Bezhin Meadow: Sequences from an Unfinished Film
1968 · 31 MIN · IMDB 6.7 · 704 VOTES · DIR. Sergei Eisenstein
Overview
Bezhin Lug (Bezhin Meadow) was to be a Soviet film about a young farm boy whose father attempts to betray the government for political reasons by sabotaging the year's harvest, and the son's efforts to stop his own father to protect the Soviet state, culminating in the boy's murder and a social uprising. Assigned to Soviet film-maker Sergei Eisenstein, the filming followed the same path as with his previous effort, "Que Viva Mexico", into cost overrun and over-shooting of footage. Furthermore, Eisenstein's usage of forbidden experimental film techniques outraged his government superiors, who ordered the film destroyed before it was even completed. All that survives are the first and last frames of each shot, preserved by Sergei Eisenstein’s wife, Pera Atasheva. The 1967 reconstruction, by Naum Kleiman of the Eisenstein Museum and Sergei Yutkevich of Gosfilmofond, places these frames in order, approximating the original film.
Dialogue Timeline — 132 lines
A SAMPLE ACROSS THE RUNTIME — EVERY LINE IS SEARCHABLE
00:00:12 The Russian Film Archives present
00:00:43 that will be restored
00:01:05 director Sergei Youtkevitch
00:01:24 the complete footage of Que Viva Mexico
00:01:42 was fruitless for a while.
00:02:03 This drama was for him
00:02:22 and the new soviet and socialist country.
00:02:43 whereas the new Russia
00:03:04 should have been the climax.
00:03:30 popular, gay and full of energy.
00:03:49 Eisenstein went back to work.
00:04:09 by a dynamic sequence
00:04:29 has burned while Mosfilm was bombed
00:04:49 who preserved the material on which this film is based
00:05:04 His father Boris Zakhava
00:07:27 "Ruined by my own son."
00:08:55 "...kill him like a dog."
00:09:53 "But the child is mine!"
00:14:57 "Oh, Lord, what have God-fearing people come to?"'
00:18:43 Everyone decides to turn the church into a clubhouse.
00:24:53 The kulaks murder their guards and escape into the woods.
00:27:23 "Father..."
00:30:34 Sound Boris Volsky
00:30:56 Set designer Charles Agadjanov