For most cinema buffs, the upcoming screenings of ”We From Kronstadt”
at Facets Multimedia represent nothing more or less than an opportunity to see a classic vintage Soviet film.
But for Richard Covello, the 1936 Russian-language movie with English subtitles promises to be the cinematic experience of a lifetime-and the end of a crusade to find a piece of his past that has eluded him for more than 25 years.
”I`ve heard very good things about this film, but I won`t be disappointed no matter what it`s like,” says Covello, who persuaded Facets to screen the film Sunday and Monday and plans to be there both nights.
”The whole time I`m watching it, I`ll be thinking of my mother and my aunt and my Russian roots. I`ve waited more than 25 years to see this film.” If you`re thinking that Covello doesn`t sound like a Russian name, you`re right. It`s Italian; his dad was born in Italy. But Covello`s late mother, Henrietta Dzigan Covello, was born in Moscow, and her first cousin, the late Soviet film director Yefim Dzigan, made ”We From Kronstadt.”
The grimly realistic film chronicles the Bolshevik army`s defense of Petrograd against the White army forces in 1919.
”It`s considered to be a classic because it`s a very good example of Russian realist cinema of the 1930s,” Facets co-director Milos Stehlik says of the film, which will be shown at 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday and 7 and 9 p.m. Monday at Facets, 1517 W. Fullerton Ave.
”The film`s not a household name in America, but it deals graphically with the emotional effects of war without being stagy, which made it an exception among films of that era.
”It really shows how the Russian Revolution of 1917 immediately touched the lives of so many millions of Russians, something that has always been difficult for us in America to understand.
”It also was one of the last films of its kind to be made for 40 or 50 years, because the whole subject of post-revolutionary strife in Russia became a taboo subject under Stalin. So Russian writers and filmmakers couldn`t deal with the topic for many years.”
Covello, continuity director at radio stations WNIB/WNIZ, isn`t an especially big film buff; his passion runs more to classical music. (He spent 20 years in the classical concert management field, working with the Fine Arts Quartet and Chicago Opera Theater, before moving to his job with classically oriented WNIB/WNIZ in 1982.)
But for him, ”We From Kronstadt” is in a class by itself. One of his favorite childhood memories concerns the thrill he felt when his usually reticent mother told him that they had a movie director in the family.
”My mother, who came to the U.S. as a child with her family around 1910, never gave out a lot of information about her past,” recalls Covello, who grew up in New York and moved to Chicago in the mid-1960s.
”When she was a young girl in the 1920s, the worst thing you could call someone was a Bolshevik, so she never wanted to talk much about her heritage. But she mentioned once that her cousin had directed a movie, and as a child, I was thrilled that I had a relative in the movies, even if he wasn`t working in Hollywood.”
Henrietta didn`t reveal much more about the family`s movie connection, and Covello didn`t press her for details. But he never forgot about the movie director who represented a tantalizingly mysterious piece of his family history. As a young adult in the mid-1960s, Covello began to get serious about the quest to ferret out more facts about Dzigan.
”It became something of a passion,” he says. ”My mother had passed on by that time, but my Aunt Olga, who was more open about the family history, was able to tell me the name of the film and a little more about Yefim-enough so that I was able to start doing research myself.”
Using contacts at The New York Times, where he had worked as a college student, Covello launched his ”Kronstadt” crusade by scouring back copies of newspapers and magazines on microfilm, searching for mentions of the movie. Eventually, he tracked down articles on the film in Time and The New York Times.
”Both gave it it fabulous reviews,” he notes proudly.
Not long after, Covello moved to Chicago to take a job-and thought for one glorious moment that he had struck pay dirt.
”The Plaza Theater, a movie house in Old Town, was having a foreign film festival and `Kronstadt` was on the bill,” he says. ”Unfortunately, the theater went out of business right before the film fest.”
Undaunted, Covello tried to track down a print of the film through the distributor, but reached another dead end. The distributor also had gone out of business.
”I put the idea on ice after that,” he says. ”I figured that I had missed my last chance to see the film when the Plaza closed.”
Then, in 1977, a friend sent Covello a ”Kronstadt” movie poster from a New York film memorabilia shop.
The poster wasn`t a 1936 original; it was designed to promote a screening of the movie at a film festival in Poland in the 1960s or `70s. But it rekindled Covello`s hopes.
”I realized the film must be fairly famous if they were showing it at a festival in Poland after all those years,” he says.
Finally, last July, Covello visited Russia for the first time and zealously renewed his ”Kronstadt” crusade.
”I planned to get a Moscow phone book and, with the help of a translator, call up everyone named Dzigan and start there,” says Covello, who does not speak Russian.
”Unfortunately, I found out that there are no phone books in Russia. So I just started asking everyone I met if they knew anything about Yefim Dzigan, and everyone`s jaws dropped when they found out he was my relative.
”Everyone had heard of him. I learned that he did most of his work between 1928 and 1956, and that `We From Kronstadt` was his best-known film.” Dzigan, Covello learned to his dismay, had died several years ago. To add to his disappointment, he learned upon arrival back in Chicago that Dzigan`s widow still lived in Moscow.
”I wrote her a six-page letter, had it translated into Russian, and sent it to her with copies of family photographs,” Covello says. ”I never heard anything back.”
It looked as if Covello had struck out again.
But hope springs eternal, and a few months ago fate walked through the door of WNIB/WNIZ in the form of a Facets staff member who had come to publicize a film at Facets about 20th Century Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
Covello immediately seized the opportunity to put in an impassioned plea for a Facets screening of ”We From Kronstadt.”
”Well, why not? It wasn`t as if I were asking them to show `Tarzan and the Leopard Woman,` ” Covello says. ”They were very kind about it.”
”We finally decided, `Why not show it?` ” Stehlik says. ”It`s a good film.
”It was just a matter of luck that the film was available and in distribution,” adds Stehlik, who got the film from a New York distributor
(it`s not available on home video).
”A lot of the films made in Russia during the 1930s have disappeared, and at this stage and in this country, Dzigan is pretty obscure.
”But this film holds up and still works because it was shot in black and white, with an almost documentary-like quality, and is very powerful in its depiction of the horrors of war.”
His quest to see ”Kronstadt” at an end, Covello has no plans to seek out more of Dzigan`s films.
”According to books on Soviet cinema, none of his other films were particularly distinguished,” he says.
”`We From Kronstadt` was the high point of his career. This is the film I`ve been waiting all these years to see.”
