ABSTRACT

Some critics called the '60s 'the golden age' of film versions. Those years saw a massive invasion of world literature by film-makers in search of new themes and subjects. Among the writers who attracted close attention were Leo Tolstoy, Feodor Dostoevsky, Ivan Turgenev, Alexander Kuprin, Anton Chekhov, William Shakespeare, Honoré de Balzac, i.e. writers whose work was connected with the protection of the honour and dignity of man, and with high-minded humanistic moral problems. The authors of the collective monograph A History of Soviet Cinema characterized the keen enthusiasm of Soviet film directors for classical literature as follows: 'As a rule, the classics are resorted to and interpreted anew when, on the arterial road of art, new problems of treating the present have been outlined and the views and the atmosphere characteristic of the period in question have assumed a definite form' 8 .