commissar

[Robert Chandler]

Dear Colleagues,

I have heard Askol'dov himself speak about all this.  The film was
shelved for 21 years.  At one point it was about to be destroyed, but
Askol'dov succeeded, at the last moment, in shaming Suslov into granting
the film a reprieve, telling him he would be remembered by future
generations as the equivalent of a Nazi book-burner.

Robert Chandler

>At the beginning of Askoldov's *Commissar* is a message: "Materialy etogo
>fil'ma, sniatogo v 1967 godu, byli sokhraneny sotrudnikami Gosfil'mofonda
>SSSR...." I have found various references in film histories to exactly what
>this might have meant. The extremes are that the film was simply shelved
>intact for 21 years and then released, or that the film was actually
>destroyed and then reconstructed from the footage "saved" by the archivists
>mentioned in the above quotation. Can anyone point me to a documented and
>accurate history of this episode?
>
>Russell.
>
>Russell Valentino
>Associate Professor
>Department of Russian
>University of Iowa
>tel 319 353-2193
>fax 319 353-2424
>russell-valentino at uiowa.edu
>
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