Bezhin Meadow is a 1937 Soviet propaganda film, famous for having been suppressed and believed destroyed before its completion. Directed by Sergei Eisenstein, it tells the story of a young farm boy whose father attempts to betray the government for political reasons by sabotaging the year’s harvest. The son’s efforts to stop his own father to protect the Soviet state, culminating in the boy’s murder and a social uprising.
About Bezhin Meadow in brief
Bezhin Meadow is a 1937 Soviet propaganda film, famous for having been suppressed and believed destroyed before its completion. Directed by Sergei Eisenstein, it tells the story of a young farm boy whose father attempts to betray the government for political reasons by sabotaging the year’s harvest. The son’s efforts to stop his own father to protect the Soviet state, culminating in the boy’s murder and a social uprising. The film draws its title from a story by Ivan Turgenev, but is based on the life of Pavlik Morozov, a young Russian boy who became a political martyr following his death in 1932, after he denounced his father to Soviet government authorities and subsequently died at the hands of his family. In the wake of the film’s failure, Eisenstein publicly recanted his work as an error. Some, however, blamed the failure of Bezhin Meadows on government interference and policies, extending all the way to Joseph Stalin himself. In some versions, the destruction of the church was replaced with a scene of villagers fighting the arsonist’s fire. In others, the film cuts, Stepok overhears his father’s planning and sneaks out in the night to inform him on the local Communist Party. After Stepok’s death, the same official carries him off in a funeral march that was said to evolve into a victory for the Communist Party, in a function that was later called a victory over the Soviet government. In other versions, when the arsonists are arrested, the fire is started when the fire was started in the community’s fuel storage area.
After the fire, the villagers transform the church into a clubhouse, symbolically ridiculing religion or the clergy. A later re-editing of the movie opens with images of orchards and blue sky, showing a stone obelisk with Turgenesv’s name on it. By the end of the set piece, the angry villagers are depicted as Christ-like, angelic, and prophetic figures, and are saved from the villagers’ wrath by Stepok. The visuals of theFilm was long thought lost in the aftermath of World War II bombings, but in the 1960s, cuttings and partial prints were found; from these, a reconstruction of BeZhin Meadow was undertaken. The most sourced and best-known version focuses on Stepok, who is a member of the local Young Pioneers Communist organization, as are other local children. His father Samokhin, a farmer, plans to sabotage the village harvest by burning down the titular meadow, but Stepok organizes the other Young Pioneer children to guard the crops. Stepok leaves with a Communist functionary, and is in turn slain by his father for betraying his own family. It is next revealed that Stepok’s mother has been beaten to death by his dad. In a dark hut, Samoklin complains that his son has a greater loyalty to the Soviet than his ownFamily, as Stepok enters from the bright day outside.
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This page is based on the article Bezhin Meadow published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 04, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
