User Reviews

Almost six hour long Russian epic about Grigori Melekhov and the course of his life over the ten years from 1912 to 1922. Dealing with not only his personal life but the life of his town as the First World War, the Soviet Revolution, the civil war that followed and their aftermath impact on everyone living in Russia, and in particular in his Cossack town on the Don River. The story begins as Grigori starts an affair with the married Aksiniya, who's husband is away with the rest of Cossacks. Its an affair that is far from secret and who's fall out will affect everyone for years to come, it is also the center of the story which shifts gears as Grigori tries to find his place in the world, in the Czarist army, in the Red Army and even with the Whites.

Think of this as movie as immersion tank. This is a movie that picks you up and drops you into a particular time and place and keeps you there for its entire running time. Told, at times, through a series of five or ten minute scenes that move the plot along through time this is in episodic tale that doesn't feel as such. Its clear from each scene whats transpired in the interim and there is no need for explanations. Occasionally jumps in time and place are filled in by a title over the establishing shot. The film puts the viewer into the towns, homes and battlefields where the story transpires in a way that few films ever have. Its beautiful to look at with every shot worthy of being hung on the wall. This is a movie for those who want to sit and disappear into some place far away from todays world.

As a technical achievement the film is amazing, it looks great, the acting is wonderful, the music first rate. The movie for the most part hooks you and drags you along through its decade long story. Lets face it almost no film has ever tried to tell a story this big with out cutting it up into little pieces and it losing something (Consider that the original release of this film in the west was cut by almost four hours for release). Its amazing to see what the film makers have done.

On the level of entertainment I'm of mixed emotions. On some levels this is very much an epic soap opera, the film is ultimately concerned with who loves whom, who is cheating on whom, and all of the emotions that are so ingrained in human nature.Certainly this is not your typical romance, not only does the film have other things on its mind, but there is also a ten year arc to consider, ten years where the course of a country and the world was forever altered. And thats part of the problem for me. The film, which is broken into three parts, has almost three different feels and focuses. The first is the romances and its almost a self contained film about the various players trying to find love. The second part of the film concerns the First World War and the halcyon days of the early revolution, here there is a great deal of political discussion and it makes the already slow pace of the film seem even slower. The last part of the film concerns the revolution and the civil war that followed. Here we have a blending of politics and humanity and it makes for odd an odd mix as emotion crashes against propaganda. While I was happy to follow along I was also wondering if the film hadn't lost its way.

Do I like the film? Yes. I don't love it. I can honestly say that while it is a great achievement I think that its not going to be everyone's cup of tea. There is something the film that seems to be very rooted in the Russian experience, and in particular the experience of those that lived through or were affected by the time period covered in the story. The film is also deliberately paced which many people will take a slow and feel is the kiss of death (especially at five plus hours). I understand that but would argue with out the pacing you wouldn't really feel like you're in the place where the story is happening. And the soap opera nature of the events will also weed out some who want "real" life. I didn't mind it and just let the film do what its going to do.

Is the film worth seeing? Yes, if you're willing to give yourself over to it, perhaps on three nights. I don't know if its one of the great films of world cinema, but its certainly a unique one. If you click with it I'm almost certain that for the period its running you'll be in a little cossack town somewhere along the Don.

Beautiful film and well-acted in a theatrical style that is common of many older Russian films. The story is long and involved, and an American audience will likely wonder what the point of the first 1/3 of the movie is about. As described by another, that portion of the film seems very much like a soap opera concerned with who is sleeping with whom. More importantly is how the scandal plays out in the families and village and how the characters are trapped within their lives, culture, communities, and expectations.

Americans and other westerners might also be surprised by the 2nd part of the film, which depicts the Bolshevik victory as far from certain, often challenged, with parties changing sides and allegiances as the war weary citizens fight on through tragedy after tragedy.

Overall, it's a brilliant film ... a technical and cinematic achievement, for sure. Comparisons to "Gone with the Wind" are entirely appropriate .. however, it is a "Gone with the Wind" with muscles, with combat, with blood, with real tragedy.

