59 Fun Facts About Andrei Tarkovsky

Which river runs past Tarkovsky's birthplace, Zavrazhye?

The Volga: his mother had gone to stay with relatives there, and Tarkovsky was born in the house of her stepfather, a doctor at the village hospital.

How many feature films did Tarkovsky direct in his career?

Only 7 features in a quarter-century: five in the Soviet Union, where film officials stalled project after project, and two in exile before cancer killed him at 54.

What was Tarkovsky's first feature film, released in 1962?

Ivan's Childhood reached him as a wreck: another director's footage had been scrapped as unusable, and the unknown graduate was handed the war story to rescue.

Which festival prize did Tarkovsky's debut feature win in 1962?

The Golden Lion at Venice made his name at 30, yet Communist critics attacked the film as bourgeois, and it was Jean-Paul Sartre who defended it in print.

Under which filmmaker did Tarkovsky study at the State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK)?

Mikhail Romm taught Tarkovsky side by side with his opposite, the future writer-director Vasily Shukshin, who played the hunted ex-boxer in Tarkovsky's first student film.

Tarkovsky's first student short, The Killers (1956), was adapted from a story by which writer?

Ernest Hemingway's story became a 19-minute student thriller shot in a mocked-up American bar, with Tarkovsky himself playing a customer who whistles through the tense silence.

What was Tarkovsky's diploma film, sold to Mosfilm and co-written with Andrei Konchalovsky?

The Steamroller and the Violin ran 46 minutes, and the unknown student had the nerve to ask the star cameraman of The Cranes Are Flying to shoot it; he was turned down.

Before film school, Tarkovsky worked as a prospector on a year-long expedition in which region?

The Siberian taiga near Turukhansk held him for nearly a year: he tramped the Kureika river country collecting samples, filled an album with sketches, and came home set on film school.

Which director remade Solaris in 2002 with George Clooney in the lead role?

Steven Soderbergh insisted he was filming the original novel afresh, not remaking Tarkovsky; his producer was James Cameron, the director of Titanic.

Tarkovsky's father Arseny was celebrated in which art form?

Poetry came late for Arseny Tarkovsky: known for decades as a translator, he was in his mid-fifties before his first collection appeared in 1962, the year of his son's first feature.

Andrei Rublev, Tarkovsky's 1966 epic, portrays the life of what kind of artist?

An icon painter the film never shows at work: his paintings appear only in the closing minutes, when the black-and-white picture suddenly turns to colour.

What was the original 205-minute cut of Tarkovsky's 1966 medieval epic called?

The Passion According to Andrei had one Moscow screening before it was shelved; Tarkovsky later insisted that nobody but he had cut it, and called the shorter version the best.

The final episode of Andrei Rublev follows the boy Boriska as he undertakes what task?

Casting a giant bell is a bluff with his life at stake: Boriska swears his dead father left him the secret, and only when it rings does he sob that he was told nothing.

Andrei Rublev opens with a prologue in which a man named Yefim takes flight by what means?

A hot air balloon lifts Yefim from a church tower past an angry crowd, and for a few ecstatic moments he sees the land from the sky; then he crashes to earth.

In Andrei Rublev, what vow does the hero take in penance after the sack of Vladimir?

A vow of silence: Rublev has just killed a soldier with an axe to save a holy fool from rape, and for years afterwards he neither speaks nor practises his art.

Solaris (1972) was adapted from a novel by which writer?

Stanisław Lem quarrelled with Tarkovsky over the script and later complained that the director had not filmed Solaris at all, but Crime and Punishment.

Which science fiction film did Tarkovsky call 'phoney' and 'a lifeless schema' before he made Solaris?

2001: A Space Odyssey struck him as cold, sterile and obsessed with gadgets; Soviet publicity then sold Solaris as the Russian answer to it.

Who plays psychologist Kris Kelvin in Solaris?

Donatas Banionis, a Lithuanian stage star, had played a suave Soviet agent in the 1968 thriller Dead Season, the film Vladimir Putin says inspired him to join the KGB.

Who plays Hari, the dead wife who reappears aboard the station in Solaris?

Natalya Bondarchuk was his third choice: Tarkovsky first meant to cast his ex-wife, then settled on Sweden's Bibi Andersson, before returning to the young Russian who had first shown him the novel.

Which prize did Solaris win at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival?

The Grand Prix Spécial du Jury crowned a tactical choice: with a personal script rejected, he had proposed science fiction, betting it would look safe to Soviet film officials.

