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ALEXANDER DOVZHENKO: A LIFE IN SOVIET FILM. By George O. Liber. London: British Film Institute, 2002. vii, 309 pp., notes, bibliography, filmography, index, illustrations. ISBN (cloth) 0-85170-927-3.
This handsomely produced and timely volume arose from an intersection of several disciplines. A historian by training and primary scholarly specialization, George Liber offers here a biography of Ukraine's greatest filmmaker, situating him in the sociopolitical context of his times. The volume's chief focus is thus on Dovzhenko as a (perhaps unwilling) "political animal," caught in the rapid shifts of the official formulae of Stalin-era Soviet ideology, and struggling to survive as a creative individual or simply as a human being. Much of the book's attention is devoted to the painful traumas sustained by the filmmaker and the debilitating pressures that accompanied most of his career. If there is one aspect of Dovzhenko's life, however, that the book does not delve into too deeply, it is the actual creative aspect of his biography; in the struggle between ideology and aesthetics, it is ideology that receives the lion's share of Liber's attention, even though most would agree that the primary enduring value of Dovzhenko's films lies in their aesthetic innovation. What remains outside Liber's focus is the question of why the best of Dovzhenko's art is so captivating-and so influential for later generations of filmmakers. Therefore, the reader who would benefit the most from this book is the one already somewhat familiar with the canonical history of Soviet cinema and with Dovzhenko's best-known work. The principal riches of this volume lie in the fleshing out of Dovzhenko's origins, his first forays into...