Dostoevsky and Soviet Film: Visions of Demonic Realism by N.M. Lary (review)

236 LEITERS IN CANADA 1986 who can most readily be explained by the 'mid-life crisis' theory that Elliott Jacques proposed so usefully some twenty years ago; like Shakespeare or Goethe, Beethoven or Wagner, perhaps like Renoir pereas well, Jean Renoir moves from a 'spontaneous' kind of artistic utterance to a finally 'sculpted' one; from, in Wordsworth's phrases, 'the splendour in the grass' to 'the philosophic mind.' So that the films of his last period, such as Le Carrosse d'or, represent his final breaking of his staff. The one flaw in Faulkner's admirably coherent examination of Renoir's career is that he seems to regret Renoir's turning away from social concern , and so can call his entry into the palace of art the 'cost in social terms' (italics added). Faulkner ends his book with a question: 'What is Renoir's art now but our wish-fulfilling desire?' While this enigmatic question may seem to impugn that art that does not engage social questions, the 'now' triumphantly asserts the continuing relevance, possessed by all great art, that we find in the work of Jean Renoir. (BARRIE HAYNE) N.M. Lary. Dostoevsky and Soviet Film:Visions of Demnnic Realism Cornell University Press. 279· us $24.95 In his remarkably thorough book Nikita Lary sets out to examine in chronological order two principal issues: the actual treatment of some of Dostoevsky's works in Soviet films and the importance of Dostoevsky in the work of leading Soviet film artists, especially Eisenstein and Kozintsev . The result of this work yields a most interesting cluster of some truly Dostoevskian paradoxes. The most important of these relates to the fact that although Dostoevsky has played an essential role in the work of the best Soviet filmmakers, there is yet to be made a film that would deal successfully with the philosophical complexities present in Dostoevsky's writings.The list offilms based on Dostoevsky's works made in the Soviet Union between '932 and 1980 includes twelve features which drew on a number of novels and stories, including The Demons, The Idiot, Brothers Karamawu, and Crime and Punishment; but with the exception of Kulidzhanov 's mm of the last, released in '970, and Alov's and Naumov's Nasty Story, completed in 1965, but never released for public viewing, the films range from competent to embarrassingly bad. (Here the reader must take the author's word for granted, since most of the films are not accessible for viewing; from the detailed outlines in the book, this does not seem a great 10".) The reasons for the unsatisfactory results constitute another of the paradoxes of this book: it seems that the task of translating Dostoevsky's works from page to screen was either entrusted to, or arrogated by, mediocre talents. The major film artists either never managed to get beyond the contemplative or preparatory stages in dealing with Dos- HUMANITIES 237 toevsky, or were frustrated in their efforts by impossible political circumstances . The task of actually making the 'Dostoevsky' movies was taken up by men such as Vasili Fedorov, who in the process of shooting House ofthe Dead completely destroyed what promised to be an excellent script by Viktor Shklovsky, or to Ivan Pyriev, who tried unsuccessfully to redeem what he considered to be his past artistic failures by turning to Dostoevsky. Some of the most interesting passages in Lary's book deal with the tragicomic efforts of trying to fit Dostoevsky into the framework of Socialist Realism. These efforts entailed a series of ultimately absurd manipulative exercises, aimed at reconstituting Dostoevsky in order to make him acceptable to the censors. The work of the early Socialist Realists was complicated by the fact that they didn't seem to be quite sure what exactly they should do: how much of Dostoevsky could they remove from the original while still retaining a legitimate claim to having filmed a work by him? There were serious difficulties with the great author's writing which caused them particular discomfort: the tremendous range of his characters , and especially their apparently limitless capacity for both good and evil, was difficult to fit into structures determined by political or bureaucratic powers...