Lieutenant Kizhe restored

Lieutenant Kizhe restored

Poruchik Kizhe - Пору́чик Киже́ ( Lieutenant Kijé ) (1934) Aka: The Czar Wants to Sleep With subtitles Revised 2018 – frames edited, better flicker removal To get subtitles, click on the second version, and then on the CC icon. This is a delightful comedy about a fictional Lt. Kizhe who came about because of a scribe’s copying mistake. The officials were afraid to embarrass the Czar, so they created a fictional Kizhe who served as a convenient scapegoat. After being whipped, exiled, returned, married, and promoted Kizhe finally had to die when the Czar wanted to meet him. This is the first movie with a Prokofiev film score, so it is an important historical document and should be considered a classic. But it is also a very enjoyable comedy. The music from the film was subsequently recycled by Prokofiev into the popular Lieutenant Kijé suite. The story originated with a family story recounted in Vladimir Dahl's "Rasskazy o vremenakh Pavla I" ("Stories of the time of Paul I") in the journal Russkaya starina in 1870. Iit was expanded by Yury Tynyanov into a novella and movie with added fictional events. The score was provided by Prokofiev, while abroad, as segments that could be inserted and repeated as needed. Later it was recycled by Prokofiev into the popular Lt. Kijé suite. Kijé is the French transliteration, but Kizhe is correct for English. The story parodied Paul I, the son of Catherine the Great. But there is a possible suspicion that the movie may have also been intended as a criticism of the current Soviet government, disguised as a historical story. Paul was actually revered by many of his people and was idealistic and generous but also mercurial and sometimes vindictive. The depiction in the movie of his paranoia is probably accurate. His fear may not have been misplaced because shortly after he occupied his new “secure” palace he was assassinated. It is unknown whether a mythical Kizhe was actually invented to prevent Czarist embarrassment. So the movie is

https://archive.org/details/LieutenantKizhe1934Restored · Public domain (Internet Archive)