Don Quixote (Russian: Дон Кихот, translit. Don Kikhot) is a 1957 Soviet drama film directed by Grigori Kozintsev. It is based on Evgeny Shvartz’s stage adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes’s classic novel of the same name. It was entered into the 1957 Cannes Film Festival. It opened in the United States in 1961, beginning its U.S. run on January 20.

The film was exhibited in the mid-1960s by Australian University film clubs receiving the productions of Sovexportfilm. It was the first film version of Don Quixote to be filmed in both widescreen and color.

Summary:
Senor Quexana has read so many books on chivalry that he believes that he is the knight Don Quixote de la Mancha. So Don Quixote sets off on his horse, accompanied by his squire Sancho Panza on a mule, to perform valiant deeds. They mistakenly save the Lady Altisidora who is so amused that she invites them to visit the Duke to provide some merriment at court. Among other deeds, Don Quixote frees some prisoners, who then turn upon him, and Don Quixote attacks a windmill that he imagines is a monstrous wizard.

Don Kikhot.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 41mn
Size: 	1.32 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	720x328 ~> 770x328
Aspect ratio:  	2.35:1
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	1 650 Kbps
BPP: 	0.279
Audio
#1:  	Russian 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/3742E16C34BEB2D/Don_Kikhot.mkv

Language(s):Russian
Subtitles:Russian English French German Spanish Italian

The post Grigori Kozintsev – Don Kikhot AKA Don Quixote (1957) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

When the King of Denmark suddenly dies. his son, Crown Prince Hamlet, returns home to find that his Uncle Claudius has usurped the throne and married his sister-in-law, Hamlet’s recently-widowed mother. One night Hamlet is visited by his father’s ghost, who commands him to avenge his murder at Claudius’ hands.

Quote:
Arguably the finest screen Hamlet of all time, even though the language barrier does somewhat moot comparisons between Smoktunovsky and Olivier, Kozintsev’s film won a special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival and, in 1967, was nominated for a Best Foreign Picture Golden Globe. By no means a “filmed play,” Kozintsev’s HAMLET is profoundly cinematic; it is also swept clean of Freudian accoutrements and treated with somber fervor closer to Orson Welles’ Macbeth. Boris Pasternak’s modern-language translation is used for the dialogue. The tradition of the “active” (read: dissident) HAMLET, with his fixation on the imprisonment motif, would culminate 15 years later at the Taganka Theater, when national folk-singing icon Vladimir Vysotsky (see BRIEF ENCOUNTERS) displaced Smoktunovsky as the ultimate Russian embodiment of the part. — seagullfilms.com

Hamlet.1964.001.DVDRIP.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 14 min
Size: 	1.03 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	712x438 ~> 1029x438
Aspect ratio:  	2.35:1
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	1 880 kb/s
BPP: 	0.251
Audio
#1:  	Russian 1.0ch AC-3 @ 96.0 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/F8876CA55F5011D/Hamlet.1964.001.DVDRIP.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/6CAC859B7FDB157/Hamlet.1964.002.DVDRIP.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

Language(s):Russian
Subtitles:English

The post Grigori Kozintsev – Gamlet AKA Hamlet (1964) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear’s loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about his faithful son Edgar. Madness and tragedy befall both ill-starred fathers.

King.Lear.1970.DVDRIP.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 17 min
Size: 	2.18 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	706x438 ~> 985x438
Aspect ratio:  	2.25:1
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	2 138 kb/s
BPP: 	0.288
Audio
#1:  	Russian 1.0ch AC-3 @ 224 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/0BFB1B03CA44892/King.Lear.1970.DVDRIP.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

Language(s):Russian
Subtitles:English

The post Grigoriy Kozintsev & Iosif Shapiro – Korol Lir AKA King Lear (1970) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear’s loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about his faithful son Edgar. Madness and tragedy befall both ill-starred fathers.

Quote:
Black and white cinematography of Gritsius, the music of Shostakovich and the enigmatic face of Jarvet, makes all other versions of King Lear smaller in stature. Lord Olivier himself acknowledged the stark brilliance of this film. Oleg Dal’s fool lends a fascinating twist to the character. The “Christian Marxism” of Kozintsev can knock-out any serious student of cinema and Shakespeare.

Kozintsev is one of least sung masters of Russian cinema. His cinema is very close to that of Tarkovsky and Sergei Paradjanov. Kozintsev’s Lear is not a Lear that mourns his past and his daughters–his Lear is close to the soil, the plants, and all elements of nature. That’s what makes Kozintsev’s Shakespearean works outstanding.

2.34GB | 2 h 11 min | 1034×440 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/AB6ECF43B68561A/Korol.Lir.1971.DVDRip-AVC.AC3._rutracker.org_.mkv

Language:Russian
Subtitles:English, Spanish, Portuguese

The post Grigori Kozintsev & Iosif Shapiro – Korol Lir AKA King Lear (1971) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

(imdb)
A failed Russian Revolution succeeded magnificently on screen., 3 June 1999
Author: Theodore J. van Houten from Haamstede, 4328 ZG 1 Netherlands

