Film Adaptations of Russian Classics

Alexandra Smith is Reader in Russian Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She has published extensively on Russian literature and culture and authored several books including Poetic Canons, Cultural Memory and Russian National Identity after 1991 (co-authored with Katharine Hodgson, 2020), which was awarded the Alexander Nove 2020 Prize in Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies. Smith has also authored Montaging Pushkin: Pushkin and Visions of Modernity in Russian 20th-century Poetry (2006); and The Song of the Mockingbird: Pushkin in the Work of Marina Tsvetaeva (1994). Olga Sobolev is Director of the Language, Culture and Society Programme at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research interests lie in comparative studies and concern nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian and European culture. Her recent books and contributions to edited volumes include: From Orientalism to Cultural Capital: The Myth of Russia in British Literature of the 1920s (co-authored with Angus Wrenn, 2017); ‘Anna Karenina: The ways of Seeing’ (2021); ‘Representation of H. G. Wells on the Russian Stage and Screen’ (2019); The Only Hope of the World: G. B. Shaw and Russia (co-authored with Angus Wrenn, 2012); The Silver Mask: Harlequinade in the Symbolist Poetry of Blok and Belyi (2008).

• Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction On the TEXT-Film Relationship: the question of Apt and Inapt Adaptations - Alexandra Smith and Olga Sobolev Part 1 Goncharov and Turgenev: Adaptation as Nostalgia1.1 The politics of nostalgia: Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov and Mikhalkov’s film adaptation - Henrietta Mondry 1.2 Adapting Turgenev’s Novel as a Pastorale: Avdotya Smirnova’s Fathers and Sons - Alexandra Smith Part 2 Reimagining Dostoevsky 2.3 Dostoevsky and Bresson: From ‘A Meek Creature’ to Une femme douce - Olga Peters Hasty 2.4 Funny and Frightening: Dostoyevsky’s The Double in Richard Ayoade’s interpretation - Tine Roesen Part 3 Collaborating with Chekhov3.5 ‘The Paths I Have Established…’: Chekhov on the Russian and American Screen - Radislav Lapushin 3.6 Louis Malle and Uncle Vanya - Angus Wrenn 3.7 Reinventing Chekhov for the American Screen Michael Mayer’s The Seagull - Olga Partan Part 4 Engaging with Tolstoy4.8 Thanatophobia on the Soviet Screen. Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Il¢ ich and Aleksandr Kaidanovsky’s A Simple Death - Otto Boele 4.9 Forged Network-Narratives: Tolstoy’s The Forged Coupon and a cycle of adaptations in World Cinema - Greg Dolgopolov 4.10 War and Peace: A New Visual Dimension - Olga Sobolev

An erudite study that places adaptations of less-studied works (Tolstoy’s The Forged Coupon and Dostoevsky’s The Double and “The Meek One”) alongside large-scale projects like the BBC’s award-winning 2016 adaptation of War and Peace. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.