I would highly recommend this film to anyone that is interested in Cossack history and culture and/or early Soviet history. However, if you don't already have an interest in these areas, you will likely find the films very slow and boring. All three parts take some patience to watch due to their length and pacing, especially the first part which really isn't all that exciting and is more of a soap opera as others have mentioned.

A couple bits of advice for the foreign/western viewer:

1. The first part may not be as exciting as the last two, but it introduces you to all the characters in the film and fleshes out their relations to each other. To get the most out of the parts 2 and 3, it is important to make an effort to put names to faces and note how each character is related to each other.

2. The films were made for audiences that already had some knowledge of Cossacks and this period in history (WWI, Russian revolution, and the civil war). There are scenes that take place in parts 2 and 3 that no background information is given on, and if you are not familiar with the history will be somewhat confusing. It is highly recommended that one do a little reading online on Cossack history during this period before viewing this miniseries. It would also help to have a basic understanding of Russian revolution and subsequent civil war.

This is one of those movies which would haunt you again and again after you watched it once. And more over -- the more you watch it the more you find something new about yourself,people and life. Thikhiy Don depicts life of two -- man and woman, their love, their hardships, their fight for their love and all this happens against the backdrop of a wide picture of life of the whole country during a very dramatical and crucial period of Russia, including WW1, civilian war,and a lot of others events. I don't know another movie where love was depicted so sincerely and so nicely as it was done here. Petr Glebov and Elina Bystritskaya not played they lived on the screen, as did the love of their heroes. The movie turned out to be very realistic, with big respect for details. Before the movie was set out actors lived several months at the khutor where events of the book really took place. A lot of beautiful Russian actors performed in this movie, each performance is a little masterpiece. The music was written by Yuriy Levitin, one of the best follower of Shostakovitch and it matches the movie very well. The director did a superb job, there are no details missed in this movie, all was in check by director, even the river itself which gave the name to the whole thing was one of the actors -- Don i mean. In my opinion it is one of the best movie made in the 20 th century. Some people could compare it with 'Gone with the wind'but i appreciate it much higher. I rate it 10.

Those Soviets surely were not holding back spending their rubles on large scale productions at the time. This over 6 hour long epic production is not just epic in its running time. It's an epic movie in basically all of its sequences and the movie gets filled with some impressive battle sequences as well. The Soviets were basically the pioneers in how large scale battles and battle sequences in general got brought to the screen. Another and even better example (and longer) of this is the even larger 1967 Soviet movie production of war and peace; "Voyna i mir".

The way I see this movie it's basically a tribute to the Cossacks. They get presented as a proud, noble and hard working community of farmers, who fight and give their lives for mother Russia in its most dyer times. The backbone of Russia so to speak. Hyme to the Cossacks could had been a title for this time.

Appearantly there also is a short version of this all somewhere available for the international market, which is a good thing. Although the story is always great, 6 hours is of course a long time to watch anything. I can also imaging an 2 hour movie telling exactly the same story and just as good. The movie perhaps repeat itself too often and all that at times seems to be happening are a bunch of characters sitting around either eating, drinking or being depressed.

But no, it's not like the movie ever turns into a weak one. It's far too well done for that, even when the movie is turning slow. Its story and characters always make sure that you'll stay interested throughout.

A real large scale cinematic accomplishment about love and war, in the early 20th century southern Russia countryside.

10/10

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There's something about Russian films made around this time which are simply brilliant. 6 hours pass very quickly. Pure Genius

SYNOPSIS The lives and loves of Russian Cossacks living on the eastern steps of Russia during the Russian Revolution.

CONCEPT IN RELATION TO THE VIEWER How events beyond our control and the judgment of others shape our lives in the long term. No matter how hard we try, sometimes fate controls our destiny.

PROS AND CONS This is a great film, not because of it's acting or screenplay, but because it shows the western world that there were important events in the past that we have little knowledge of. It opens a doorway to us that we never knew existed and lets us glimpse some of the reasons that others think differently than we do.

During the late 1950 the Soviet Union was keen to copy everything that the west did regarding popular culture to show that they could do it just as well as the Americans and the Europeans. They sort of had a chip on their shoulder and wanted to prove that they were good enough to run with the big boys. In response to films such as "Ben Hur" and "Gone With The Wind", they geared up their own state sponsored film industry to produce 'epics'. This is one of them. Five and a half hours of the Russian experience in grand scope and scale.