S.V.D. was released in August 1927. A beautiful costume drama, it is on the other hand a somewhat expressionistic, poetical fantasy. Its photography and images are more important than its desired political contents. The script, written by the inspiring historian Yuri Tinyanov (director Leonid Trauberg [1901-1990]could speak about Tinyanov for hours) supplied a failed love story, a political intrigue involving two czars, and a traveling circus background. The picture glorifies the 1825 ‘Decembrists’ uprisal: officers in the imperial Russian army are fed up with the new czar’s autocracy. The main character is a traitor, the Scotsman Maddocks (Medoks). He has won a ring gambling. It carries the initials S.V.D. – the secret union of the ‘Big Deed’ (overthrowing the czar). Maddocks expects the ring to protect him. He is desparate to enter the circles of political power in St. Petersburg hoping a former lover (Sofia Magaril) will introduce him there. A wounded revolutionary officer is on the run, finding refuge in a circus. This setting enabled cinematographer Andrei Moskvin to film a sequence on a galloping horse ‘holding only the camera’. One of the most imaginative scenes takes place on the skating rink. The picture suddenly turns into an ice crystal created by using mirrors. The skater now waltzes his rounds all over the picture. S.V.D. introduces several pessimistic symbols: night clouds, a turtle suggesting how slowly the wounded revolutionary can move, etc. It is an extremely beautiful film, its narrative less important than its image qualities. An un-Russian revolution that failed but turned out a success on screen. It is clear that Kozintsev & Trauberg were ready for their next costume drama THE NEW BABYLON, now considered their great masterpiece. S.V.D. was restored by the German TV-station ZDF ca. 1980. For this version German composer Hamel wrote a new electronic music score, not very fitting apart from the skating rink waltz.

702MB | 1:09:28 | 608×448 | avi

https://nitroflare.com/view/F1DBB36CC7AAEB3/S.V.D._-_soyuz_velikogo_dela_1927.avi
https://nitroflare.com/view/81DD19D421500DE/soyuz_velikogo_dela_1927.ENG.04.srt

Language:Silent
Subtitles:English

The post Grigori Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg – S.V.D. – Soyuz velikogo dela AKA Union of the Great Cause (1927) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

The Overcoat is a 1926 Soviet film directed by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, based on Nikolai Gogol stories Nevsky Prospekt and The Overcoat.

A young clerk, disappointed in love in early life passes his life in paper work. He centres his interests in a new overcoat but is robbed and assaulted on the way home. He gets sick and dies.

1.01GB | 1 h 6 min | 738×570 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/4E4A32451603130/The.Overcoat.1926.DVDRIP.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

Language:Russian Intertitles
Subtitles:English

The post Grigoriy Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg – Shinel AKA The Overcoat (1926) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

The Paris Commune was an epic phenomenon in the early history of the socialist movement. The Commune was located in the workers quarters within the centre of Paris. An important location was the emporium LA NOUVELLE BABYLONE, still existing at Metro Babylone. The main character in the film is Louise, a salesgirl in the shop. She is a communard. Her counterpart is a soldier that helps to wipe out the Commune. Thus, the enormous social and dialectic complications and contrasts between the workers on one side, and bourgeoisie and army on the other side, are projected on two characters. And of course they fall in love. Louise is a fierce heroine. Jean a naïve soldier, a farmer who is ordered and abused. In the end they meet not in bed but on the barricades. Jean is a conscript in the army that defeats the Commune fighters in the bloody week in June 1871. Thousands of the Communards were killed in action or shot at Père Lachaise cemetery.

NEW BABYLON was based on Karl Marx’s report on the Commune, contemporary novels by Zola (La debacle, Nana, Au Bonheur des dames) and also inspired by Offenbach’s operettas and Chapentier’s opera Louise, by paintings by Millet, Delacroix, Goya, Daumier and Rembrandt. To catch the atmosphere directors Kozintsev & Trauberg went to Paris and met some of the old communards. They also shot some footage, on top of a Notre Dame tower, but only a fragment ended up in the film, of which two versions were cut.

NEW BABYLON was Kozintsev & Trauberg’s last film. They wanted original music for it and engaged 22 year old cinema and theatre pianist and composer Dmitry Shostakovich. He may have written his best score for NEW BABYLON, although his music for ODNA, Kozintsev & Trauberg’s next film, was equally shattering. Shostakovich made a pasticcio of unknown quality, at the same time a parody on run-of-the-mill cinema music. He quoted Offenbach (Cancan, La belle Hélène), the Marseillaise (counterpoint to Cancan) and songs from the French Revolution. Shostakovich would compose scores for all the later Kozintsev & Trauberg’s films, and the later films directed by Kozintsev alone. The partnership of Kozintsev, Trauberg and Shostakovich ended when Trauberg was attacked during Stalin’s post-war ‘anti-cosmopolitan’ campaign.

NEW BABYLON is one of the finest examples of early Soviet avant-garde cinema. If the theme was not revolutionary, at least the form should be. It was a perfect synthesis of avant-garde eccentricism and expressionism and Marxist theory. The film was both hailed and criticized, in the USSR itself and abroad. At the time Shostakovich’s music did not last long. Orchestras nor conductors could handle it. It was revived in the 1970’s and 80’s in France, England and Holland in particular.

Abroad the film was prohibited (UK), censored and cut. A TV screening at the occasion of the Paris Commune’s centennial was barred by President Pompidou himself. In Holland (1929) it passed the censor, though a shot of a young drunken girl had to be cut.

NEW BABYLON shows the struggling hungry workers in 1870 Paris and their political creativity setting up the Commune. The cinematography was in the hands of the best Russian cameraman ever, Andrey Moskvin. The political topic did not stop Kozintsev & Trauberg from adding absurd humor and grotesque eccentric characters. The collective struggle of the anonymous mass of communards was handed over to recognizable individuals.

http://nitroflare.com/view/31F4AD3FE2045D4/The_New_Babylon.mkv

Language(s):Russian intertitles
Subtitles:English

The post Grigori Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg – Novyy Vavilon AKA The New Babylon (1929) first appeared on Cinema of the World.