Oleg Yankovsky Movies
- 1991
Malcolm McDowell, with shock-white hair and a death-mask visage, delivers a powerful and intense performance in this British/Russian co-production, directed by Karen Shakhnazarov -- and also starring popular Russian actor Oleg Yankovsky. McDowell plays a schizophrenic patient in a Russian hospital named Timofeyev who is convinced that he was Yakov Yurovsky, the man who executed Tsar Nicholas II and the royal family during the Russian Revolution in 1918. Timofeyev tries to convince the doctors that he is cured of his delusions, but a new doctor, Smirnov (Oleg Yankovsky), thinks that there is something hidden beneath the surface of Timofeyev's delusions that has yet to be revealed. Smironov becomes as obsessive as Timofeyev in attempting to uncover the truth of the assassination. When Smironov travels to Sverdlovsk, where the Tsar was killed in 1918, he and Timofeyev both proceed to re-live the tragic murders. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Malcolm McDowell, Oleg Yankovsky, (more)
- 1977
The moral consequences of character are the perennial focus for this film's director Ilia Averbakh, who trained and worked as a physician before becoming a filmmaker. In this psychological drama, Zina (Svetlana Smirnova) is an extremely selfish and manipulative adolescent. She befriends her schoolteacher Vera Ivanova (Irinia Kutpschenko) and shares certain confidences with her, such as reading Vera's love-letters. When she inevitably has a falling-out with Vera, Zina effortlessly and thoughtlessly causes Vera much pain by using the information she has gained to attack her where it hurts. Oblivious to the harm she has caused, Zina travels with her schoolmates to summer camp. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Irina Kupchenko, Svetlana Smirnova, (more)
- 1976
Because of many good deeds the Finns did for Lenin prior to the Russian Revolution, their persistent desire for independence from Russia was permitted. In one instance, Finns helped Lenin escape from the police during a journey he took in 1907. Lenin's affection for the country was reinforced during his frequent journeys through Finland. This historical epic, featuring both documentary and fictional footage of the founding Soviet leader, chronicles the Finnish struggle for independence and explores the basis for trust between Finland and the Soviet Union. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kirill Lavrov, Margarita Terekhova, (more)
- 1986
The setting for this off-beat drama of love and jealousy is the Pushkin Poetry Festival in Boldino. Liosha (Oleg Yankovsky) and his wife Tania (Tatiana Drubich) are walking through the plush forest around Boldino when a mysterious figure pops up from behind a tree and asks the couple a question on an esoteric point of Pushkin scholarship. From that strange beginning, the man, whose name is Klimov (Alexander Abdulov), starts to ease himself into the couple's private space, and trouble ensues. Complementing this story is the festival itself, enactments of Pushkin's works, and emotional debates among the festival-goers over the meaning of his poetry. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Oleg Yankovsky, Tatyana Drubich, (more)
- 1992
Junya Sato directs this historical epic about an Japanese sailor shipwrecked in Russia. Set during the Edo period (1600-1868, an era of great international isolation when going abroad was an offense punishable by death), the film centers on ship captain Daikokuya Kodayu (Ken Ogata), who, while transporting a load of rice from Ise to Edo (pre-modern Tokyo), gets blown off course. Nine months later, he and his ragged crew land on Kamchatka Peninsula. There they brave Siberian winters, and Russia's labyrinthine bureaucracy. Along the way, Kodayu learns Russian and befriends a local scholar (Oleg Yankovskii), who accompanies him on his exhausting journey across the tundra to St. Petersburg where he meets Catherine the Great. Ten years later, when he returns to Japan, he is immediately jailed. Will the hero be put to death? ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ken Ogata, Toshiyuki Nishida, (more)
- 1987
This dramatic tragedy is taken from the short story by Leo Tolstoy. Vasili (Oleg Yankovsky) recalls his past love affair and marriage with Lisa (Irina Selezneva). When a piano-playing gypsy gives Lisa music lessons, her husband becomes enraged and tries to kill him. Lisa is accidentally murdered, and the court acquits the distraught and lonely husband for his crime of passion. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Oleg Yankovsky, Alexandr Trofimov, (more)
- 2002
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
- Starring:
- Oleg Yankovsky, Sergei Garmash, (more)
- 1989
In this gentle comedy, Mado (Marianne Groves) is the letter-carrier for her small town, and she is constantly on the lookout for a good Catholic man who shares her enthusiasm for sunrises. She even puts up posters on trees and walls advertising her interest. The townspeople make fun of her, but she isn't discouraged. Her best friend is Germaine (Isabelle Gelinas), a pretty girl whose moral standards are not as strict as Mado's. When a film director (Oleg Yankovsky) arrives in town, everyone is agog, but Mado is particularly keen to find out about him. However, it seems that he has his eye on Germaine, and he isn't really in her league anyhow. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marianne Groves, Oleg Yankovsky, (more)
- 1993
Writer/director Yolande Zauberman's touching tale of the friendship between two boys, one Jewish and the other Catholic, in pre-World War Two Poland. ~ Nicole Gagne, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Roma Alexandrovich, Sasha Yakovlev, (more)