Which visual motif appears in several Tarkovsky films, most notably Solaris?

Characters levitating: asked why bodies so often rise into the air in his films, he said simply that the scene has great power and makes the image more filmic, more photogenic.

Which Tarkovsky film is the most autobiographical, built from his own family memories and dreams?

Mirror contains, he said, no invented episodes, only his family's history; once it was finished, the dreams of his childhood home that had haunted him for years stopped.

Tarkovsky's 1975 autobiographical film opens with a television clip of a boy being cured of what?

A stutter: a therapist hypnotises the boy until his speech flows freely. The film itself was nearly muffled: Soviet officials gave it only a small, restricted release.

Which real family member appears on screen in Tarkovsky's 1975 autobiographical film?

His mother Maria Vishnyakova plays the mother in old age, sharing the role with the actress Margarita Terekhova; his father is heard on the soundtrack but never seen.

Stalker (1979) was loosely based on which novel by the Strugatsky brothers?

Roadside Picnic recounts several trips into the Zone; the film cut them to a single journey and kept little else from the novel beyond the Zone itself and the guide who leads people in.

In Stalker, what lies at the heart of the Zone?

A room that grants innermost desires waits at the end of the journey, yet when the three men finally reach its threshold, not one of them dares to step inside.

What is the name of the Stalker's mentor, who grew rich in the Zone and then hanged himself?

Porcupine, the Stalker says, sent his own brother to his death in the Zone, came home fabulously rich, and then hanged himself.

Why did almost all of Stalker have to be shot again?

Badly developed negatives ruined the footage from months of location work in 1977; Tarkovsky suspected sabotage, lost his cameraman, and won funding to begin again as a two-part film.

Near which city were the Zone scenes of Stalker filmed?

Tallinn was a last resort: an earthquake ruled out the first-choice locations in Tajikistan, and months of searching ended at derelict power stations outside the Estonian capital.

What did Stalker's sound designer blame for Tarkovsky's fatal cancer?

Chemicals from a plant upstream of the location: Vladimir Sharun recalled white foam on the river and rashes on the crew, and noted that Tarkovsky's wife and an actor died of the same cancer.

Who plays the title role in Stalker?

Alexander Kaidanovsky plays him gaunt and shaven-headed, like a man just out of a labour camp; the Stalker is indeed an ex-convict, who says that for him everywhere is a prison.

What health crisis struck Tarkovsky in April 1978, during the troubled making of Stalker?

A heart attack halted a production already in trouble; he recovered, and by June he was back on location, shooting the film all over again.

Which disaster zone's cleanup workers called themselves stalkers, echoing Stalker's Zone?

Chernobyl's liquidators and scientists took up the name in 1986, seven years after the film, and the sealed land around the reactor is still known simply as the Zone.

In which country did Tarkovsky shoot Nostalghia (1983)?

Italy gave him the freedom he had asked for, and he used it to film a Russian traveller sick with longing for home; a year later he announced he would never go back himself.

Which screenwriter of Antonioni's Blow-Up co-wrote Nostalghia with Tarkovsky?

Tonino Guerra first toured the future locations with Tarkovsky in 1979, a journey the two friends filmed and released as the documentary Voyage in Time.

In Nostalghia's climax, Andrei Gorchakov tries to carry what across a drained mineral pool?

A lit candle: the flame keeps going out and he must start again, and when he finally reaches the far side, in one long unbroken shot, he collapses and dies.

Who plays the Russian writer Gorchakov in Nostalghia?

Oleg Yankovsky stepped in after Anatoly Solonitsyn, for whom the part was meant, died of cancer; he had already played the father in Tarkovsky's autobiographical film of 1975.

With which director did Tarkovsky share a special Grand Prix du cinéma de création at Cannes in 1983?

Robert Bresson, one of his idols, shared the prize; Tarkovsky believed a Soviet juror had been told to keep the Palme d'Or from him, and the suspicion helped decide him to stay in the West.

Which opera did Tarkovsky stage at London's Royal Opera House in 1983?

Boris Godunov was the only opera he ever staged; he and conductor Claudio Abbado parted as friends, and after his death Abbado recorded an album of new music in homage to him.

How does the madman Domenico end his public speech in Nostalghia?

He sets himself on fire as a recording of Beethoven's Ninth plays, a self-sacrifice meant to wake the world up; Tarkovsky made the same act the subject of his final film.

