988Leningrad Documentary
Film Production
The war dream
The relatives of this woman,
Maria lvanovna Vishnyakova,
were villagers.
They insisted she give birth
in the village.
A boy was born,
named Andrei,
in Zavrazhye,
Yurievets District,
lvanovo Oblast,
on April 4, 1 932.
Soon after, his sister
was born.
She was named
Marina.
Their father
was a prominent
Russian poet,
Arseni Tarkovsky.
The Tarkovsky family
originated in Dagestan
at least seven centuries
ago.
The Tarkovsky princedom
existed in the Caucasus
up until the middle
of the 1 9th century.
ln Maria's family, there were
generals and engineers.
Laura!
This is Andrei.
Andrei Tarkovsky.
The Soviet filmmaker
was invited to ltaly
by RAl, an ltalian state-owned
TV and radio company,
to work on his film
Nostalghia.
Talking with Tonino Guerra,
poet and script-writer.
You know, Andrei,
tonight l wrote a poem for you.
l'd like
to read it now.
l write poetry in dialect,
not in literary ltalian.
Yet l want you to listen,
perhaps you'll understand.
What's a home?
Perhaps it's a coat,
or when it rains, an umbrella.
lt's full of bottles,
rags,
wooden ducks,
curtains and fans.
No desire to ever leave here,
it seems.
Then, is it
a cage
...for anyone
who happens to come?
Even for a bird like you,
with traces of snow...
lt's very good,
only too sad.
There's some hope.
We must have a programme,
or we'll get no results.
We must look through
all we saw during our trip,
all we may need
for the script,
and leave out
all we won't need.
We still need
a general list,
to begin with
Sorrento.
Toni, salute Michelangelo.
Thank him for everything.
When the work on Nostalghia
started,
he was already 50.
We travel all the time
around tourist sites.
l haven't yet seen
a single place
our character could
come across.
l show him
all these places
so he can absorb
all the beauties of ltaly.
Then, of course,
he can forget it all.
However...
However,
l'd like to ask you:
if a Russian
comes here,
what's his purpose?
He may come
for business.
Or he may have
a cultural purpose.
l agree we must show
some of ltaly's beauty,
but l don't want our character
to be abstract.
lt's interesting
to watch him.
His movements,
his silence.
His speech.
One easily remembers
his gestures, his smile,
his particular concentration.
His image is immediate
and remains with us.
You're going to see some
footage shot long ago.
lt strikingly resembles
though it was long ago,
many years ago
the images
you have just seen.
A literary hero
is not a superman.
Among literary heroes,
there is Bashmachkin,
from Gogol's
Overcoat,
Dostoevsky's
Prince Myshkin,
Raskolnikov,
Pushkin's Hermann.
One can't understand
what's heroic
about Myshkin, or Raskolnikov,
who killed an old woman.
Or about Bashmachkin, a clerk
who had his overcoat stolen.
Or about Prince Myshkin,
who wasn't quite sane.
lt appears that
art influences the public
not by contagion,
that's wrong,
but through a kind
of ethical enlightenment,
through one's encounter
with the world
of artists...
This has such an impact
on the human soul
that it changes,
and...
...one who's seen or read
a work of art,
can no longer remain
the same... as before.
lt's hard to give
advice.
Yet the main thing l would say
to young directors,
is to learn not to separate
their work,
their films,
or cinema in general,
from life as it is.
One should try
to avoid gaps
between one's work,
one's own films,
and one's acts.
This is because a filmmaker
is like a poet or a musician,
and total self-sacrifice
is required.
lt would be strange
to see a filmmaker
consider his work
as a special gift of fate,
follow a certain
way of life,
but make his films
in a different way.
l'd like to tell all
the young filmmakers
to be