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| Aleksei German obituary | Aleksei German obituary |
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| Aleksei German, who has died of heart failure aged 74, was among the very last in a generation of film directors victimised by the Soviet Union's draconian attitude to the arts. As a result, since 1968 German had made only six films, one of them co-directed and one uncompleted at his death. Three of them were shelved for several years, and Khrustalyov, My Car! (1998), seven years in the making, was repeatedly bailed out by French money. German's reputation is based on only four films, all of them masterpieces. | Aleksei German, who has died of heart failure aged 74, was among the very last in a generation of film directors victimised by the Soviet Union's draconian attitude to the arts. As a result, since 1968 German had made only six films, one of them co-directed and one uncompleted at his death. Three of them were shelved for several years, and Khrustalyov, My Car! (1998), seven years in the making, was repeatedly bailed out by French money. German's reputation is based on only four films, all of them masterpieces. |
| Gradually, after the fall of communism in Russia, German's films were screened at cinematheques and festivals in the west. Khrustalyov, My Car!, the only one of his works that was not banned, provoked a mass walkout by critics at the 1998 Cannes film festival. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the 150-minute film was "incomprehensible for long stretches and unforgivably unfunny in the endless scenes of manic visual satire". Martin Scorsese, who was president of the Cannes jury, remarked that German's film obviously deserved the Palme d'Or, but he wasn't able to convince his fellow jurors because he didn't really understand it. Since then, many critics, initially confused by the opaque narrative and overwhelmed by its black humour and nightmarish vision of Russia during the last days of Stalin, have acclaimed the film. | Gradually, after the fall of communism in Russia, German's films were screened at cinematheques and festivals in the west. Khrustalyov, My Car!, the only one of his works that was not banned, provoked a mass walkout by critics at the 1998 Cannes film festival. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the 150-minute film was "incomprehensible for long stretches and unforgivably unfunny in the endless scenes of manic visual satire". Martin Scorsese, who was president of the Cannes jury, remarked that German's film obviously deserved the Palme d'Or, but he wasn't able to convince his fellow jurors because he didn't really understand it. Since then, many critics, initially confused by the opaque narrative and overwhelmed by its black humour and nightmarish vision of Russia during the last days of Stalin, have acclaimed the film. |
| Despite his films having had limited distribution, German is now considered by many the equal of the better-known Andrei Tarkovsky. My Friend Ivan Lapshin, which German completed in 1982, was released in Russia in 1986 thanks to glasnost. It was subsequently voted the best Soviet film ever made in a national poll of film critics. | Despite his films having had limited distribution, German is now considered by many the equal of the better-known Andrei Tarkovsky. My Friend Ivan Lapshin, which German completed in 1982, was released in Russia in 1986 thanks to glasnost. It was subsequently voted the best Soviet film ever made in a national poll of film critics. |
| German was born in Leningrad of Jewish parentage, the son of the novelist and scriptwriter Yuri German, whose novel My Friend Ivan Lapshin was used as the basis of the younger German's most successful film, and whose story Operation Happy New Year inspired his son's first solo film effort, Trial on the Road (1971). Aleksei graduated as a theatre director in 1962 from what became the Saint Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy, before following his father into film by studying with Grigori Kozintsev, for whom Yuri had written screenplays. Aleksei then joined Lenfilm studio as an assistant director. | German was born in Leningrad of Jewish parentage, the son of the novelist and scriptwriter Yuri German, whose novel My Friend Ivan Lapshin was used as the basis of the younger German's most successful film, and whose story Operation Happy New Year inspired his son's first solo film effort, Trial on the Road (1971). Aleksei graduated as a theatre director in 1962 from what became the Saint Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy, before following his father into film by studying with Grigori Kozintsev, for whom Yuri had written screenplays. Aleksei then joined Lenfilm studio as an assistant director. |
| He made his film-directing debut with The Seventh Companion (1968), set immediately after the revolution. The fact that German later disowned it – mainly because of disagreements with his co-director, Grigori Aronov, a loyal Soviet – does not diminish its interest. Like all his work, the film focuses on an outsider, caught between opposing ideologies. In this case, it is a former tsarist general, released from prison into the utopian society of the Soviet Union, where he is told: "The fact that you are alive is a misunderstanding." | He made his film-directing debut with The Seventh Companion (1968), set immediately after the revolution. The fact that German later disowned it – mainly because of disagreements with his co-director, Grigori Aronov, a loyal Soviet – does not diminish its interest. Like all his work, the film focuses on an outsider, caught between opposing ideologies. In this case, it is a former tsarist general, released from prison into the utopian society of the Soviet Union, where he is told: "The fact that you are alive is a misunderstanding." |
| German's first solo effort was Trial on the Road, in which a German soldier is captured by Russian partisans but reveals he is a former Red Army sergeant who was forced to serve the Nazis. He is taken into the fighting unit, where he is treated with suspicion and vindictiveness until he distinguishes himself by bravery. This assured, anti-war film, in dazzling monochrome, effectively evoking the atmosphere of the Breugelesque landscape, and playing ironically with notions of heroism, was released during perestroika after being banned for 15 years for "anti-heroic" depiction of Soviet history. | German's first solo effort was Trial on the Road, in which a German soldier is captured by Russian partisans but reveals he is a former Red Army sergeant who was forced to serve the Nazis. He is taken into the fighting unit, where he is treated with suspicion and vindictiveness until he distinguishes himself by bravery. This assured, anti-war film, in dazzling monochrome, effectively evoking the atmosphere of the Breugelesque landscape, and playing ironically with notions of heroism, was released during perestroika after being banned for 15 years for "anti-heroic" depiction of Soviet history. |
