Change Your Image
erika_takacs
Reviews
Gamlet (1964)
tsf-1962's comment
In fact Smoktunovsky was not a Holocaust survivor: he was captured as a soldier wounded in the war, but as he got better he escaped from the German camp., back to the partisans and then he went back into the war. Of course he was very young: only 17-18 when this happened, and became a real actor just in the 1950-s. He was the son of a Russian Jewish family (had Polish roots), and when he was young he wanted to become a film-technician: his career was cut because of the war. After the war he decided to become an actor, but he wasn't able to finish the actor's school: he got actor's jobs in the cities of the Caucasus, where his colleagues taught him how to act, and encouraged him to go to Leningrad and find a job as an actor. He went there into a film-studio, and very hardly but fortunately got a job in the Lenfilm's theatre. The rest is history: he got most of the roles what all actors just dream of but he didn't get conceited. He just humbly served his public till the end of his life.
Warriors (1999)
what about English soldiers?
I've seen this movie several times, and in my opinion it is one of the most important movie-opuses of our times. Directing, acting, camera-work: all these pieces create an absolutely excellent work. Yes, the Serbs should face what they have done there, and this movie doesn't give a fawning account of them. But... and this but is an aching absence in the movie factory of the world: what about the account of the English doing the same with much more people all around the world? In India, in China, in Africa, in Australia etc. (these are just the biggest places), not to forget about their deeds in Iraq, Afghanistan etc? When will they face their own sins in such a movie done with the same very talented and geniously acting young actors? The sooner the better. Because I think it is unjust to ill-use such a one-sided account for the world and then to act the part of the honest justiciary. Of course this is not an absolution of Serbs, as they committed real guilts there indeed. For example with my own countrymen!!! (as I am Hungarian). But I felt I have to tell this. There is a poem about all of this situation: "To arrange our common businesses, it is our work: and it is hard, indeed." We should feel not these "Iam the good,(as I am from Western Europe) and you are the bad (as you are from Eastern Europe)" feelings, but to face our common past, and create a peaceful present and future.