Word: donskoy
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...structure of Gorky's autobiography presented director Mark Donskoy with his greatest problem. A series of anecdotes, characters, observations, and philosophical reminiscences, the three volumes are tautly written though loose in form. In the construction of the films, it has been necessary to compress material, combine events by minor violations of chronology, and to except liberally. This is accomplished with great skill, and almost invariably the characters are presented with Gorky's sympathy and grimy clarity...
...notable exception though, Donskoy seems to have felt a compulsion to exaggerate the heroism of Tsiganok, a young dyer. The childishness which Gorky ascribes to him is turned by Donskoy to straightforwardness. The director refrains from describing his propensity for stealing, and transfers to Tsiganok's mouth the words of advice which so impressed young Gorky: "You must learn everything...
...years after Gorky's death, director Mark Donskoy began to film the trilogy of which The Childhood of Maxim Gorky is the first part. It is a wonderful film and well deserves the publicity the Brattle has given it. Full of characters that have since become types, the movie evoked, in Eric Erickson's Childhood and Society, a long analysis of the Russian mind. If only in one respect, Erickson is right: the movie is full of Russian life. Each frame is itself a picture; and most are crowded with Gorky's friends, the laborers, convicts, beggars, merchants, clowns...
...funny and free as they seem to be, the order of these images is quite important, and Donskoy has paid great attention to their detail. In the midst of a huge brawl between Gorky's uncles, the camera comes suddenly to rest on the spout of the tea service, which is soon discovered by Uncle Yakov who turns the service slightly so that the boiling water pours gently over Uncle Mikhail's hand. Donskoy is a magician at using montage; to accentuate the motion of his picture, he stops...
...Donskoy's way with children is as remarkable. Half his cast was children, and he treated them like adults with the result that there is little cute or faked about their performances. Though Alyosha Lyorsky acts with great charm, Young Gorky is the least convincing of the children. He is too often posed. Sometimes, when he should apparently be silently storing up observations as befits the future founder of Socialist Realism, he just stares. Similarly, S. Tikhonravov, as the anarchist lodger, falls victim to the Soviet preferences for gallant poses...