Taming of the fire is a 1972 film, directed by Daniil Khrabrovitsky

Daniil Khrabrovitsky

Daniil Khrabrovitsky was a Soviet scriptwriter and film director.- Filmography :* 1959: Все начинается с дороги* 1959: Исправленному верить...

 and starring Kirill Lavrov

Kirill Lavrov

Kirill Yuryevich Lavrov was a well-known Soviet and Russian film and theatre actor and director.-Childhood:Kirill Yuryevich Lavrov was born on September 15, 1925, in Leningrad, USSR . He was baptized by the Russian Orthodox Church of St. John the Divine in Lavrushinskoe Podvorie Monastery in...

.).

Awards and recognition

The State Prize of Russia was awarded to actor Lavrov for his performance in the leading role. The film also received several awards at various festivals in Europe and Russia, including the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival Award (1972).

Plot summary

Epic film in two episodes, based on a true story of creation and development of Russian space and missile industry. Due to secrecy demand, all names were altered in the script, although most of the characters are easily recognizable. Sergei Korolev was prototype for the lead character Bashkirtsev, played by Kirill Lavrov.

Episode 1. He is obsessed with flying since his youth. Bashkirtsev's career takes shape after his meeting with visionary space scientist Tsiolkovsky (played by Smoktunovsky). Before the World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 he develops the first rockets and builds a launch center in Central Russia. Then he makes the "Katyusha" weapon and takes it to the front-lines of WWII. In spite of his arrest and imprisonment, he continues working on rocket design. He is released from prison upon his request to fight in the front-lines against the Nazis.

Episode 2. After the end of WWII, Bashkirtsev makes a new rocket system, and works with nuclear scientist Igor Kurchatov

Igor Kurchatov

Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov , was a Soviet nuclear physicist who is widely known as the director of the Soviet atomic bomb project. Along with Georgy Flyorov and Andrei Sakharov, Kurchatov is widely remembered and dubbed as the "father of the Soviet atomic bomb" for his directorial role in the...

 on the nuclear missiles program. Then he makes a new rocket that launched "Sputnik" to orbit in 1957, from Baykonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...

. His next achievement is the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961....

, and other human space missions. By the mid 1960s Bashkirtsev makes developments for the flight to the Moon. However, Bashkirtsev's uncompromising character causes him many problems with Soviet politicians, in additions to other pressures in his life, and he dies from a heart attack. His mission is carried on by his colleagues and apprentices.

Main cast

• Kirill Lavrov
  Kirill Lavrov
  Kirill Yuryevich Lavrov was a well-known Soviet and Russian film and theatre actor and director.-Childhood:Kirill Yuryevich Lavrov was born on September 15, 1925, in Leningrad, USSR . He was baptized by the Russian Orthodox Church of St. John the Divine in Lavrushinskoe Podvorie Monastery in...
  
   as Andrei Bashkirtsev (character based on Sergei Korolev)
• Ada Rogovtseva
• Igor Gorbachev as Ognev
• Andrei Popov as Gromov
• Igor Vladimirov
• Innokenti Smoktunovsky as Tsiolkovski
• Petr Shelokhonov
  Petr Shelokhonov
  Petr Illarionovich Shelokhonov, was a Russian actor and director, designated Honorable Actor of Russia .-Childhood:Petr Shelokhonov was born in 1929, in Belarus, then a part of the Soviet Union; Peter Larionovich Shelokhonov...
  
   as Leonid Karelin
• Svetlana Korkoshko
• Vsevolod Safonov
• Zinovi Gerdt
  Zinovi Gerdt
  Zinovy Efimovich Gerdt was a Soviet/Russian theatre and cinema actor, recognized with the title People's Artist of the USSR.-Biography:At 15, Gerdt graduated from a vocational school affiliated with the Valerian Kuybyshev Electrical Plant. He started working on Metrostroy as a...
  
  
• Yevgeny Matveyev
• Vera Kuznetsova
• Andro Kobaladze as Stalin
• Igor Petrovsky
• Yuri Leonidov
• Ivan Ryzhov
• Valentina Khmara as Korolev's secretary
• Galina Samokhina
• Vladimir Deyanov
• Vadim Spiridonov
• Nikolai Barmin
• Galiks Kolchitsky
• Vitali Belyakov
• Lavr Lyndin
• Georgi Shevtsov
• Yevgeni Steblov
• I. Bargi
• V. Paulus
• A. Mirimov
• V. Kharkov

Crew

• Director: Daniil Khrabrovitsky
• Writer: Daniil Khrabrovitsky
• Cinematographers: Sergei Vronsky, Aleksandr Grigoryev, Oleg Gorshkov, U. Bergstrem, A. Gavrilyuk, E. Kerch
• Executive producer: Viktor Tsirul
• Composer: Andrei Petrov
  Andrei Petrov
  Andrey Pavlovich Petrov was a Russian and Soviet composer. Andrey Petrov is known for his music for films such as I Step Through Moscow, Beware of the Car, and Office Romance.-Life:...
  
