Celebrating Chekhov
From February 7 through March 3, the Gene Siskel Film Center takes note of 2010 as the 150th anniversary of the birth of Russian playwright and short-story writer Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) with the series Celebrating Chekhov, presenting eight films based on or inspired by his writings.
Chekhov, one of the most beloved and internationally appreciated of all Russian writers, brought to his work a keen understanding of the circumstances and forces that shape human behavior. In masterworks including The Seagull, The Cherry Orchard, and Uncle Vanya, and in scores of short stories, his characters are aristocrats who sense helplessly that their era of privilege is coming to a close, or members of the middle class whose lives are strictly and frustratingly defined by the demands of propriety. Lost dreams, unfulfilled ambitions, unrequited love, lives undercut by indolence, perfidy, failure, and the greed of others--this is the eternal stuff of Chekhov. His body of work has proven to be as rich a source of material for the movie screen as for the stage.
Our series features the most recent Chekhov screen adaptation, Karen Shakhnazarov’s WARD NO. 6, the film that is currently Russia’s official submission for Academy Awards consideration. This harrowing tale of a smug doctor whose downfall is brought about through his obsession with a patient is made all the more fascinating by the fact that Chekhov was a practicing physician his entire career, and wrote in his spare time.
The fading milieu of princely living is evoked with relish in films including THE HUNTING ACCIDENT and THE SEAGULL, while the holiday atmosphere of the seaside resort of Yalta, where Chekhov himself lived for some years, is made to symbolize freedom for a couple meeting on the sly in THE LADY WITH THE DOG.
Directors Andrei Konchalovsky and Nikita Mikhalkov rise to the emotional challenge of Chekhov, eliciting magnificently nuanced performances from large ensemble casts in Konchalovsky’s UNCLE VANYA and Mikhalkov’s AN UNFINISHED PIECE FOR A PLAYER PIANO. Two more experimental treatments of Chekhov’s material are seen in Kira Muratova’s CHEKHOV’S MOTIVES and in Louis Malle’s VANYA ON 42ND STREET.
Celebrating Chekhov is a presentation of Seagull Films in collaboration with the National Gallery of Art and Mosfilm Studio.
—Barbara Scharres
Sunday double-bill discount!
Buy a ticket at our regular prices for the 3:00 Chekhov film on any Sunday in February, and get a ticket for the second Chekhov film that day at this discount rate (tickets must be purchased at the same time at our box office - this offer is not available through Ticketmaster): General Admission $7; Students $5; Members $4. (This discount rate applies to the second film only.)
CHEKHOV’S MOTIFS
(CHEKHOVSKIYE MOTIVI)
2002, Kira Muratova, Ukraine/Russia, 120 min.
With Sergei Bekhterev, Nina Ruslanova
“Kira Muratova lends considerable glee to CHEKHOV’S MOTIFS, an off-with-the-statues’-heads satire of Russian culture and literary traditions…Sublimely funny.”—Dennis Harvey, Variety
Two Chekhov pieces, the play Tatiana Repina and the short story Difficult People, merge in a farcical contemporary treatment of an urbanized son’s less-than-welcome homecoming to the family farm. When a plea to borrow money is denied, the rebuffed man bumbles his way into the church wedding of strangers, an epic sequence that Muratova crafts with Felliniesque eccentricity. In Russian with English subtitles. DVCAM video. (BS)
- February 21st—4:45pm
- February 22nd—7:45pm
A HUNTING ACCIDENT
(aka MY TENDER AND AFFECTIONATE BEAST)
(MOY IASKOVIY I NEZHNIY ZVER)
1978, Emil Loyanu, USSR, 109 min.
With Galina Belyayeva, Oleg Yankovskiy
Love, jealousy, and greed are at the heart of this atmospheric production richly evocative of aristocratic decadence at its height. In a story based on Chekhov’s Drama at the Hunt, a penniless 16-year-old beauty satisfies her lust for the trappings of wealth and power in an arranged marriage to an aging prince, but finds love lacking until a dashing detective arrives as a guest at their country estate. The soundtrack music by Evgeniy Doga, especially his famed “Wedding Waltz,” is one of the sumptuous highlights. In Russian with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
- February 14th—5:00pm
- February 15th—8:00pm
THE LADY WITH THE DOG
(DAMA S SABACHKOY)
1960, Iosif Kheifitz, USSR, 89 min.
With Alexei Batalov, Iya Sawina
The poignant side of Chekhov is delicately exploited in this lovely tale of an affair with a doubtful future. Gurov, a married banker and habitual womanizer mired in mid-life boredom, gets a new lease on life when a brief dalliance with a young married woman at a Yalta resort unexpectedly engages his heart. Through ruses and subterfuges the fearful but equally enthralled lady is coaxed to a string of secret meetings until propriety’s bonds threaten to stifle their short-lived dream of freedom. In Russian with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
- February 21st—3:00pm
- February 25th—8:15pm
THE SEAGULL
(CHAIKA)
1970, Yuli Karasik, USSR, 99 min.
