An iconoclastic and eminent figure of postwar Russian cinema, the scrappy,
Romanian-born Kira Muratova, a resident of the Ukraine for most of her life, has
produced a powerful body of work. Those familiar with her films acknowledge the
particular niche they occupy among the works of the Soviet New Wave, and even
among the works of current Eastern European cinema; relatively few, though, can
claim the luxury of having seen them, as they were almost completely unknown
until the coming of glasnost. Often heavily censored or utterly buried,
Muratova’s films (along with Alexei Gherman’s) have been described by J.
Hoberman as the most suppressed of the Soviet New Wave. The societal ills
depicted in Muratova’s audacious debut, BRIEF ENCOUNTERS (1967), likely sparked
the film’s twenty-year-ban, after which it was hailed as a major discovery. Her
follow up, LONG FAREWELLS (1971), a melodrama about a young man in search of his
father that is as formally daring as BRIEF ENCOUNTERS, elicited an even more
vehement response and suffered a similar fate, remaining unseen for sixteen
years, while Muratova herself was forced to abandon filmmaking until GETTING TO
KNOW THE BIG WIDE WORLD (1978), made for Lenfilm Studios.
Whether it is the castigatory nature of her work or simply its experimental
irreverence that has most offended officials is open to question. Muratova
boldly incorporates competing elements and tones, creating a peculiar breed of
contemporary surrealism that hides streaks of humanism within the cynicism of
her characters’ lives. The aesthetic lineage of Muratova’s cinema can be traced
to the French New Wave (her first two features exhibit clear signs of the
nouvelle vague’s influence), but her films differ in their almost populist
penchant for sensationalism, though they share a disavowal of audience
expectations and genre conventions. The characters in Muratova’s films can be
blankly cruel or suddenly generous, nihilistic or hopeful, and the director sees
no particular need to iron out psychological discrepancies any more than she
sees the need to reconcile the seeming artistic contradictions of her
unpredictable oeuvre.
The only film banned (temporarily) during perestroika, THE ASTHENIC SYNDROME
(1989), usually cited as her most ingenious work, perhaps best expresses
Muratova’s acerbic sensibility. Comprised of aleatory details and fragmented
plot, the film depicts, in its first part, a grief-stricken woman whose
schizophrenic tirade may be seen to embody the confusion and chaos of
post-communist Russia. Though deceptively light, PASSIONS (1994), which has
until now met with the most acclaim from Soviet critics, contains undertones of
unease that definitively mark it as a Muratova film, while the hyper-real
violence and black humour of THREE STORIES (1997) also place it clearly in her
oeuvre. With THE TUNER (2004), which was inspired by the memoirs of a
nineteenth-century detective and stars Russian cinema icon Renata Litvinova,
Muratova continues to chronicle cruelty and compassion from an amoral distance,
thereby allowing a characteristically lucid snapshot of humanity to emerge. –
George Kaltsounakis
Cinematheque Ontario wishes to thank the following individuals and organizations
who have helped make this retrospective possible: Alla Verlotsky, Seagull Films
(New York); the Russian Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography; Fleur
Buckley, BFI (London); and Cord Dueppe and the Film Society of Lincoln Center
(New York). Film descriptions are adapted from text by the Film Society of
Lincoln Center, unless otherwise noted.