The Seventh Companion, Alexei Guerman/Grigori Aronov (U.S.S.R., 1967): Russian Inferno: The Films of Alexei Guerman

Film - Series | July 29 | 5 p.m. |  PFA Theater

Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Guerman’s first film, codirected with the more established Grigori Aronov, is set in 1919, when Terrors both Red and White wracked the Russian populace. Imprisoned by revolutionary forces for his bourgeois background, Major General Adomov stands out among both prisoners and guards for his reasoned, reflective nature, even as his more aristocratic prison mates are executed. Finally released to society, Adomov finds little acceptance in it; “the fact that you are alive is a misunderstanding,” dryly notes one character. Pointedly beginning with a 1918 revolutionary decree (“Not an eye for an eye, but a thousand eyes for one. Long Live the Red Terror!”), The Seventh Companion chronicles what appears to be the only moral man left in an amoral world. “We wanted to say that . . . the absence of moral principles cannot be the foundation of anything,” wrote Guerman. Brilliantly shot in black and white, The Seventh Companion offers a profoundly sorrowful look at the difficulty of being a person of moral character in a society devoid of any.

—Jason Sanders

• Written by Edgar Dubrovsky, Yuri Klepikov, based on a novel by Boris Lavrenyev. Photographed by Eduard Rozovsky. With Andrei Popov, Aleksandr Anisimov, Georgi Shtil, Pyotr Chernov. (89 mins, In Russian with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm)

Tickets required: $5.50 BAM/PFA members and UCB students,  $9.50 Adults (18-64),  $6.50 UC Berkeley faculty and staff, non-UC Berkeley students, senior citizens (65 & over), disabled persons, and youth (17 & under)

Event Contact: bampfa@berkeley.edu, 510-642-0808