Elem Germanovich Klimov

Background

Elem Klimov was born on July 9, 1933.

Education

In 1957, he graduated from Moscow Aviation Institute, in 1964 - Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography. He showed himself as a master of eccentrics in his student work "The Groom" in 1960.

Career

Came to the film industry from science. Originally graduated as an aviation engineer. Later graduated from the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography.

Acquired a reputation for his satirical short films when he was a film student — Careful Banality, Look, The Sky, etc. His children’s film (for adults) Welcome, 1964, became a classic. His second full-length film, Adventures of a Dentist, 1967, confirmed his reputation as a master of satire.

Neither film was widely distributed because they annoyed the authorities with their criticism of Soviet bureaucracy (both are transparent allegories on the way of life in the USSR). His next film, Agoniia (Agony), about Rasputin and the last years before the revolution, took him nearly 20 years to make. The film was ready in 1975 but was released only in 1985, having been distributed abroad the previous year to test reaction.

It made a sensation both abroad and in the USSR with its subject-matter, which had previously been regarded as taboo, and with its sympathetic treatment of Nicholas II. Agoniia was a major box office hit in 1985-1987. His film Farewell to Matera is based on V. Rasputin’s story, and was started by his wife Larissa Shepitko, who died (together with her 7 crew) in a car crash during the shooting. Supplemented the film with short sequel, Larissa, in her memory.

He was unanimously elected General Secretary of the Film-makers Union (practically the head of the Soviet film industry) and released all the films which had been shelved in the previous 30 years (literally hundreds, including all his own films). This had been made possible thanks to the historic Congress of the Film-makers’ Union in May 1986, which had shifted the decision-making role from the bureaucrats and censors to the film-makers.

He proved his eccentric ideas in satirical comedy “Welcome, or No Trespassing” in 1964. In this movie he used grotesque reception –parodic reinterpretation of stamped societies, rituals and the ideological norms of Soviet morality. The movie of 1965 “Adventures of a Dentist” – cinematic apologue about futility of talent in the unified society – appeared on the screen only in 1987.

I.A. Pyryev offered Elem Klimov to work on the movie plot of G.E. Rasputin. Klimov had been developing it for 20 years during which it was undergoing huge changes – where in first versions there was farcical-eccentric manner of presenting the material to the version of historical chronicle drama, which became the final edition of “Agony” movie (1981, released in the screens in 1985). If the turning point in the life of the nation was captured in a series of vivid metaphorical images comparable to scenes of “October” movie by S. M. Eisenstein at the intermediate stage (for example, in the director's script of 1973), the inevitable tread of the revolution was demonstrated by a more familiar technique – introduction of the film chronicle (edited to the music of A. G. Schnittke) in the final version. Movie “Sport, sport, sport” (1971) showed interest in working with the chronicle and artistic experiments at the intersection of documentary and feature films. We see the same interest in the unfinished by M.I.Romma movie “The world today”, which was accomplished by Klimov and others and released in 1976 under the name “And Still I Believe...”). There was the tragic outlook in the Klimov’s creative activity of 1980. The documentary film “Larisa” (1980), dedicated to his wife deceased in the car accident, was finished by Klimov by design of Shepitko’s “Farewell” (1983, “Farewell to Matyora” by Valentin Rasputin). “Farewell” is a film narrative about the destruction of the Belarusian village by the Nazis " Go and see» (1985).

Connections

He was married to Larisa Shepitko.

References

• Great Russian Encyclopedia