Best 10 Films of Russia

1. Man With the Movie Camera (1928) USSR, bw/silent [photo top]
2. The Cuckoo (2002) Russia
3. Mongol (2007) Russia
4. Come and See (1985) Russia

5. The Battleship Potemkin (1925, Eisenstein) USSR, bw
6. Ballad of a Soldier (1959) Russia, bw
7. War and Peace (1968) Russia
8. Andrei Rublev (1966, Tarkovsky)
9. Prisoner of the Mountains (1996)
10. Alexander Nevsky (1938, Eisenstein)
11. I Am Cuba (1964) Cuba-Russia, bw
12. Ivan's Childhood (1962) Russia, bw
13. The Cranes Are Flying (1957) Russia

14. The Italian (2005) Russia [photo below]
15. Siberiade (1979) Russia

Photo from Sergei Bondarchuk's War and Peace, which used

over 250,000 extras and ran 7 hrs in length

It was first seen in the west on 4 nights on PBS

Dziga Vertov's Man With the Movie Camera, even though silent, still looks modern today, using superimposed images, rapid edits, moving cameras.. the theme and subtitle was "A day in the life of the USSR" - now that hasn't been copied much through the decades!

All Sergei Eisenstein films are brilliant, I just happen to like Battleship Potemkin and Alexander Nevsky the most..

I need to rewatch Ivan the Terrible, it's been decades.. that's why it's not on here..

Come and See is a terrific holocaust film; the German invasion of Byelorussia and the scorched earth policy..

The War and Peace directed by Sergei Bondarchuk was the most expensive film (100 m. estimated in 1968) of it's era, and they used 250,000 members of the Red Army free of charge.. costumes must have been a real nightmare!

Andrei Tarkovsky is really a Jekyll and Hyde.. The Mirror is another good one, along with Andrei Rublev, but the others are painful to bear.. I would skip The Sacrifice, Solaris, and Stalker, unless you're a masochist

Top Ranked Films from Russia-USSR

© William L. Sinclair

The top ranked films on our internet survey from Russia or the USSR; 34 total mentioned, with 23 in the top 1000. The top three are ironically silent films; the #1 ranked Man With a Movie Camera still looks modern today, featuring thousands of edits and creative camerawork to show one day in the Soviet Union.

1. Man With a Movie Camera [Vertov, Dziga; 1929] #78
2. Battleship Potemkin [Eisenstein, Sergei; 1925] #100
3. October [Eisenstein, Sergei; 1927] #222
4. Earth [Dovzhenko, Alexander; 1930] #249
5. Solaris [Tarkovsky, Andrei; 1972] #267
6. Andrei Rublev [Tarkovsky, Andrei; 1966] #282
7. Strike [Eisenstein, Sergei; 1924] #328
8. Ivan the Terrible, Part One [Eisenstein, Sergei; 1944] #357
9. Alexander Nevsky [Eisenstein, Sergei; 1938] #374 [photo rt - this features the ice battle on a frozen lake]
10. Mirror, The [Tarkovsky, Andrei; 1976] #382

11. Stalker [Tarkovsky, Andrei; 1979] #407
12. Ivan the Terrible, Part Two [Eisenstein, Sergei; 1946] #416
13. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors [Parajanov, Sergei; 1964] #508
14. Come and See [Klimov, Elem; 1985] #559
15. Colour of Pomegranate, The [Parajanov, Sergei; 1968] #578
16. I Am Cuba [Kalatozishvili, Mikheil; 1964] #637
17. Ivan's Childhood [Tarkovsky, Andrei; 1962] #743
18. Storm Over Asia [Pudovkin, Vsevolod; 1928] #753
19. Tulpan [Dvortsevoy, Sergei; 2008] #758
20. Outskirts (Okraina) [Barnet, Boris; 1933] #801

21. Mother (Mat) [Pudovkin, Vsevolod; 1926] #855
22. Cranes Are Flying, The [Kalatozishvili, Mikheil; 1957] #874
23. Russian Ark [Sokurov, Aleksandr; 2002] #898
24. End of St. Petersburg, The [Pudovkin, Vsevolod; 1927] #1016
25. Alexandra [Sokurov, Aleksandr; 2007] #1042
26. Happiness [Medvedkin, Aleksandr; 1934] #1056
27. War and Peace [Bondarchuk, Sergei; 1967] #1077
28. Childhood of Maxim Gorky, The [Donskoi, Mark; 1938] #1120
29. By the Bluest of Seas [Barnet, Boris; 1936] #1135
30. Burnt by the Sun [Mikhalkov, Nikita; 1994] #1146

31. Slave of Love, A [Mikhalkov, Nikita; 1976] #1165
32. My Apprenticeship (Gorky Trilogy II) [Donskoi, Mark; 1939] #1173
33. My Friend Ivan Lapshin [Gherman, Alexei; 1984] #1199
34. Arsenal [Dovzhenko, Alexander; 1928] #1202

We lumped Russia and the USSR together.
It's interesting that Ivan the Terrible, in two parts, was listed as one from Russia, one from the USSR.

Many of these are terrific: all the Eisensteins, Man With the Movie Camera (deserves #1), Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev, Ivan's Childhood, and The Mirror, the holocaust story Come and See, and the major league epic War and Peace, which is over 6 hrs, with 250,000 extras.

 

Missing: Gregori Chukrai's Ballad of a Soldier (1959), first Russian film distributed in the U.S., a beautiful b&w anti-war tale of a soldier's train journey home on a special furlough for heroism.