  
• Editing: Nina Glagoleva, Mariya Timofeyeva
• Production design: Yuri Kladiyenko
• Costumes: Natalya Firsova
• Makeup: Aleksey Tetyurkin, I. Baykova, M. Chiglyakova
• Second Unit Director: A. Razumovsky
• Sound: Yuri Rabinovich, Roman Berz
• Set designers: V. Feduliv, G. Kuznetsova, V. Rappoport
• Special effects: Yu. Chekmaryov, A. Merezhkov
• Consultants: Boris Chertok
  Boris Chertok
  Boris Evseyevich Chertok is a prominent Soviet and Russian rocket designer, responsible for control systems of a number of ballistic missiles and spacecraft. Author of a four-volume book Rockets and People, the definitive source of information about the history of the Soviet space program.-Books...
  
  , Mikhail Grigoryev, Aleksai Isaev, Nikolai Krylov, Vladimir Patrushev, S. Tsvigun.
• Music director, score: Emin Khachaturyan

Admissions and DVD sales

• 1972 theatrical admissions : 27,600,000 (Soviet Union)
• 1972 theatrical admissions in Europe : unknown
• 1991 - 2011 video and DVD sales in Russia and Europe : over 10 million copies

Production

• Mosfilm studio was the main production company. Additional production assistance was provided by the Red Army
  Red Army
  The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
  
  and Gagarin Space Center in Moscow, by Baykonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and by OKB 1 and OKB 3 missile industries in central Russia and in Ukraine.

• All actors and crew had to pass background checks to get clearance for filming at Cosmodrome Baykonur and Gagarin Space Center in 1970 and 1971.
• Footages of Baykonur Kosmodrome in Kazakhstan and of the Soviet Space Center in Moscow are adding authenticity to the film, but most of the footages had not been released to the public. The original director's cut had 5500 meters of film length, but then it was shown to Brezhnev and Politbureau and was censored before the public release in 1972; the film was reduced to 4553m and ran 166 minutes. Currently available copies run only 158 minutes.

Comments

• Epic film about the Soviet space program. Loosely based on bio of the top-secret Russian rocket designer Sergei Korolev (b. 1906 - d. 1966). Film was released 6 years after Korolev's death, still the Soviet censorship covered his real name. Other characters are also based on real people, but their names were top secret in the Soviet Union. Today astronautics.com gives some real names as well as the accurate list of actors in the original cast from the German opening night booklet. Soviet censorship ordered several scenes to be deleted, so many characters were altered and reduced, which caused changes in film's opening and closing credits.

• The film was originally planned for release on April 12, 1971, the 10th anniversary of Gagarin's flight, but the film was banned by censorship. It was cut and shortened several times until it was seen by the Defence Minister Ustinov and Brezhnev, which led to further censorship of several scenes related to rocket science and politics. What's left of the film today is a patchwork of scenes of rocket launches, technical discussions mixed with politics, and a fictitious love story. Also fictitious are scenes showing Soviet political leaders and the Red Army Commanders in their nervous discussions about arms race and technology, showing the paranoia of the Cold War.

• Censorship and political influences are evident in the film, in some parts the editing is abrupt and hectic, because the banned footages of film were cut out and destroyed, so it affected characters development and caused incongruent cuts. Soviet political censorship dominated over the filmmakers. Filming locations were top secret in the Soviet Union, such as the Baykonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and the Gagarin Space Center near Moscow. Military censorship watched the secret equipment and rocket science machinery that were not allowed to be seen, so several scenes with good acting were cut out and destroyed. The total length of destroyed footages was about 1200–1500 meters of film, so the film was reduced by more than one hour.

• Cinematographers expressed their regrets that several beautiful scenes on location at Baykonur Cosmodrome were deleted and destroyed by the Soviet censorship, so the original director's cut was losing scene after scene until in was cleared in a much shorter version for public release in April 1972. The original 1971 version of the film ran almost four hours, but it was reduced down to two and a half hours, before international release. The actors and filmmakers were still happy, that after two years of work, the film was allowed for release, albeit in a shorter version.

• The film shows pride in such events as the launch of "Sputnik" in 1957, and the flight of Gagarin, the first man in space, in 1961. But in 1969, four American astronauts walked on the Moon, and two more landed there in February 1971, leaving Russia behind in the space race. Then the Soviet leadership released this film. The space race and the arms race are shown here from the Soviet side. Political figures of Stalin and the nuclear scientist Kurchatov are portrayed with careful exaggeration. Other historic figures, like Tsiolkovsky and Gagarin fit well, albeit the fictitious parallel story of the main character's wife has no chemistry. Cinematography with two cameras is impressive, and music score by Andrei Petrov is memorable.

• The director works with some of the finest Russian actors, such as Lavrov, Smoktunovsky, Popov, Kuznetsova and Gerdt among others. Lavrov's range and nuanced acting is arguably the best in his entire career.

• The State Prize of Russia was awarded to actor Lavrov for his performance in the leading role. The film also received several awards at various festivals in Europe and Russia, including the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival Award (1972).