With Alla Demidova, Yuri Yakovlev
A successful yet melancholy actress, a son living in the shadow of his famous mother, a vain writer with a weakness for the ladies, and the impressionable girl who adores him--characters among the most famous and emblematic in the Chekhov canon--find exploration of their inner and outer worlds limited by the truncated state of their own souls. Director Karasik cast this lavish and definitive screen adaptation of THE SEAGULL with the finest Russian stage actors of his generation, including the exquisite Demidova, and Lyudmila Savelyeva, whose portrayal of a woman who loves in vain is one of the film’s many strengths. In Russian with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
- February 14th—3:00pm
- February 18th—8:15pm
UNCLE VANYA
(DYADYA VANYA)
1970, Andrei Konchalovsky, USSR, 104 min.
With Innokenti Smoktunovsky, Irina Miroshnichenko
“The best filmed Chekhov I’ve ever seen…an exceedingly graceful, beautifully acted production.”—Vincent Canby, The New York Times
Acclaimed in Russia as one of the greatest films ever made in the Russian language, UNCLE VANYA has long been out of distribution in the U.S. The talent of director Konchalovsky (SIBERIADA, RUNAWAY TRAIN) for orchestrating emotion on a grand scale is seen to advantage in the archetypically Chekhovian story of a genteel estate-based clan whose economic and social decline is hastened by the homecoming of the pompous widowed owner with his much-younger beauty of a new wife. In Russian with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
- February 7th—4:45pm
- February 8th—7:45pm
AN UNFINISHED PIECE FOR A PLAYER PIANO
(NEOKONCHENNAYA PYESA DLYA MEKHANICHESKOGO PIANINO)
1977, Nikita Mikhalkov, USSR, 100 min.
With Yelena Solovev, Alexander Kalyagin
“A succession of exquisitely stirring characterizations by an enormously gifted ensemble.”—Andrew Sarris, Village Voice
“Brilliantly funny…sardonic, insightful, and tender by turns…great and definitive Chekhov.”—Sheila Benson, Los Angeles Times
Director Mikhalkov (Oscar winner for BURNT BY THE SUN) drew on several of Chekhov’s short stories and the early play Platanov for this comedy-drama steeped in the themes of lost opportunity and love gone awry. A clutch of faded aristocrats and ne’er-do-wells meet for a summer gathering at the country estate of a general’s widow. Flighty, passionate Sophia, newly married to the hostess’s dull son, recognizes the schoolmaster, also married, as her ex-lover, and sparks of nostalgia are slowly fanned into an afternoon’s emotional conflagration. In Russian with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
- February 28th—5:15pm
- March 1st—6:00pm
VANYA ON 42ND STREET
1994, Louis Malle, USA, 119 min.
With Julianne Moore, Andre Gregory, Wallace Shawn
“The performances are precise, the language is alive and well spoken, and the setting is striking.”—Todd McCarthy, Variety
“It is not about characters in 19th-century Russia, but about anyone who feels their lives have been placed on hold.”—Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Leave it to a clutch of Broadway denizens to interpret Chekhov’s iconic Uncle Vanya with heartbreaking, hermetically sealed authenticity, even as they open it up to contemporary appreciation through a breathtakingly avant-garde method and grounded performances. Louis Malle sets the scene, and stage director Andre Gregory (MY DINNER WITH ANDRE) subtly shepherds his round-table-bound cast through David Mamet’s translation in the ruins of an old theater for a revitalized rip-roaring tragedy of wasted lives, dashed hopes, and unfulfilled dreams. In English. 35mm. (BS)
- February 28th—3:00pm
- March 3rd—6:00pm
Chicago premiere!
WARD NO. 6
(PALATA NOMER SHEST)
2009, Karen Shakhnazarov, Russia, 83 min.
With Evgeny Stychkin, Vladimir Ilyin
“Brilliant…deconstructs Chekhov to dazzling effect.”—Ronnie Scheib, Variety
“Deliberately blurs the line between fiction and reality, present and past, the sane and the crazy.”—Stephen Holden, The New York Times
Russia’s current submission for foreign-language Oscar consideration, WARD NO. 6 is a daring contemporary adaptation of Chekhov’s 1892 short story, filmed in a working mental institution with actual patients in supporting roles. Director Shakhnazarov (ZERO CITY, THE RIDER NAMED DEATH) creates an eerie documentary backdrop to this tale of a slovenly, self-important staff doctor whose obsession with a preternaturally intelligent patient proves to be his downfall. Current affairs and the ambience of present-day Moscow interface provocatively with the unhurried tone of Chekhov’s dialogue. In Russian with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
- February 7th—3:00pm
- February 11th—8:15pm