Chapaev (film)
차파예프 (영화)
The Vasilyev brothers' 1934 Soviet sound film about the Red Army commander Vasily Chapayev, from Dmitry Furmanov's novel. Thirty million people saw it in its first year and Stalin is said to have watched it 38 times. It became a leading work of socialist realism, and its hero is still a staple of Russian jokes.
In depth
What is the story?
The Ural front in the Civil War. The divisional commander Chapayev is a peasant hero, barely literate and always swearing. Moscow sends him a commissar, Furmanov, and they clash at once. Chapayev insists on having a horse doctor examined as a "doctor"; Furmanov arrests a platoon commander whose men robbed peasants, and they argue over who runs the division. When the goods are returned, a peasant delegation comes to thank him, and Chapayev declares he will personally shoot any looter. A peasant asks: "Are you for the Bolsheviks or for the Communists?" Chapayev sidesteps: "I am for the International."
He teaches a lesson in where a commander belongs in battle using potatoes and a pipe, and his orderly Petka falls in love with Anka as he tests her on stripping a machine gun. The climax is the "psychological attack". White officers in black uniforms march in formation to a drumbeat, ignoring their fallen comrades, and frightened soldiers are brought back by the commissar. Anka stops them with the machine gun until she runs out of ammunition; as the Cossack cavalry bears down, Chapayev charges in with drawn sabres.
Furmanov is recalled to Moscow and the White colonel Borozdin proposes a raid on Lbishchensk, where the divisional headquarters is. Cossacks pour into the town at night, Chapayev fires a machine gun from an attic and is wounded. Petka dies covering him on the bank, and Chapayev is shot and sinks while swimming the Ural. The film ends as the division, brought by Anka, falls on the Whites.
Why was it so popular?
Georgi and Sergei Vasilyev were known as the Vasilyev brothers, though they were not related, and they used the misunderstanding in their credits. In summer 1932 they were handed a poster-like script by Furmanov's widow. They went through the archives and sought out hundreds of veterans of the division, even Ural Cossacks who had fought against it. Of the 57 final scenes only four came from the original script. The secret was the contrast between a legendary hero in battle and a simple man after it. Boris Babochkin, first considered for Petka, won the title role.
At its opening in November 1934 at the Titan in Leningrad there were no posters, only handwritten notices, and the morning screening was thin. By evening there were queues, and Pravda wrote in an editorial that "the whole country will watch Chapaev". Thirty million saw it in the first year, and one Leningrad cinema ran it every day for two years. According to Boris Shumyatsky's notes Stalin watched it 38 times at the Kremlin in 1934-1937. He also had a view on the ending. Fearing it was too dark, the brothers shot two others, with Petka and Anka on parade or Chapayev's voice in a blossoming apple orchard, but Stalin chose the original, saying that no words were fitting after Chapayev's death.
English-language studies treat its structure as typical of socialist realism. Chapayev stands for the uneducated strength of the people and Furmanov for the party's order, and in their scenes together Furmanov is placed higher in the frame.
How does it differ from the real Chapayev?
The film crowds real episodes from different periods into the last days on the Ural. The famous psychological attack is furthest from history. Chapayev's and Kappel's units never met in battle; Kappel's opponent in June 1919 was the 24th Division. The black uniforms and skull-and-crossbones banner are closer to a propaganda image. In the novel's few lines about the attack, the officers approached silently; the film gave them drums. The real Chapayev had a head wound that day and took no direct part. For Anka there is only a possible prototype, Maria Popova.
The broad outline of his death is true: he died on 5 September 1919 in the Ural Cossack raid on Lbishchensk. How he died is unclear. The Cossacks were promised a reward for him, but nobody could prove his death or produce a body. One account has him wounded in the stomach and taken across the river by two Hungarian soldiers on a raft made from half a gate, dying of blood loss on the far bank and buried in the sand. The picture of him sinking in the water became fact thanks to the film.
How did he become the hero of jokes?
In a wartime propaganda short, Chapayev Is with Us, he finally reaches the far bank and makes a speech calling for attacks on the Germans. Boys playing Reds and Whites imagined themselves as Chapayev or Petka. Chapayev, Petka, Anka and Furmanov went on to star in a great number of Russian jokes and even a series of computer games. President Putin has named it his favourite film.