Word: gerasimovic
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According to the dogma of Socialist Realism, all art and literature must conform to the triple standard of partinost (party character), ideinost (socialist content) and narodnost (closeness to the people). For Stalin, this ideal was most faithfully reflected in the work of his favorite painter, Alexander Gerasimov, whose portraits of the dictator in various noble poses hung in museums, offices, factories and homes everywhere. At the same time, in the '30s and '40s, Stalin used every kind of coercion to apply the Socialist Realism doctrine, destroying the avant-garde and the contacts with Western artists that it needed...
...miserable every time he had to stand up or bend over. No wonder he felt like killing people. This fascinating historical tidbit came to light when the Russians removed Czar Ivan IV (1530-84) from his Kremlin tomb last year and turned the bones over to Anthropologist-Sculptor Mikhail Gerasimov, a specialist in reconstructing physical appearance from bone structure. Gerasimov got the backache idea from studying the skeleton, has now finished two busts of the 16th century ruler-one showing the muscles of Ivan's left side, and the other showing what he looked like. Ouch...
Died. Alexander Gerasimov, 82, Stalin's favorite painter, a totally unimaginative member of the draw-it-likethey-want-it-to-look school who won just about every honor there was for his portraits of the Soviet dictator, but fell from favor in the great destalinization campaign despite his abject recantings, a switch that Western observers regarded as something akin to Whistler turning on his mother; of a heart attack; in Moscow...
...other. The main source of confusion is that the movie jumps back and forth between two concepts of what makes a sound marriage--romantic love in the best modern sense of overcoming all obstacles, or carefully planned agreements by the parents of both families. Throughout the film, director Sergei Gerasimov refrains from telling us which method he thinks works better. At the end, he makes his opinion clear, but not his reasons...
...which the filming tries vainly to suggest, is just too much. He has made it too clear that he was only sorry for her in the week or two their marriage lasted. He has spent too many years in a state verging on contentment with his peasant mistress. Gerasimov's treatment of the final scenes is aimed at portraying an enlightened man undoing past mistakes. What comes out is a picture of a man, like a rat, hopping between sinking ships. He is no homecoming hero at all. He is still Grigori, and everyone in the audience knows...