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
00:00:45 from the notes, the old pictures
00:01:07 and the young film historian Naoum Kleiman.
00:01:27 back home in USSR
00:01:47 the script from Alexander Rjechevsky
00:02:08 and fundamental conflict:
00:02:33 tousled and fearsome
00:02:52 supported by the communists and the komsomols
00:03:16 such as the Crucifixion, the Deposition
00:03:40 The reception was very negative.
00:04:03 He changed the church sequence
00:04:22 The shooting was interrupted..
00:04:43 that have been used for this restoration.
00:05:01 Stepok Vitya Kartashov
00:07:10 In the morning, Stepok's father drinks with his friends.
00:08:47 "Be fruitful and multiply... but if a son betrays his father..."
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.
00:24:56 Stepok's father also escapes.
00:28:17 The boys lead a doctor to the dying Stepok.
00:30:38 Music from the works of Sergei Prokofiev