#germann

You can read various issues of this German punk zine here, and issues not included there here. (A full listing in case more are added is here.)

IRINA DYMCHENKO AS  LIZAVETA  IVANOVNA IN MASLENNIKOV’S QUEEN OF SPADES

THE QUEEN OF SPADES, DIRECTED BY IGOR MASLENNIKOV  (1982) 

BASED ON ALEXANDER PUSHKIN’S 1832  SHORT STORY 

The 1982 film The Queen of Spades (Пиковая дама), directed by Igor Maslennikov, is more faithful to the original short story by Alexander Pushkin than any other of the numerous Russian and foreign film versions of this story. In fact, it retains virtually  all of the original text of the story. Maslennikov does everything possible to create a “realistic” version of the tale, using costumes which accurately reflect the period,  filming exclusively in St. Petersburg, and even limiting his soundtrack to period music (compositions of Dmitriy Bortniansky). Even the epigraphs at the beginning of each brief chapter are printed on the screen.

In order to hold to Pushkin’s text, a narrator (played by Alla Demidova) appears in the streets and salons of St. Petersburg, convincingly telling the story in Pushkin’s words. She begins narrating as she opens the door to the dining room of Narumov (played by Konstantine Grigoriev), where several aristocratic guards officers have been playing cards all night. Their game is observed by Hermann/Germann (played by Viktor Proskurin), an officer of the corps of engineers (and thus not of the high aristocratic class of the other officers). He seems fascinated by the card game, and is very attentive to the conversations of the guards officers. Germann is an ethnic German, and seems to fit the Russian stereotype of a thrifty German: he does not gamble because he is not willing to risk losing “that which is necessary in order to gain that which is superfluous.”

As the night is coming to an end, one of the officers, Count Pavel (“Paul”) Tomsky (played by Vitaly Solomin) tells a story from the youth of his now aged grandmother, who once gained a huge gambling debt in France, and supposedly approached the mysterious Count Saint-Germain for help. Tomsky goes on to state that the Count gave her a winning card combination, and she won back enough to pay off  her gambling debt. Tomsky further states that his grandmother, now in her eighties, refuses to share the secret with anyone in his family. Tomsky gets a bit carried away with his story, saying that “Richelieu” had been madly in love with his grandmother. The famous Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642) was before his grandmother’s time, so we can only assume he was referring to the less celebrated Louis-François Armand du Pless Richelieu (1696-1788), a French marshal and grand-nephew to the renowned Cardinal and statesman Also, the mention of Count Saint Germain (1710-1784), a mysterious   character associated with the occult, makes the story seem a bit fantastic, and the other officers may have taken note of this, but Germann takes the story quite literally.

The elderly countess Anna Fedotovna (played by Elena Gogoleva) is attended by a young companion (a “ward,” probably an impoverished distant relative) called Lizaveta Ivanovna (played by Irina Dymchenko), and Germann begins to seek a way to initiate a romance with Lizaveta in order to gain access to the elderly countess and her secret.

After negligently causing the death of the countess, Germann is visited by her ghost, who tells him the secret of the 3 cards. Germann is now confidant that he can use the secret to win a fortune.  He uses his contacts among the guards officers to gain entrance to the elite card game of Chekalinsky (played by Innokenty Smoktonovsky), where he risks his modest fortune in an attempt to gain fantastic wealth.