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Defence of Sevastopol Movie Review

Defence of Sevastopol is a 1911 Russian silent war film directed by Vasily Goncharov and starring Ivan Mozzhukhin. It’s a flawed, but important historical artifact.

Set in 1854-1855, in Sevastopol and Yalta during the Crimean War. Admirals Kornilov and Nakhimov organized the defense during the siege of Sevastopol. Both admirals are killed during the battle, and the city of Sevastopol is taken by the alliance of British, French, Sardinian, and Turkish troops. This war was very important in 19^th century Russian history, but it’s ever more relevant now for the recent problematic developments in the region of Crimea.

Vasily Goncharov directed this movie with a lot of style to spare. There is a lot to consider here in terms of historical importance as the film is one of the first ever feature-length pictures along with another famous movie from this year – ‘L’Inferno’. It basically started the whole movement running from 1911 onward for a couple of years that consisted basically of many different countries making their own epic cinematic feats set in the near or distant past.

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Clearly all of this influence and being one of the first makes the movie a must watch for cinephiles and history buffs (buffs for both the history of cinema and general history itself). However, I would personally state that the technical aspects are its biggest merits besides the factors of importance and preservation.

Yes, Goncharov directed the picture superbly, especially admirable for such an early era in film history. While the storytelling left a lot to be desired, and I will get to that in just a moment, his direction was perfectly competent and what the others did in the tech department also needs to be lauded.

The biggest praise should be lavished upon the names of Louis Forestier and Aleksandr Ryllo, the two men responsible for the look of the film. Yes, the cinematography here is incredible for the early 1910s. The movie looks super professional, very epic in scope and some shots and camera panning were just fantastic. They made the film more epic than it otherwise would have been, but it’s a shame that there wasn’t an accompanying orchestra or at least the sound was non-existent in the online version where I saw the movie, which is on YouTube.

Defence of Sevastopol is clearly at its worst in the storytelling and characterization departments. The movie employed one actor in its cast who was a true star in this period from Russian cinema history and that is the iconic Ivan Mozzhukhin. This guy was everything back in this decade for the Russians. However, unlike his great turn in ‘The Queen of Spades’, here he was very much wasted as were all of the other actors. They just appeared shortly in a couple of scenes and all were nameless, forgettable and simply the faces of just another soldier.

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This type of documentarian approach has never appealed to me personally as I favor a more narrative-driven approach for a live-action feature film. It also led to the plot being perfunctory and almost absent to the point where the camera and the technicalities take the lead and the story takes the backseat, even resulting in some confusion for audiences not really in the know about this particular war and historical period. It needed more intertitles and more explanations for sure.

Defence of Sevastopol is one of the first feature-length films ever made not just in Russia, but in the entire world as well. It deserves praise for its historical merits and especially the technicalities as the directing and particularly the cinematography are surprisingly competent and impressive for its time. Negative points go toward the lack of plot and characterization as it is overly documentarian in approach with an insufficient number of intertitles too.

My Rating – 3.5