Viktor SOKOLOV
Виктор СОКОЛОВ
Viktor SOKOLOV
USSR, 1962, 92mn 
Black and white, fiction
When The Bridges Are Raised
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Когда разводят мосты

 

 Quand les ponts sont levés

 Kogda razvodyat mosty

 
Directed by : Viktor SOKOLOV (Виктор СОКОЛОВ)
 
Cast
Leonid BYKOV (Леонид БЫКОВ) ...Richard
Vladimir CHETVERIKOV (Владимир ЧЕТВЕРИКОВ)
Vladimir KOLOKOLTSEV (Владимир КОЛОКОЛЬЦЕВ)
 
Production : Lenfilm
 
Site : IMDb

Plot synopsis
Fresh from high school, Valerka has to make a decision about his career. He cherishes romantic dreams about travelling to far off places, but fails his exam to enter naval college. Thus he goes to work as a stagehand in a theatre but soon he gives up his job and falls in love with his neighbour, Inga, who dreams of the sweat life. After a series of misfortunes, Valerka finally finds out his path in life. He gets a job at the seaport where his father has been working as a docker all his life, and enters correspondence courses at a college.
Source : www.lenfilm.ru
 

Commentaries and bibliography
Квартира, класс, двор — и снова квартира: подростки советского кино в поисках настоящего продолженного [Les adolescents dans le cinéma soviétique], Ирина МАРГОЛИНА, kinoart.ru, 2023
 
In 1961, Vasily Aksyonov, the author of the acclaimed story "A Ticket to the Stars" (1961), wrote a script under the provisional title "I'm in Tow" and offered it to the Lenfilm studio. The party bureau criticized it, calling it "ideologically harmful" and "pessimistic". There was even a proposal to abolish the script department, since its employees could not provide the studio with ideologically correct scripts. But at the artistic council, the script department defended its positions. “The protagonist could grow into a future Gagarin” - that was the main argument. And so "I'm in Tow" went to director Vladimir Sokolov and went into production under the title "When the Bridges are Raised".
“There are certain difficulties in the choice of young male actors. It is not so easy to find young performers for the leading roles”, director Viktor Sokolov reported on the filming progress. (Sokolov V. Predstoit bol'shaia interesnaia rabota [A Lot of Interesting Work Ahead] // Kadr [Shot] (L.). 1961. 17. October 14. S. 3.) For Vladimir Kolokoltsev, this was not the first big film role. In Genrikh Gabay’s “The Green Van (1959), he had played a former high school student who joined the criminal investigation department, charming and cheerful. In Sokolov’s film, the actor appeared in a different way. Valerka’s wide smile hid a poorly concealed melancholy. After the film’s release, the Soviet press accused the director of the absence of "a bunch of thoughts about life" (Velednikov V. Nizhe vozmozhnostei avtora [Below the Author’s Capabilities] // Sovetskii ekran [The Soviet Screen] (M.). 1963. 6. S. 6.). But where could this "bunch" come from? It’s not so easy to go into space, and the war is long over. And so the sea beckons Valerka - no thoughs about the bright Soviet future, only dreams of personal happiness, which does not come. The girl he loves rejects him, choosing to carve out her own life, but she also does not really succeed in it... From a photo, meanwhile, Audrey Hepburn looks at her, reminding her: “Do not miss your chance”. So Inga tries her best, even agrees to a job "no worse than any other", to sell lottery tickets. Perhaps she will also get the one that will bring her luck?
At the level of the plot, Sokolov has everything layed out and predicted. But although the ending of the film with Valerka’s successful employment in the port seems artificial and made-up, just to hint about the happy future of the young builder of communism and to condemn Inga who sells lottery tickets, the sincere intonation of the director redeems everything.
Daria Gorbach

Selected in the following festivals or events :
- Moscow International Festival of Archival Films (Formerly "Belye Stolby"), Moscow (Russia), 2021