Some have said that this is the Russian version of "Gone With The Wind", but it is more closely tied to "Dr. Zhivago" in theme and tone. The film deals with a portion of history rarely seen in the west. The internal struggles of a nation in the midst of Civil War in what could best be described as the Wild West of Russia.

This film is long with slow pacing. Russian cinema does not move a story along at a fast pace. Characters are built slowly and relationships between them are complex and wide ranging. The scenery is beautiful but sparse, as befits the Russian hinterlands. This is mostly a rural 'people' film, without much else to distract the audience, such as machinery or large scenes in cities. It is intimacy played out on a very broad canvas.

One of the more peculiar things about this version of the film is the narration. The film is shown in it's original language with no subtitles. The characters are narrated, not voiced over. So when someone speaks, it is in their native tongue, and then an English voice speaks what they are saying, sort of like you are reading their mind in delayed time. It preserves more of the feel of the film, but takes a little getting used to.

The other thing that was noticeable about the film was the Foley work. Sounds such as breaking glass or gun shots were VERY loud and distracted from the film at times. In a fist fight early in the film, the sounds of fists hitting the actors faces sounded like a sack of rice dropped from two stories up and hitting a wooden floor.

Unless you watch this film very closely, without distraction, it is easy to get lost in the complexity of the story. I was often left wondering who were the Reds (Communists) were and who were the Whites (Loyalists) and who was fighting whom. This film assumes that the audience has a good understanding of this time in Russian history, much like most American audiences have a good understanding of who Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere were.

What this film left me with was a better understanding of the mind set of the Russian people and how they perceive their world and their place in it. They are pragmatic for a reason and see the journey of life as a hard and difficult thing. There is no "pursuit of happiness" in their character. There is only finding happiness where it lays and enjoying it while you can.

The film contains 3 parts, each of which is close to 2 hours.

Here are what I like: 1. This film accurately depicted an agricultural society before the industrial revolution. People used oil lamps. Most people were not well educated. There was no sliced bread. You need to slice bread when you eat. People ate potato, bread, drank milk and soup. There were no in-door plumbing.

2. People's psyches were also very typical of a pre-industrial society. Everyone in the Cossack community were Orthodox Christian. The basic moral fiber was well and strong. Multi-generations lived in a large household. Young people were hooked up by marriage brokers. Young people needed family patriarch's blessing before they could marry.

In other words, you would feel people's psyches and the society at large were very much like the Chinese society before China felt the impact of industrial revolution.

I felt very familiar with the characters and their surroundings. In fact, I felt the men and women were so intimate to me, that I felt really strongly about their joy, anxiety, and anguish.

3. Politics was a central theme in this movie. The novel and the film did a great job in depicting the reality of Russia during the tumultuous years of War World I and the Civil War following the Boshevik revolution.

4. Watching the film, I hated the communists who pretended to be pacifists during War World I, and then showed their ugly face by pushing the country into a 3-year long extremely bloody civil war after War World I ended.

5. Overall, the protagonist, Grigory Melekhov, is a freedom loving, traditionalist with a humanist world view. The communists had the inhumane view of class warfare, and were power mongers.

6. It is amazing that the movie makers were able to make the movie without a single brush of communist propaganda. The movie didn't villanize either side. Nor did it promote, or aggrandize either side.

7. I didn't read the novel. It was said that the adaptation to film lost the richness of the novel. On the basis of the film, I'd say the story structure is a very good epic structure.

8. It is a very dramatic and moving story. With a lot of colorful characters, with rich and interesting characterizations.

9. The 4th DVD contains special features. There were an interview with Ellina Bystritskaya who played Aksinya and an interview with Zinaida Kirienko who played Natalya. Both interviews were done in 2002, I believe. They are quite interesting.

Here are what I felt could be better: 10. There is a soap opera feeling to the film. The characters are not very deep.

11. There were many drinking and eating scenes, which became repetitive.

12. The ending is not satisfactory. The novel was originally circulated in 1928, under Stalin's regime. It would have been banned in Soviet Union if it had a satisfactory ending to my taste. So, I really don't expect more.

