User Reviews

This creaky Soviet-era (1978) production of Tchaikovsky's classic is primarily of interest to those who wish to see what cultural life was like under the Soviet regime in its most heavy-handed years. (It was filmed a year before the USSR invaded Afghanistan, leading to decades of murderous political instability that are still influencing world politics in 2009.) The quality of the film is, frankly, poor; the stage seems to be in near total darkness for much of the 1st act, and the TV work is downright awful; every time the shot changes, the stage is out of focus for at least a couple of seconds before somebody thinks to refocus the new camera.

The production features 2 of the Bolshoi's most renowned stars of the late Soviet era: the husband-and-wife team of Ekaterina Maximova (as the heroine "Masha," better known in the west as "Klara") and Vladimir Vasiliev as the Nutcracker/Prince. As this production took place at the Bolshoi, however, don't expect the dazzling dancing seen in other productions available on DVD. The dancing is precise and technically almost flawless, but one can't avoid feeling the KGB were backstage with Kalashnikovs locked and loaded; the dancing is careful, therefore tedious, at times to the point of being leaden. Some of the best dancing is not from the principals---both in their mid-40s when this production was filmed and a bit long in the tooth for "The Nutcracker" in any case---but appears in the 2nd-act divertissements, most especially the "Arabian" variation which is costumed here as a "Central Asian" number, less redolent of Arabia than of Circassian or Caucasian numbers in "Prince Igor" or the Polovtsian Dances of Borodin.

Staging and costuming raise puzzling questions about this production. It is neither a traditional Nutcracker nor is it especially innovative, and yet there is something unsettled and unsettling about the whole thing--as with that "Central Asian" dance. This is particularly obvious in the peculiar staging and choreography of the 2nd-act pas de deux, here danced by "Masha" and the Nutcracker/Prince. (This production has no Sugar Plum Fairy.) There are some very odd moves here suggesting a ritual context, so obvious it must have been meant to have some significance. When Masha and the Prince first emerge to dance this number, they kneel facing away from the audience and toward a group of male dancers who hold up huge candelabra with electric candles. Later both of them are invested with honorific garments---the prince gets a long red cloak and Masha, a bridal veil so long that other dancers have to follow her around holding it off the floor. Then both are raised as if standing on the shoulders of other dancers, exalted above everyone else on stage. The production consequently seems to suggest some kind of mystic marriage of the Russian people ("Masha") and Marxist-Leninist communism---The Nutcracker, dressed in blazing red from top to toe. (In 1978 Russia that much red was no coincidence.)

That "The Nutcracker" could be adapted to such propagandizing ends in Russia is not surprising. Nor is it unusual that it could have been done in such a strained and tendentious manner. It is unfortunate that the results are so unimpressive in their clumsiness and obscurity. But that, too, can serve the present-day observer as an example of what the Soviet people had to put up with even as they watched one of their past culture's most light-hearted yet imperishable creations.