| Also banned for some years, for similar reasons, was German's second film, Twenty Days Without War (1976), a restrained examination into the nature of truth, in which a novelist and war correspondent, Major Lopatin (Yuri Nikulin, the comic actor and circus performer, cast against type), has 20 days leave after the Battle of Stalingrad to visit his home town in Tashkent, where a "positive" war film, based on his army memoirs, is being made. Beginning with a tour-de-force 10-minute take on a train, the film displays German's eye for detail as Lopatin soon discovers that people's perceptions of the "great patriotic war" are very different from what he has experienced, making him realise that those who stayed at home need romantic and heroic illusions. "We can't have a film without a heroic act," he is told by the producer of the film-within-the-film. | Also banned for some years, for similar reasons, was German's second film, Twenty Days Without War (1976), a restrained examination into the nature of truth, in which a novelist and war correspondent, Major Lopatin (Yuri Nikulin, the comic actor and circus performer, cast against type), has 20 days leave after the Battle of Stalingrad to visit his home town in Tashkent, where a "positive" war film, based on his army memoirs, is being made. Beginning with a tour-de-force 10-minute take on a train, the film displays German's eye for detail as Lopatin soon discovers that people's perceptions of the "great patriotic war" are very different from what he has experienced, making him realise that those who stayed at home need romantic and heroic illusions. "We can't have a film without a heroic act," he is told by the producer of the film-within-the-film. |
| Set in the winter of 1935, My Friend Ivan Lapshin follows the eponymous police chief in a provincial Russian town, whose main activity is to track down a notorious gang of criminals, though he finds time to make clumsy attempts at romance. The film opens in the present (in colour) and reverts to the past (in black and white) via an unseen narrator – as usual in German's work, atmosphere and character are more important than plot. A densely packed and richly detailed tapestry of life and conditions in the period just prior to the Stalin purges, it is made with a Chekhovian sensibility and a naturalistic style. | Set in the winter of 1935, My Friend Ivan Lapshin follows the eponymous police chief in a provincial Russian town, whose main activity is to track down a notorious gang of criminals, though he finds time to make clumsy attempts at romance. The film opens in the present (in colour) and reverts to the past (in black and white) via an unseen narrator – as usual in German's work, atmosphere and character are more important than plot. A densely packed and richly detailed tapestry of life and conditions in the period just prior to the Stalin purges, it is made with a Chekhovian sensibility and a naturalistic style. |
| Nothing could have prepared audiences for Khrustalyov, My Car!, the style of which combines the baroque of Orson Welles, the phantasmagoria of Federico Fellini and the rigour of Béla Tarr, but which is unmistakably German's own. Adapted loosely from a story by Joseph Brodsky, it takes place over three days during the winter of 1953 (it always seems to be winter in German's Russia), as Stalin lies dying. The elusive narrative follows a military brain surgeon, General Klenski, released from a gulag, who is taken to Stalin's deathbed. On the way, he is brutally abused by a group of convicts. With vibrant use of handheld camera and long takes at significant moments, Khrustalyov, My Car!, is like an x-ray of the collective unconscious of the Russian brain at the time. | Nothing could have prepared audiences for Khrustalyov, My Car!, the style of which combines the baroque of Orson Welles, the phantasmagoria of Federico Fellini and the rigour of Béla Tarr, but which is unmistakably German's own. Adapted loosely from a story by Joseph Brodsky, it takes place over three days during the winter of 1953 (it always seems to be winter in German's Russia), as Stalin lies dying. The elusive narrative follows a military brain surgeon, General Klenski, released from a gulag, who is taken to Stalin's deathbed. On the way, he is brutally abused by a group of convicts. With vibrant use of handheld camera and long takes at significant moments, Khrustalyov, My Car!, is like an x-ray of the collective unconscious of the Russian brain at the time. |
| For more than 10 years, German had been struggling to complete History of the Arkanar Massacre, based on the 1964 science-fiction novel Hard to Be a God by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Set on another planet, it is an allegory about the Stalin era that might also be applied, to a certain extent, to Putin's Russia. It was finally nearing completion when German died. According to his son, Aleksei, a superb film-maker in his own right, there remains only some re-recording of sound and editing to be resolved. | For more than 10 years, German had been struggling to complete History of the Arkanar Massacre, based on the 1964 science-fiction novel Hard to Be a God by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Set on another planet, it is an allegory about the Stalin era that might also be applied, to a certain extent, to Putin's Russia. It was finally nearing completion when German died. According to his son, Aleksei, a superb film-maker in his own right, there remains only some re-recording of sound and editing to be resolved. |
| German is survived by his wife, the screenwriter Svetlana Karmalita, who co-wrote Khrustalyov, My Car!, and his son. | German is survived by his wife, the screenwriter Svetlana Karmalita, who co-wrote Khrustalyov, My Car!, and his son. |
| • Aleksei Yuryevich German, film director, born 20 July 1938; died 21 February 2013 | • Aleksei Yuryevich German, film director, born 20 July 1938; died 21 February 2013 |
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