Denied access to Bergman's island of Fårö, where did Tarkovsky film The Sacrifice instead?

Gotland: neighbouring Fårö was then a military zone closed to foreign citizens, so the house at the centre of the film was built on Närsholmen, a protected Gotland peninsula of bird sanctuaries.

Which Bergman cinematographer shot The Sacrifice?

Sven Nykvist found a director who, unlike Bergman, sat at the camera for hours planning every movement himself; their first weeks were strained, yet he later called it one of his most exciting jobs.

Why did the climactic house-burning in The Sacrifice have to be shot twice?

The camera failed mid-take while the only house burned to the ground. The crew rebuilt it at great cost and burned it again with two cameras rolling, and wept when the long single shot finally worked.

Which award did The Sacrifice win in 1988?

The BAFTA for Best Foreign Language Film came in March 1988, more than a year after Tarkovsky's death; his last film beat Jean de Florette, which was named Best Film of all that same night.

What is the title of Tarkovsky's book setting out his ideas on cinema and art?

Sculpting in Time takes its title from his image of the director's craft: as a sculptor cuts away marble, a film-maker carves the film out of a 'lump of time', discarding whatever he does not need.

What is the original title of Tarkovsky's diaries?

Martyrology reached readers abroad first: the diaries appeared in English in 1991 as Time Within Time, and in Polish, Italian and French, while a Russian edition had to wait until 2008.

What inscription is carved on Tarkovsky's gravestone in France?

To the man who saw the Angel was his widow Larisa's idea: she devised the stone, the Russian sculptor Ernst Neizvestny made it, and it was set over the grave only in 1994.

Which Soviet honour was Tarkovsky awarded posthumously in 1990?

The Lenin Prize, among the highest Soviet honours, went to a man who in 1984 had announced he would never go home, saying he had been left unable to work there; he died in exile two years later.

Which artist's unfinished Adoration of the Magi fills the screen under the opening credits of The Sacrifice?

Leonardo da Vinci's panel sets a ruined pagan building behind the kneeling kings, an old world yielding to a new faith. The film blends both worlds too: its hero seeks salvation from a woman said to be a witch.

Which play did Tarkovsky direct on stage at Moscow's Lenkom Theatre in the 1970s?

Hamlet starred Anatoly Solonitsyn, the actor he cast in film after film, and the play never let him go: in exile he was still drafting a screen version in 1986, the year he died.

Which cinematographer shot every Tarkovsky film from his diploma short to Solaris?

Vadim Yusov shot four films with him and then refused the next: after more than a decade he felt the director had invaded his territory, and he did not warm to the new, intensely personal script.

Which three Tarkovsky films made the top 100 of Sight & Sound's 2012 critics' poll?

Andrei Rublev, Mirror and Stalker all placed in the top 30. Mirror led them at 19, though when it first appeared fellow Soviet film-makers had publicly condemned it as elitist.

What celestial object was named after Tarkovsky?

A minor planet: the asteroid Tarkovskij had already been recorded in 1938 but went unrecognised for 44 years, until a Soviet astronomer working in Crimea spotted it again in December 1982.

Which Bergman regular starred in both Nostalghia and The Sacrifice?

Erland Josephson played the madman Domenico in Nostalghia, and Tarkovsky then wrote the lead role in The Sacrifice specifically for him.

Which German Romantic writer was the subject of a 1970s Tarkovsky screenplay he never filmed?

E. T. A. Hoffmann was the subject of Hoffmanniana, a script Tarkovsky wrote for an Estonian studio in the 1970s; in exile he took it up again and planned to film it after The Sacrifice, but it was never made.

Which French filmmaker made the documentary One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich?

Chris Marker was a friend who had filmed Tarkovsky on the set of The Sacrifice and at his sickbed, still editing the film and reunited at last with the son Soviet officials had kept from him.

Which real city's expressways stand in for the city of the future in Solaris?

Tokyo's expressways, filmed with only the ordinary cars of the day, play the future unaltered: Tarkovsky simply let the tunnels, flyovers and tail lights of a real city look alien.

Tarkovsky lies in the Russian émigré cemetery of which town outside Paris?

Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois took him in after a funeral at the Russian cathedral in Paris, where his fellow exile, the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, played Bach in farewell.

What work does the 12-year-old orphan do for the Soviet army in Tarkovsky's war film?

Scouting behind enemy lines: small enough to slip across the river unseen, the boy refuses to be sent to the safety of a military school, and goes out on one mission too many.