TONITE’S BEST BET: Nobility Turns 85 Алексей Баталов. “Я не торгуюсь с судьбой”/Aleksei Batalov: “I Don’t Bargain with Fate” (Documentary. Russia, 2013)(Channel 1, 22:30. Premiere.) -- >If anyone deserved a patent for the “portrayal of positive and noble characters” on the stage and screen during the 2nd half of the Soviet period, it was Aleksei Batalov, of whose sizable body of film work one need only mention 5 titles – Летят журавли/The Cranes Are Flying (1957), Дама с собачкой/Lady With a Lapdog (1960), Девять дней одного года/Nine Days of One Year (1962), Бег/Flight (1970), and Москва слезам не верит/Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (1979) – and the point makes itself. After the last of these AB effectively retired from film acting and has devoted the rest of his long career (b. 20 Nov. 1928) to teaching several rising generations of actors and collecting various lifetime achievement awards, all of them certainly deserved. That’s all very well, of course, but Batalov has, as it turns out, considerably more to talk about than the acting biz and his literal and figurative roles therein. As you learn from this and other documentaries, AB grew up in a home where the regular visitors included Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Yury Olesha, Faina Raevskaya and various other luminaries; put otherwise, here’s a man whose thoughts on literature and on his favorite writers – those he had occasion to know and with whom he has worked – are of much more than passing interest. Think of the possibilities! Koroche, tune in this documentary (and/or the others below) for some illuminating views of a great actor – and of great artists whose work you know from someone who knew them rather better.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 03:59:09 +0000
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