13. All characters were quick at saying negative things, and none were good at saying positive things.

This is a 6 hour flick of three episodes. 1 Pre WW1, the way of life,the lives and loves of the rural Cossack village. 2 Mobilization, WW1, defeat 3 The end of WW1, revolution,chaos, civil war, changing fortunes, Bolshevik Victory. The turbulence of Cossack life during this time.A bit of propaganda,but who cares? This is the Russian Gone With the Wind.As good and maybe better. A vanished world. I had seen it before,but this adaptation was better.Maybe the other was edited different or the subtitles are better? The flow of the story was better.Several characters from the home village appear again and again during the film. The main character is Grigory, a young rather wild Cossack, his next door married lover, his family selected wife.His large family gets a lot of time in this.A rather boring life is soon interrupted by war,revolution,counter revolution , Bolsheviks, white Russians,bandits and Communists. As things change, Grigory switches sides, his family and the Cossacks way of life is ruined. He loses everything. Well filmed,well acted,excellently scored, a cast of thousands.A classic Russian epic. Well worth watching. Epic War, history and love.You can't beat the combination.

Historical drama, epic. The film adaptation of the great epoch-making novel by the famous Soviet writer Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov, which I have not read, but I undertake to correct this flaw, and therefore I will evaluate the picture as an independent work. Why did I suddenly remember about this picture? It's just that I'm reading "The Raised Virgin Land" now (and I watched its 1959 film adaptation no further than last year), and even more so I watched the Gerasimov version in snatches as a child when it was played on a box, well, I only saw the 2006 version of Bondarchuk in full (which I liked only with costumes and effects, no more), so right now I decided to watch the full Gerasimov version, made during the lifetime of Mikhail Alexandrovich (who remained modestly pleased with the film adaptation, but also fairly criticized). And the viewing was definitely worth five and a half hours. And here is my brief opinion for you - The hard fate of the Don Cossacks. I want to indicate right away that there are no flaws in the picture, there have never been and never will be, but I have a few technical comments that I will describe in a separate paragraph, but for now let's finish with such a tedious introduction and move on to the merits of this masterpiece and classics of Soviet cinema.

So, here they are: 1. Scenario - the picture covers the time from 1913 to 1920, thereby affecting the events of the First World War (then it was called "German"), the February Revolution of 1917, the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917, the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922, the Soviet-Polish War of 1920-1921, Peasant uprisings against Soviet power of those same years. The main place of events is the Don, Tatarsky farm (the prototype of which was the famous village of Veshinskaya, where Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov lived). The life of the Don Cossacks and Cossacks is shown against the background of the tragic and great events of that time, and in the center of course is the forbidden love between the main characters of the Cossack Grigory Melekhov and Aksinya Astakhova. The central romantic line goes through a series of the hardest trials, and seething passions, which is so similar to real life, and historical events are just important, but the background. The characters are spelled out, the characters are alive, the people are real, I'm not talking about the magnificent acting, to which Sashka Petrov and his brothers and sisters can go on and on. The finale turned out to be very vital, but that's what it was all about. And the picture also hits emotions very hard, and therefore will not leave anyone indifferent!

2. Entourage - the story literally comes to life before our eyes, because the real participants of those events were introduced into the narrative (ataman Kaledin, Bolshevik Podtelkov, Colonel Chernetsov, and so on). The work of the costumers, who did a great job, was an excellent success, because many uniforms had to be made for mass scenes, and they did not forget about the insignia for the imperial and Austrian army, White and Red, and even "allies" were designated. A real Cossack farm served in kind. And all this immerses the viewer so much into the atmosphere of the Don Cossacks that you are amazed.

3. People - both white and red, both Cossacks and nonresidents, in short, all are shown by ordinary people with their fears, weaknesses and virtues. There is no conscious "dehumanization" of one side and the elevation of the other to the absolute. Both sides have broken firewood (and the "allies" too). On each side there are both good people and not so good, fanatics and idealists who are ready to go under bullets for the sake of their ideas. It just so happened that the Russian people followed the Bolsheviks, who did build a better world and the best and fairest society in the world, and the Cossacks had only to accept it. Moreover, the Cossacks themselves were not united and often ran from one side to the other (which is personified by Grigory Melekhov, who is not only the main character, but also the image of a typical Cossack of that time). Each of the heroes is worthy of regret, there are openly negative characters, but even they have a clear and clear motivation.

