Chapaev (film)

• 1. Introduction

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  Chapaev, a Soviet war film from 1934, was watched by Joseph Stalin more than 30 times between 1934 and 1936. The Soviet dictator considered it the finest achievement in his country's cinema. That is a remarkable record for a man who had a state to run and a great many other things to watch over. The film follows a Red Army commander through the Russian Civil War, yet its hero is far from a polished officer. So why did one picture about a rough, shouting division chief grip a whole nation, from the Kremlin to the schoolyard? And how much of the story on screen actually happened? The answers begin with a real man, a book, and a studio in Leningrad.

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• 2. A Commander and His Chronicler

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  Vasily Ivanovich Chapayev lived from 1887 to 1919 and became a notable Red Army commander during the Russian Civil War. He is the figure the film is named for, though the film bends his life heavily into fiction.

  The path to the screen ran through a book. Dmitry Furmanov, a Russian writer, served as a Bolshevik commissar and fought alongside Chapayev himself. He wrote a novel of the same name, and it supplied the foundation for the picture.

  The Vasilyev brothers directed the adaptation for Lenfilm. Their screenplay kept a version of Furmanov as a character, so the author effectively appears in his own story. That choice turns the film into a portrait of two men at once, and it sets up the partnership that drives everything that follows.

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• 3. The Commissar Arrives

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  At the start of the film, a Red Army division led by Chapayev is locked in a fight with White Army troops commanded by Colonel Borozdin. Into this camp comes a commissar named Furmanov, sent out from Moscow.

  The two men do not hit it off. Trouble finally erupts when Chapayev's own soldiers take goods from local peasants. Furmanov settles the dispute, and in doing so earns the respect of the commander who had doubted him. They become good friends.

  Two younger figures grow in importance around them. Petka is Chapayev's adjutant, and Anka is a machine gunner. Over the course of the story, the two develop a romantic interest in each other.

  The division also gets help from inside the enemy camp. Petrovich, an aide to Borozdin, defects and passes along intelligence. With that information, Chapayev's men beat back a White Army attack. Yet the victory depends on a commissar who is about to be taken away.

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• 4. Night Attack

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  Higher authorities in Moscow decide to move Furmanov to a different Red Army division. Once he is gone, the situation around Chapayev begins to deteriorate.

  Under the cover of darkness, Borozdin and his men strike at the division's headquarters. Petka and Chapayev fight bravely, but both are killed.

  The film does not end on defeat. Anka raises the alarm among the rest of the division, and a counterattack follows. The closing shots show that attack succeeding, so the deaths of the two men are answered on screen. The audience leaves the story with loss and vindication together.

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• 5. The Faces on Screen

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  Boris Babochkin took the title role of Vasily Chapayev. Boris Blinov played the commissar Furmanov, so the film's central partnership rested on these two performers.

  Varvara Myasnikova played Anka, while Leonid Kmit played Petka. Illarion Pevtsov was cast as Colonel Sergei Nikolayveitch Borozdin, the White commander. Stepan Shkurat appeared as Potapov, known as Petrovich, who serves as Borozdin's batman.

  The credits run deep into smaller parts. Nikolay Simonov plays the platoon commander Zhiharev, and Georgiy Zhzhonov plays Teryosha, Furmanov's orderly. Boris Chirkov and Elena Volintseva appear as farmers, and Mikhail Rostovtsev plays a veterinarian.

  Some performers went uncredited. Victor Yablonsky played a Cossack Plastun, and Konstantin Nazarenko played a trouble-making partisan. Pavel Leshkov appeared as Borozdin's interlocutor, and Emil Gal as a veterinary assistant.

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• 6. Realism by Formula

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  The camera in Chapaev behaves with great discipline. The film follows socialist realism, the dominant approach to art in the Soviet Union of its day. In pursuit of a believable world, its camera work is predictable and repetitive, almost mechanical.

  The central pairing follows a pattern typical of such films. Chapayev and Furmanov are both supremely competent, one as a commander and the other as a commissar. Yet they stand for different things.

  Chapayev is the heroic ordinary Russian. He is uneducated, he swears, and he behaves in a disorderly way. Furmanov speaks for the Party and its Communist ideology. He is tidier and more commanding.

  The framing makes the hierarchy visible. In scenes where the two men share the screen, Furmanov is placed higher in the shot. That placement signals his superior standing, even when Chapayev is the louder presence.

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• 7. The Whole Country Watches

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  Chapaev premiered on the 6th of November 1934 at the Titan cinema in Leningrad. It quickly became one of the most popular films in the Soviet Union.

  The numbers were huge. In its first year, 30 million people in the USSR alone saw it. Pravda ran an editorial on the 21st of November that carried a bold instruction: "The whole country will watch Chapaev".

  Recognition abroad followed. In 1935, the US National Board of Review named it "Best Foreign Film". In 1937, it won the Grand-Prix of the Paris World Fair.

  Its standing lasted for decades. In a 1978 poll, cinema critics counted it among the 100 best films in history. By then the picture had already moved beyond the screen and into everyday talk.

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• 8. From Screen to Folklore

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  Soon after the film appeared, Chapayev, his adjutant Petka, and Anka became characters in Russian folklore. Together with their political commissar Furmanov, they turned up in a large number of Russian jokes.

  The real Chapayev was already a war hero before the cameras rolled. The film raised his heroic standing higher still.

  Children absorbed the story directly into play. When boys staged games of Reds against Whites, many imagined themselves as Chapayev. Others chose to be his heroic adjutant Petka.

  The affection has outlasted the Soviet state itself. President Vladimir Putin has named Chapaev as his favorite film.

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