- 1977
No relation to the 1985 British film of the same name, the Russian The Shooting Party was based on an Anton Chekhov story. Most of the film takes place on the estate of Count Volsky, where the lovely Olga is forced into a loveless marriage with Volsky's overseer. Standing wistfully on the sidelines is provincial magistrate Petroff, who loves Olga but dares not speak up. Petroff's inability to express himself at the right time, coupled with Olga's inevitable fall from respectability, results in tragedy. The Shooting Party was previously filmed in Hollywood in 1944, under the title Summer Storm. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Galina Belyayeva, Oleg Yankovsky, (more)
A mute American working on a low-budget movie runs afoul of the Russian mafia in this internationally produced thriller. Billy (Marina Zudina), a special-effects makeup artist who is unable to speak, is in Moscow working on a cheapie slasher flick directed by Andy (Evan Richards), her sister's boyfriend. Late one night, Billy returns to the set to pick up some equipment and stumbles on what appears to be the filming of an actual snuff film. Watching, unseen, as an "actress" (Olga Tolstetskaya) is bludgeoned to death before her very eyes, Billy flees the set, pursued by the snuff film's crew. Eventually, she escapes and tells her story to her sister, Karen (Fay Ripley), and Andy. The film crew convinces the police that it was simply some special effects that Billy witnessed, then they start a deadly cat-and-mouse game with the hapless Americans. The intrigue soon leads Billy and her friends to "The Reaper" (Alec Guinness), the shadowy financier of an entire snuff-film underground. Director Anthony Waller's screenplay for Mute Witness began as a tale of gangsters in 1930s Chicago, but he rewrote it to take advantage of Russia's analogous present-day climate -- and the country's cheap sets and labor. Unexpected problems, from a diptheria epidemic to unexpected fines at the customs gate, nearly sank the production. The director convinced Guinness to appear in the film several years before principal photography began; the veteran thespian was paid nothing for his scenes, which were shot in a single morning in Germany. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marina Zudina, Oleg Yankovsky, (more)
- 1989
Dorothy Segda essays three roles in the Hungarian-made My 20th Century. The film begins with the birth of twin girls to a Budapest mother (Dorothy Segda) in 1880. Orphaned early on, the girls are forced to sell matches on the streets until both are adopted by two separate families. Flash forward to 1900: Having lost track of one another, the grown-up twins take separate compartments on the Orient Express. One of the girls (Segda again) has become the pampered mistress of a wealthy man; the other (Segda yet again) is a bomb-wielding anarchist. Director Ildiko Enyedi evidently intended My 20th Century as an allegorical statement concerning the status of women in the modern mechanical age. The experiences of the twins are interspersed with shots of Thomas Edison (Peter Andorai), whom we see at the beginning of the film perfecting his incandescent light bulb on the very day that the sisters are born. The more technological advances made by Edison, the more confused the twins become in establishing their own roles in an advancing civilization. Adroitly avoiding cut-and-dried symbolism, Ildiko Enyedi keeps the audience wondering what she's up to by including such surrealistic vignettes as a caged chimpanzee recounting the day of his capture! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dorota Segda, Peter Andorai, (more)
- 1983
Nostalghia is Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's enigmatic work about a writer (Oleg Yankovsky) who, trapped by his fame and an unhappy marriage, seeks out his cultural past in Italy. Here he meets Erland Josephson, a local pariah who declares that the world is coming to an end. The writer finds this prophecy curiously more alluring than the possibility of a dead-end future. Nostalghia won the Grand Prix de Creation and the International Critics Prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Oleg Yankovsky, Domiziana Giordano, (more)
- 1978
Adapted from a fairy tale by Yevgeny Shvarts, this story is about a magician (Oleg Yankovsky) who is concerned because his wife (Irina Kupchenko) has become rather bored -- and he decides to do something about it. He goes out and finds a bear, and with some "abracadabra," he changes the bear into a handsome young man (Alexander Abdulov). Then he says to his wife that "It has been foretold that a bear (in the guise of a handsome young man) will meet a princess and fall in love with her -- but as soon as they have their first kiss, it will change him permanently back into his bear form." After which he tells her that the king (Yevgeny Leonov), his daughter the princess (Yevgeniya Simonova), and their court will come to the magician's house and meet the young-man-cum "bear." Sure enough, the entire troupe shows up, and the princess falls in love with the man/bear -- who knows the truth about the effect of only one kiss with the princess. Desperate to save her feelings, he leaves rather than kiss her. The princess is disheartened at his behavior and leaves too -- but the pair is destined to meet again in spite of the machinations of the Prime Minister (Andrei Mironov) who wants to marry the princess himself. Now the magician needs a real miracle to bring everything to a desired happy ending. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Oleg Yankovsky, Irina Kupchenko, (more)