4. Strong dramatic scenes - first of all, these are scenes of executions. First, the Russian officer at the time of General Kornilov's speech, the execution of revolutionary Cossacks led by Fyodor Grigoryevich Podteklov, the execution of the Bolshevik Daria Melekhova and of course the execution of Pyotr Melekhov by Mikhail Konev. The executed Bolsheviks, who determined the victory of the Soviet Government, stand out here in particular. It was they who showed with their courage and honor that there is a better fate than living under the boot of a capitalist, and time judged their rightness and eternal glory. Even when they were dying, they believed in the victory of communism and in a better world that would surely come. They themselves showed cruelty, but this is war. "Either we bury them or they bury us." In addition to these scenes, there are no less strong and tearing to tears, but I will not dwell on them, otherwise the review will turn out in five parts. Moving on.

5. The life of the Don Cossacks - the customs, customs, life of the Don Cossacks can be traced throughout the entire timekeeping. The very way of thinking of these people is amazing. There is a clear difference between the elderly - the most respected and the first people in the farms and villages and the young Cossacks who passed the trenches of the First World War and saw two revolutions and the agitation of the Bolsheviks. Now the Cossacks are gradually recovering from the losses they suffered after the Civil War (although there are enough mummers who cannot be called "Cossacks", because a Cossack is a Russian warrior devoted to the Motherland and the Orthodox Faith, and not a clown who wears glitter and smashes monuments to the Soviet past and puts up new monuments to accomplices of fascism, like Krasnova). Yes, the Soviet government hit the Cossacks hard, but this is only the fault of the Cossacks and Comrade Sverdlov, who with his directive almost brought the Bolsheviks to the brink of defeat in 1919. The spirit of the Cossacks survived, and they continued to serve Russia during the difficult years of the Great Patriotic War and beyond. These Cossacks are honored, because they did not betray the Motherland, no matter what it was called.

6. Fights and battle scenes - the film devoted time to fights and battle scenes, which for 1957 look just great, but in our century - not so much. But even so, emotions, passions and thirst for victory are felt at these moments. Scary moments are not shown, but there is blood.

Now about some remarks. The picture needs restoration (in normal and without abbreviations, as it has already been done with crooked hands), because at the moment there is not enough high resolution (I'm not talking about 4K). The sound should also be edited, because it sounds either too loud or too quiet, which makes almost a third of the characters' replicas impossible to hear and understand. And it will not be superfluous to reissue the picture in blu-ray format, so that a new generation of viewers can get acquainted with this immortal classic of Soviet cinema.

A little about the main characters: 1. Grigory Melekhov performed by Pyotr Glebov is a Don Cossack, in the future a centurion, a full cavalier of St. George, who fought in the First World War, and then in the Civil War for the Reds and whites, and then in the Polish company for the Reds. An experienced commander and a dashing slashman who rushes about either choosing a side or loving Aksinya. A kind of symbol of a Cossack of the Civil War era, who was superbly played by Pyotr Petrovich Glebov.

2. Aksinya Astakhova performed by Elina Bystritskaya is the love of Grigory Melekhov's life, ready to follow him into fire and water. A strong-minded Cossack woman whose image strongly resembles our Russian women, without whom we would not have gone far. Elina Bystritskaya played this heroine as much as Nonna Mordyukova played her heroines superbly. Bravo!

I undertake to read Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov's novel without fail!

By the way, today there are four film adaptations of this great novel: 1930, 1957, 2006 and 2015, but it is Gerasimov's version that is considered the best, even despite some disapproval from the writer himself. Well, at least I am glad that Mikhail Alexandrovich did not live up to Bondarchuk's version, where all the money was poured exclusively into costumes and effects, completely forgetting about the script and the rest. And after watching two versions out of four, I tend to Gerasimov 1957 as the most accurate and the most emotional. And the word "epic" is one hundred percent suitable here!

As a result, we have an epoch-making film adaptation of a great novel, with a great script, great costumes and scenery, great music, and great acting!

My rating is 10 out of 10 and my recommendation for viewing!