Page 43 - (DK Eyewitness) Top 10 Travel Guide - St. Petersburg

Writers ❮❮ 41

TOP 10 FILMS SET IN
ST PETERSBURG
1 October (1927)
Sergei Eisenstein’s film, an epic
depiction of the 1917 Revolution, is a
silent black-and-white master piece.
2 The End of St Petersburg (1927)
Another film dedicated to the 1917
Revolution, Pudovkin’s film forms part
of the direc tor’s Revolutionary Trilogy.
Joseph Brodsky 3 The Irony of Fate (1975)
A romantic comedy that uses as its
Brodsky (1940–96)
8 plot device the extreme similarity
of Soviet housing.
Joseph Brodsky, protégé of
Akhmatova, won the Nobel Prize 4 The Burglar (1986)
for Literature in 1987. He left the A perestroika favourite, this film
USSR in 1972 after his works were portrays the city’s underground
attacked by the au tho rities. rock scene.
5 GoldenEye (1995)
Akhmatova (1889–1966)
9 British spy James Bond comes to
St Petersburg to carry out a daring
Branded a “half-harlot, half-
nun” by Soviet autho rities in 1946, raid involving the Russian Mafia in
this action-packed film.
the poet Anna Akhmatova wrote
Requiem (1940), her tragic master- 6 Brother (1997)
piece about the terrifying Stalin A bleak yet humorous film that depicts
the chaos of mid-1990s St Petersburg.
years, which was banned in the
USSR until 1989. Her first husband 7 Russian Ark (2002)
was killed by the Bolsheviks. The world’s first unedited feature film,
Russian Ark is a 90-minute wander
through the Winter Palace (see p14).
8 The Idiot (2003)
A highly successful and popular
Russian TV adaptation of Dostoevsky’s
famous novel The Idiot.
9 The Stroll (2003)
Three young people wander around
the city dis cussing life and love.
10 Garpastum (2003)
Love, war and football (garpastum
means “ball game” in Latin) take equal
billing in this impressive film by Alexsei
German Jr, set in 1914.
Anna Akhmatova
Blok (1880–1921)
0
Central to the “Silver Age”
of Russian poetry, Alexander Blok
developed com plex poetic sym bols.
His contro versial work, The Twelve,
likens Bolshevik soldiers to A still from October
Christ’s Apostles.

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