The Enchanted Desna

Alternate title(s):
Foreign Title:
Date: January 01, 1964 to December 31, 1964
Dates Note: 1964
Country of Origin: USSR
Place of Origin: USSR
Languages: Russian
Color: Color
Silent: No
Based On:
Additional Info:

Digital scan of BAMPFA’s 35mm print

Curator Notes

Film Series/Exhibition Title: 
Out of the Vault: The Enchanted Yuliya Solntseva
Description: 

After Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s death in 1956, Yuliya Solntseva adapted three of his personal scripts, culminating in The Enchanted Desna. “Dovzhenko grew up in a town situated on the banks of the Desna River. The movie is a quasi-autobiographical memory piece that brings together three periods—the modern day, the Second World War, and the time of the filmmaker’s prerevolutionary childhood in a farm village—with a boldly subjective freedom akin to that of such innovators as Alain Resnais. . . . Solntseva pairs [the protagonist Oleksandr’s] idyllic memories with pictorial rhapsody, filling the screen with a molten crimson sunrise, wavering light on a river’s surface which looks like animated Abstract Expressionism, mist drifting dreamily along the riverbanks, smoke billowing, and clouds swarming amid the twilit sky” (Richard Brody, New Yorker). For Jean-Luc Godard, it was the best film of 1965.

Please note: We are showing a digital scan of BAMPFA’s 35mm print.

Authors/Roles: 

Related People

  • Person: 
    Yuliya Solntseva
    Role: director
    Person: 
    Oleksandr Dovzhenko
    Role: screenwriter
    Person: 
    Boris Andreyev
    Role: actors
    Person: 
    Evgeniy Bondarenko
    Role: actors
    Person: 
    Vladimir Goncharov
    Role: actors
    Person: 
    Evgeniy Samyolov
    Role: actors
    Person: 
    Zinaida Kirienko
    Role: actors