Lenin v Polshe

Sergei Yutkevich won the Best Director Award (his second) in Cannes 1966 for this black-and-white widescreen film. Actually, the cinematography and storyboard is quite varied and inventive, considering the limited topic. Lenin's stay in Poland from 1912 to 1914 is told in flash-backs by the temporarily imprisoned Russian journalist and revolutionary, in the form of a continuous voice-over. His memory of a day trip to the mountains near his exile home in a small village near Kraków offers some stunning sceneries; also, documentary footage from WW1, early aeroplanes and even 'comic' films (watched by Lenin in the local cinema) are interweaved with mass scenes from factories and battlefields, made with hundreds of extras. Ulka, the young Polish maid in Lenin's and Krupskaya's home (played by Ilona Kusmierska) and her fiancé, a young shepherd, add an element of romance and give this version of Lenin an opportunity both to reflect on love and religion and to try to convince ordinary Poles of his political views - not entirely successfully, though. Parts of the story are probably myths and pedagogic fiction, but the film's touch is not too heavy-handed and contains some elements of humour; e.g. Lenin the prisoner doing his weekly duties, washing the office floor, angrily mumbling to himself about the chauvinist and imperialist war and the German Social Democrats' betrayal of the international solidarity of the workers.