The Captivating Star of Happiness

The Captivating Star of Happiness
Directed by Vladimir Motyl
Written by Vladimir Motyl
Oleg Osetinsky
Mark Zakharov
Starring Igor Kostolevsky
Irina Kupchenko
Aleksey Batalov
Natalya Bondarchuk
Oleg Strizhenov
Music by Isaak Schwarz
Cinematography Dmitriy Meshiev
Edited by Ye. Sadovskaya
Production
company
Release date
 November 11, 1975 (1975-11-11)
Running time
 167 min.
Country Soviet Union
Language Russian

The Captivating Star of Happiness (Russian: Звезда пленительного счастья, translit. Zvezda plenitelnogo schastya, lit. 'The Star of Fascinating Happiness') is a 1975 Soviet historical drama.[1] The title is an allusion to a line from a poem by Alexander Pushkin.[2] It is a costume drama dedicated "to the women of Russia".

The story is set in the aftermath of the Decembrist revolt against Tsar Nicholas I in 1825. The revolt is repressed, and the military officers involved confess one by one. They are sentenced to exile in Siberia and their wives face the decision as to whether or not to follow them.

Cast

Production

After making the 1970 hit film White Sun of the Desert, Motyl did not get directorial projects for five years.

When Motyl got the green light from Goskino to make a film about the Decembrists, he still had problems and had to do many rewrites because the authorities believed that the picture had too many parallels to the Soviet regime and allusions about Soviet dissidents.

Nevertheless, the screenplay was rejected. Then Motyl went to Leningrad, to the regional party committee. He handed the script to the secretary on ideology; the woman did not have time to read it and instead gave the text to her daughter who ended up adoring it. The mother called Filipp Ermash, Moscow's Minister of Cinematography and declared that "The Leningrad Regional Committee is interested in the film about the Decembrists!" Thus the script got to Lenfilm, but the budget was cut to 1.5 million rubles from the initial 3.5 million.[3][4]

The locations of the film included the Peterhof Palace and the Winter Palace.[5]

References

  1. ↑ "Звезда пленительного счастья. Х/ф". Russia-K.
  2. ↑ (in Russian) Wikisource link to К Чедаеву (Пушкин). Wikisource.
  3. ↑ ""Звезда пленительного счастья", или как судьбу легендарного фильма решили д". Argumenty i Fakty.
  4. ↑ "Звезда пленительного счастья". VokrugTV.
  5. ↑ ""Звезда пленительного счастья". Сорок лет на экране". culture.ru.
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