Dead Souls (1984 film)

Dead Souls (Russian: Мёртвые души, romanized: Myortvye dushi) is a 1984 Soviet television miniseries directed by Mikhail Schweitzer, based on Nikolai Gogol's epic poem of the same name. This story has been shared in many different interpretations. In 1930, author Mikhail Bulgakov was commissioned to write the first adaptation of this novel for the Soviet stage at the Moscow Art Theater.[1] The 1984 miniseries was based on the 1960 film adaptation directed by Leonid Trauberg, which was inspired the Moscow Art Theater script. This story was also adapted as an opera in the 1980s as an American-Soviet production that first opened in Boston.[2] The first cinematic interpretation of this work was directed by Pyotr Chardynin in 1909.

Dead Souls
Directed byMikhail Schweitzer
Written byMikhail Schweitzer
Nikolai Gogol (novel)
StarringAleksandr Kalyagin
Larisa Udovichenko
Tamara Nosova
Innokenty Smoktunovsky
Vyacheslav Nevinny
Inna Churikova
Narrated byAleksandr Trofimov
CinematographyDilshat Fatkhulin
Music byAlfred Schnittke
Production
company
Release date
1984
Running time
387 minutes
CountrySoviet Union
LanguageRussian

Synopsis

This is a small-screen rendering of Gogol's epic poem critiquing the class system in 19th-century Russia by the same name. In this film, main character Chichikov travels through the countryside buying dead souls, or serfs who had deceased. By purchasing the deed to these "property," Chichikov is able to improve his social standing at a discount as these individuals were still accounted for in property registers postmortem and the rights to ownership for deceased serfs was less than that of the living. Dead Souls is a critique and satire of middle class life in Imperial Russia.[3]

Cast

References
  1. Borden, Richard; Milne, Lesley (July 1994). "Mikhail Bulgakov: A Critical Biography". Russian Review. 53 (3): 440. doi:10.2307/131208. JSTOR 131208.
  2. Holland, Bernard; Times, Special to The New York (1988-03-14). "Review/Opera; U.S.-Soviet Portrayal Of Gogol's 'Dead Souls'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  3. "Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol: Summary & Analysis". Study.com. Retrieved 2019-06-12.


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