracted to men who turned out to be homosexuals. As the years passed, she found it increasingly difficult to control her paranoid delusions and had to be institutionalized. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This Russian psychological drama examines the bitter feelings of World War II veterans confronting the coldness of the postwar world. Four veterans, who have not seen one another since the war, meet for the funeral of a fifth. They discover that though they are all just the same, the world has changed. For most of the film, they discuss the various changes that irk them. In one scene, when one of them has a heart attack, they ask a man with a car to drive them to the hospital with the sick man. The driver refuses in a callous way, and they are so infuriated that they beat him up. This film was very well received by the older generation when it was first screened, and it would appear that it accurately describes the discontents of a whole generation. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Two medium-length films by first-time directors Larisa Shepitko and Andrei Smirnov were exhibited together under the title Natshalo Nevedomogo Veka in 1987. As separate 38-minute works, they were each completed around 1967 and were kept on the shelf by censors for reasons which are unclear even today. Both were produced by The Moscow Studio for Creative Experiment. The first, Angel, was made by Andrei Smirnov and is based on a short story by Yuri Olesha. It concerns the 1920 journey of a group of refugees fleeing the disruptions of the fighting between the White and Red Russians in the civil war. In the story, when the train runs off the tracks, a group of determined survivors get it running again with a great deal of pluck and daring. When they are captured by the White Russian calling himself "Angel of God," despite their sufferings at his hands, they somehow maintain their dignity. The second, Rodina Elektrichevstva, by Larisa Shepitko, is based on a story by Andrei Platonov. Variety's Yung says of this film: "[it] turns the classic boy-meets-tractor plot into stirring cinema." In it, a mechanically skilled boy transforms a useless old motorcycle into a much-needed irrigation pump, answering the drought-stricken Turkmenistan villagers' prayers briefly. Larisa Shepitko, whose film Voskhozhdeniye (Ascent) won a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1977, and a number of other awards at lesser festivals, was considered one of the most promising Soviet directors. She died in a car crash in 1979. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide