King Lear (Korol Lir) with introduction by Tiffany Ann Moore and Steven Brown.

Transcript

For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.

John Quackenbush  0:00 

May 4, 2013. The Harvard Film Archive screened King Lear. This is the introduction by Harvard Professor Tiffany Ann Moore and theater manager Steven Brown.

Steven Brown  0:15 

[INITIAL AUDIO MISSING] to look forward to. And the reason why we're all here, in part— besides to see this beautiful archive print of this rarely screened masterpiece—is, too, for Tiffany to introduce the public to her new book called Kozintsev’s Shakespeare Films: Russian Political Protest in Hamlet and King Lear. And it's where she examines the films in their artistic and cultural context. And particularly, she's concerned with the ways in which these plays have been used as a means to critique the Soviet government and the country's problems in an age in which official censorship was all-pervasive. Kozintsev's films, as well as his theatrical productions of Hamlet and Lear, continue this mode of protest by providing a vehicle for him and his collaborators to address the oppression, violence and corruption of the Soviet society. The book is available from McFarland or on Amazon. You can get an ebook or a hard copy.

Tiffany Ann Moore  0:26 

I have flyers, too.

Steven Brown  1:39 

Flyers, too. So, without further ado, I will introduce our guest introducer, Tiffany Ann Conroy Moore. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

Tiffany Ann Moore  1:55 

Hello! I'm very glad to see that there are other people who are willing to come inside on a day like this and watch a film by Grigori Kozintsev. I think he gets a little overshadowed, maybe, by some of the other Russian filmmakers, like Eisenstein, or Tarkovsky, or Vertov, or some other people like that. And he deserves to be right up there alongside them, I think. So what I'd like to do is give you a little orientation to the film by reading a few pages from the chapter in the book where I focus on an exegesis of this particular film. And if you have any comments, or anything that you want to say afterwards, that would be super. I can also read to you a little bit more about what I wrote about the ending of the film, which I don't necessarily want to ruin for you by, you know... [LAUGHS] Well, I don't want to give you my reading of it before you've seen it, so... Alright!

[READING FROM BOOK, WITH SOME ASIDES:]  After his Hamlet film of 1963, Kozintsev did not complete another film until King Lear in 1970. The research notes and letters pertaining to the film became the contents of his last book, King Lear, the Space of Tragedy, published in the USSR in 1973, the year of his death. Kozintsev had other projects planned before he died, such as a film adaptation of The Tempest, but the film and the book remain as his final works. Fittingly, containing the themes of age and succession in King Lear, Kozintsev was in his late 60s when King Lear was released, after a career that had already spanned five decades. Those decades were among the most tumultuous in all of Russian history, not only in governmental, political, and ideological terms, but also in light of major changes in artistic technology and aesthetics. Kozintsev came of age as a theatre practitioner and a filmmaker in the 1920s. The technology of film and the sophistication of montage, thanks to Russians such as Sergei Eisenstein, made this an exciting time for the young Kozintsev (he was born in 1905), whose work with FEKS, which is the Factory of the Eccentric Actor, included experimental film and theater productions. He also participated in the spread of Bolshevik revolutionary ideology through the traveling cinema groups of the 10s and 20s, who were Lenin's emissaries to distant reaches of the Russian Empire, sent to instruct the masses using film, since the majority were, in fact, still illiterate. The work of FEKS and other avant-garde filmmakers and writers and artists of the 10s and 20s, came to a premature close with the institution of socialist realism in 1935. And this, coupled with the formation of new artistic unions and a ministry for ideology and censorship, ushered in tremendous change for artists. Kozintsev continued to work in the theater and in the cinema, but his works had to eschew the carnival, avant-garde abandon of the FX days. His Maxim trilogy film, which won the Stalin Prize in 1941, were, in fact, a capitulation to socialist realism, as well as marking Kozintsev’s contribution to the war effort, which demanded films that celebrated patriotism, unity and heroism. After the war and the banning of his 1945 film, Simple People, Kozintsev’s cinematic output slowed significantly, as he was forced to negotiate his survival, as so many others, in Stalin's postwar renewal of repression. He made only two films between 1945 and 1953. After Stalin's death, Kozintsev embraced the Khrushchev Thaw—the short-lived Khrushchev Thaw—and released Don Quixote in 1957, and Hamlet in 1963, before this era of a somewhat freer atmosphere, too, came to an abrupt end, and Brezhnev’s stagnation period began. This was the period in which Kozintsev revisited King Lear, which he had produced theatrically in 1941, during World War Two, as a direct commentary upon the war, Stalin's flaws, and the moral and social problems that had arisen since the Bolshevik Revolution.

It is not surprising that Kozintsev would return to the Lear in the Brezhnev era. It must have seemed to him and many others that there was a return to Stalinesque government, as well as the renewal of wartime fears, as military actions took place throughout the USSR, and the threat of the Cold War conjured up the imagery of the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The depiction of war and ravaged, burning homes and landscapes in Kozintsev’s Lear film, reflect the persistence of governmental bellicosity and violence against the masses, against popular uprising, against popular uprisings in regions not formerly part of Russia, such as Poland and Czechoslovakia, and inside traditionally Russian territory as well. The ubiquity of clientism and corruption at all levels of government, and in many institutions, finds its manifestation in Kozintsev’s characterization of, and writings about, figures such as Oswald, Edmund, Goneril, Regan, and Cornwall, who he describes as “odious beasts, who have succumbed to the worst in human nature, in the interest of self-promotion and self-preservation.” The renewals of Stalinesque religious persecution and artistic stifling are referenced in the film’s subtly positive portrayal of Christianity, and in its treatment of the figure of the fool, who is both an artist struggling to be heard, and an emblematic victim of Soviet antisemitism. And again, I would refer you to Kozintsev’s book, King Lear, the Space of Tragedy, which isn't actually that hard to come by. You'll just have to pay a lot for it because it's out of print. So, this is a dark period, this stagnation period, during which many Shakespearean productions evidenced a bleakness and resignation. It was also a time of renewed interest and urgency and wielding the weapons of art and literature against the regime. In the midst of political upheaval and oppression, artists and intellectuals were emboldened to agitate for real freedom in every sphere of Soviet life. Despite setbacks and continuing pressure from above, the movements that would eventually precipitate the downfall of the regime were already in place. Thus was born the human rights movement, including the campaign for religious freedom, as well as self-sacrificing efforts by writers, artists and filmmakers to break free of the confining ideological bonds of socialist realism. And, in case you don't know, the score for this film was written by Dimitri Shostakovich, whom we know was often getting himself into a lot of trouble throughout the Soviet era. And he really didn't like doing film scoring, because he had had to rely on film scoring as a means of survival very early in his career. But he made exceptions for certain people, and he made exceptions for Kozintsev, because they were brothers, I suppose, under the skin.

Kozintsev’s Lear deals with a broad range of dismal topics, fully reflecting the problems of the 1960s: the nuclear threat, repercussions of war, suppression of truthful expression, global isolation, the return of despotism, and the persecution of religious believers. The ending of the film silently challenges the audience to do something in response, not to acquiesce in fear. Shakespeare had come to serve the cause of the next revolution in the Russian territories and the USSR more broadly, providing a means to express dissent, and therefore inspiring and encouraging resistance to communist dictatorship. Alexander Shurbanov writes that Shakespeare had been irredeemably politicized and used to challenge communist dogma. Shakespearean discourse helped to erode the doctrine’s central postulates, those of historical optimism, historic humanism, revolutionary violence, and beneficent dictatorship. Kozintsev’s King Lear appears at the birth of the final phase of Soviet Shakespeare adaptation, the one that finally wrested the plays from the party-liners, and placed them firmly in the service of the party-decriers.

Enjoy the film!

[APPLAUSE]

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