It was very difficult for people born in the post-revolutionary and revolutionary times to live, let alone become famous personalities. Filmmaker Mikhail Kalik, a Jew by nationality, went through all circles of hell to achieve a position in society. He changed the whole history of Russian cinema, making it more poetic. It is about his difficult life that will be discussed in our article.
Childhood story
Now almost all children grow up in warmth, comfort, do not need anything. In the twenties of the last century, Russia burned with hundreds of lights, here they killed and brought to suicide the so-called "enemies of the people and the new government." Entire families were sent to distant exile. In one of these links, Mikhail Kalik was born, whose biography began in the Arkhangelsk camp for the exiled.
He was born on January 29, 1927, when events were well-known to everyone. His father, once an actor in a children's and puppet theater, was accused of something and sent his whole family to exile in Arkhangelsk. The mother of the future filmmaker was from a very wealthy family, she once graduated from an elite gymnasium, perfectly knew many languages. But with all this knowledge, a woman had to exchange more or less valuable things for food for her family, then she mastered a typewriter. She wholeheartedly hated the new government, which also hated all wealthy people in tsarist times and their descendants.
When Moses (real name Kalika) turned one year old, the family was released from exile and moved to Moscow.
Love for movies
In 1943, in the midst of World War II, the young Mikhail Kalik was in the Alma-Ata evacuation and accidentally witnessed the creation of the film. Passing by the set, where Eisenstein was shooting "Ivan the Terrible", the guy heard the phrase of one of the actresses saying that the lady was playing a Jewess. The woman was glad that at least the king was not a Jew.
Kalik then thought about the opportunity to know Russian culture to him, to become a part of it. The whole shooting area sunk into the guy’s soul, and he wanted to make his own films in the same way.
Times were difficult, especially for the Jews, but Mikhail Kalik dared to enter VGIK.
Heavy student
As Mikhail Kalik himself recalls, entering the institute was not as difficult as experiencing during the training the Stalinist repressions, which were aimed at everyone. The young Jew immediately fell under the watchful eye of the Institute. He witnessed how the Stalin process was conducted over Jewish critics, the so-called cosmopolitans, and the arrest of Jewish cultural figures.
He himself also became an "enemy of the people" and in 1951 he was arrested among several other students. The guys were accused of "anti-Soviet terrorist organization", and Kalika and Zionist activities. He did not refute the latter, considering himself a true Jew.
Later, Kalik in the biographical film of Vinokur showed how he was taken, wringing his hands, shaving on his bald head, as if sentenced to death.
The experience of the Stalin camps
The guys who once studied at VGIK were brought to the military court of the MGB of Moscow. They did not expect mercy, because from these halls they usually led to the wall, and shot. But the guys, as an exception, were assigned a “quarter” of severe Siberian camps and sent to Ozerlag, one of the most terrible camps, located near Taishet.
Mikhail Kalik, the director in the future, says that hundreds of the most hardy men died every day around him, and he, young and not so strong, could survive. The director recalls that an optimistic attitude helped him survive that time. Even sitting in a solitary damp and dark cell, he managed not to lose heart. One of the guards took pity on the kid and gave him a whole box of matches. The future director burned them slowly, and while the light was on, he made plans for the future.
Having completed six prisons and the Lefortovo Special Corps during his imprisonment, he directed the feature film "And the Wind Returns" in 1991, in which he devoted several minutes to the truth about those camps. The plot was very believable, and once French directors asked him to sell a few minutes of his movie so that they could use this instead of documentary information not found.
Mikhail Kalik, whose films contain his worst memories, jokes that Siberian camps gave him great experience as a director, and he had to be in them in order to have the necessary information in the future.
Kalik returned home fully rehabilitated in 1954 and in 1958 he continued to study as a director.
Kalika's Style
Each film shot by this director has a special style. Although the masterpieces of Kalik are artistic, each of them is filled with such believability that even in scenes of silence we see and hear the truth. Lakes, mountains and seas, shot by Mikhail Naumovich, are particularly lively.
In 1960, the director made the film "Lullaby". Having looked at this tape, Ekaterina Furtseva herself (Minister of Culture of those times) was completely delighted. This cinema masterpiece was approved by Goskino for showing at the Venice Film Festival, but did not get there, as there were difficulties in bureaucracy, and it was shown almost secretly out of competition.
Kalik's style is special, the films he shot are filled with the harmony of nature and man. There is nothing superfluous in them, even the birds sing, and the water rumbles at the right moments. The play of the actors is set in such a way that even turning the head is not accidental. Everything is thought out, everything is poetic. Mikhail Kalik does not idealize his films. In them, he shows life as it sees it: death is something terrible, nothing can be more beautiful than a child’s laughter, just like sincerity of tears.
The difficulties of a former prisoner
Those were the times when it was impossible to even think otherwise. Everything new and unknown was perceived as a possible threat to the entire USSR. Mikhail Kalik, whose films were watched several times even by security officers before going out, were heatedly discussed. They were criticized, sometimes called anti-Soviet, in which there is a secret meaning, because they were removed by a former prisoner and "enemy of the people", and there are no "enemies of the people" former!
In defense of his ward, one of Kalik's mentors, Sergey Yutkevich, spoke out. He stated that there was nothing wrong with the talented director’s films. Mikhail Naumovich, only not accidentally shot, was completely rehabilitated, which means he is completely innocent, and convicted by mistake!
