Derusu Urasa
Dersu Uzala
1975

Directed by
Akira Kurosawa

USSR 137 minutes - color - 'scope 2.55:1

— the movie has been shot in Sovcolor, a system so bad that they couldn't even keep the color consistent:It flickers and changes hue back and forth from red to blue all the time. An awful shame — and pity.
The very word "Sov", from "Soviet", of course? has come to mean "letdown" in Dutch (sof). May be Yiddish.

An interesting question for the guys who restore movies. What to do about those changing hues? It's perfectly possible to take them out - Delft Technical University in Holland has even devised software to remove the flicker of old movies. This has been caused by duping them so many times; not because they flickered in the first place. In Münchhausen, a 1943 Agfacolor production, this has all been taken out. Good, I feel. Too bad they didn't know where to stop and reproduced much too saturated colors. Bad.

— One marvelous shot contains both moon and sun; this can only be shot in the arctic circle. Too bad about that sofcolor.
— One negative thing about this movie; with perfect hindsight, it's a bit too much on the "back to nature" trip.
So was I at the time it was made. Don't let this spoil it for you; I saw it much later myself.

Dersu Uzala

A Russian expedition in 19th-century Siberia is saved from death by a Mongolian native guide, and a friendship develops between the group's leader and the simple, resourceful hunter. Epic drama by Akira Kurosawa, based on a true story and filmed on location in the Soviet Union, won the Best Foreign Film Academy Award. Maxim Munzuk, Yuri Solomon star.

Widescreen, color

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