[ppi] [ppiindia] Till Death Do Us Part

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http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2006/08/25/102.html

Till Death Do Us Part 

He was a vicious dictator. She was just a teenager when they fell in love. An 
upcoming television series turns Stalin's marriage into a soap opera. 

By Anna Malpas
Published: August 25, 2006 



Josef Stalin is depicted as a passionate lover who missed the October 
Revolution because he was in bed with his teenage lover, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, 
in a period drama titled "His Wife" that is due to air on Russian television in 
November.

The four-part drama series, which may also be released as a feature film, has 
been sold to the Rossia television network, said producer and co-director Mira 
Todorovskaya in a Tuesday interview. 

A preliminary DVD of the film (which is still in post-production) shows 
Georgian actor Duta Skhirtladze in the role of Stalin and Olga Budina in the 
role of Alliluyeva meeting at her parents' house when the Bolshevik returned 
from exile, and swiftly beginning a romantic relationship, despite their 
22-year age gap. "I love you, Nadya," Stalin confesses. "All this is serious 
and for a long time."

      
In one scene, Stalin helps a nervous Alliluyeva take off her camisole; in 
another, he pulls her into the water while she is washing him in a bath. 
According to the film's version of history, the reason he was absent during the 
storming of the Winter Palace was because he was in bed with his lover. "The 
Bolsheviks have taken power -- or haven't," he tells her, as they hear the 
sound of shooting outside.

The film is based on a novel called "The Only Woman" by Olga Trifonova, which 
came out in 2001 and presented a semi-factual account of Stalin and 
Alliluyeva's relationship based on archival research. "The material for a 
literary screenplay could only have been taken from this book. No one before 
Trifonova wrote in such detail about the life of Nadezhda Alliluyeva," 
Todorovskaya said. 

The script for "His Wife," written by Todorovskaya, was also inspired by a 2004 
documentary shot by her Mirabel film studio that covered the same story: 
"Stalin's Wife" by Slava Tsukerman. Influenced by the documentary's findings, 
Todorovskaya's drama portrays Alliluyeva's death in 1932 as suicide, rather 
than murder by her husband, as some have suggested.

"Having studied a large quantity of material, we didn't come to the conclusion 
that he could have killed her," the producer said. "I'm sure she committed 
suicide."

In the film, the parts leading up to Allilyueva's death reveal her husband's 
sadistic tendencies -- at one point, he tells her that she could be his 
daughter, since he had an affair with her mother -- but there is no suggestion 
that Stalin killed her. Her death is not shown on screen: After Stalin insults 
her at a banquet, she is shown walking through the Kremlin alone, and then a 
shot is heard.

Stalin was a "devil" and "monster," Todorovskaya said, but "in our film you 
can't see that." She believes that while Alliluyeva was alive, she helped keep 
Stalin's behavior in check. "She was like his second conscience. When she was 
no longer there, it was as if he was released from a chain."

One episode that Todorovskaya took from "The Only Woman," rather than from real 
life, was a tentative love affair between Alliluyeva and a psychiatrist in the 
Czech spa resort of Marienbad, where she went to be treated for gynecological 
problems. There is no record of such an affair, the producer said. In the film, 
the psychiatrist is killed after Alliluyeva departs.

The producer expects the film to provoke controversy for its multifaceted 
portrayal of Stalin. People who see him as inhuman "will say that we have 
beautified Stalin and made him not as he was in real life," she said. Which is 
not to say that Stalin's supporters will like it: "I think my film will have 
opponents from both sides."

The lead role went to Georgian stage actor Skhirtladze, who in 2003 acted in a 
Cesar-winning French film,"Since Otar Left." An earlier plan was to cast 
Vladimir Mashkov, a Russian actor who has played tough-guy roles in Hollywood, 
but he was unable to do it for contractual reasons, Todorovskaya said, adding, 
"I don't regret it at all."

She brushed off a suggestion that the handsome, clear-skinned Skhirtladze could 
be too attractive for the role of a man who had smallpox scars and a withered 
arm. Stalin "was pockmarked and had freckles, but he was very charming all the 
same," she said.

Todorovskaya hopes to sell the film, made on a budget of around $3 million, to 
English-speaking countries, where she feels there will be more interest. In 
Russia, she has not yet secured an agreement on cinema showings, she said, and 
distributors are reluctant to buy the film. "They say that young people aren't 
interested in this -- they don't even know who Stalin is. Why would they want 
to go to see this film?


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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