How a controversial Soviet silent film became a masterpiece of avant-garde cinema
In short: Alexander Dovzhenko’s 1928 epic Zvenigora baffled contemporary critics, who claimed no one could understand it. Yet, this revolutionary film—the first in his famous Ukraine Trilogy—left legends like Sergei Eisenstein in awe, marking the arrival of a singular new voice that blended folklore, history, and radical political ideology.
Zvenigora, released on 13 April 1928, was a pivotal moment in Soviet cinema. It tells a sweeping story spanning a millennium of Ukrainian history, centered on an old man searching for treasure buried within a mountain. While the film is often described as a revolutionary epic, its core theme is the relationship between humanity and nature. Dovzhenko argued that humanity must move beyond passive submission to nature, instead seeking control and understanding, a process he believed was catalyzed by the October Revolution.
The production was fraught with tension. Originally scripted by Maik Johansen and Yurtyk, the project faced intense scrutiny from the Odesa film studio VUFKU. Dovzhenko famously took control, heavily rewriting the script and ultimately removing the original writers from the credits. Even before its release, the newspaper Kino attacked the screenplay as bourgeois and nationalistic. Despite this, the film’s innovative, avant-garde style made a profound impression on contemporaries like Sergei Eisenstein, who praised Dovzhenko as a master of his own individuality.
The film’s legacy has only grown over time. While early viewers in Moscow were left confused, modern critics recognize its eccentric brilliance. In 2012, filmmaker Guy Maddin included it in his top ten list for the Sight & Sound poll, and in 2021, the National Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Centre ranked it nineteenth on its list of the best Ukrainian films. It remains a testament to a director who, as Eisenstein noted, created something entirely new in the medium of cinema.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Zvenigora
- Also: Wikidata — Zvenigora · CC0
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