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Katok i Skrypka (1961)

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky

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From Time Out Film Guide

Tarkovsky's graduation project at the VGIK film school in Moscow offers a key to all the later 'mature' work: it's his clearest statement of frustrated longing for a perfect union with an idealised father-figure. Six-year-old Sasha (Fomchenko) lives with his domineering, unsympathetic mother (Adzhuberi), and studies the violin under an even more domineering and even less sympathetic female music teacher. His idealised father-figure is Sergei (Zamansky), a butch-but-sensitive road-mender, who saves him from being bullied, gives him bread, milk and lessons in self-confidence and respect, and promises to take him to the movies - to see Chapayev, the venerable romantic portrait of a Communist hero. The 'romance' between man and boy receives the benediction of a prototypical Tarkovskian rainstorm, incidentally yielding a charming cine-poem about drops of water and puddles. Some ten years later, Tarkovsky reworked all of this much more elaborately in Solaris.

Author: TR 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

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User reviews of this film

  • Zenon Marko said...
    Posted on Jun 04 2008 23:49 A beautiful little gem of a film. Seemingly simple, in that not much happens in the sense of traditional narrative, but expresses depth of feeling through the silences, the gestures, and the subtle use of light and camera angle. Recommended.
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Cast & crew

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky

Cast: Igor Fomchenko, V Zamansky, N Arkhangelskaya, Marina Adzhubei full cast

Duration: 46 mins


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