Product: My Name Is Ivan [VHS] (1963)
Rating: 4.0
Remarkable First Feature
Is it possible to seperate this from the master's mature work, in some way? Certainly the context of its making is important; it is student work. But what student work! And to think that Andrei follows it. Whew! The story is fairly standard fare, a somewhat romaticising of the boy soldier, his heroism, his salutory patriotism. I believe it's the same lad who claims to have the secret of the bell-making in the majestic final stanza of,'Andrei Rubelov'. The murky claustrophia of the river and swamp, the echoing of white-truncked forests; birch, spruce?(all alien experience for this desert dweller!), these become familiar bits of the Tarkovsky lexion. Konchlovsky uses them too, in his epic, 'Siberiade'. But then they were co-students at the Moscow film school. Finally, I have this as part of the complete set of Tarkovsky's films; a gift from my eldest daughter. . The quality is great. The subtitling is as good as I've seen. And they're unexpurgated versions eg. the archival war footage of Nazi material was news to me. There's next to no information of who made this box set or where it came from, other than it's from China. You'll also find in the pack, 'The Steamroller and the Violin', a colour work also from student days, 1960. It has academic interest for me, but shouldn't be reviewed with the expectations he set in his great, mature work.