Cinema as a reflection of History
St. Petersburg was the first time in Russia that a film show was held. On May 4, 1896, six months after the first Parisian screening, the Lumière brothers sent two envoys, Émile Doublier and Charles Moisson, to St Petersburg. In 1927, Vsevolod Poudovkin produced the silent work The Last Days of St Petersburg, in which the city serves as a backdrop for the story of a worker from Piter who finds himself obliged to go to the front when war breaks out. The Soviet era dealt a severe blow to the film industry in Russia, and a fortiori in the city of St. Petersburg, where almost no Russian or foreign productions were made. Thus, apart from many Soviet works such as Pudovkin's, there are few films shot or taking place in St. Petersburg. Nevertheless, one notices The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia (1973) by Eldar Ryazanov and Francesco Prosperi, where a secret revealed by a Russian emigrant on her deathbed takes a small troupe of Italian characters across the world to arrive in the Russian city. In 1994, Yuri Mamine directed Salades russes, a fine and extremely funny phantasmagorical comedy in which a music teacher accidentally discovers the existence of a passage to Paris in the closet of his komunalka in Saint Petersburg in the middle of perestroika. In 1997, Aleksei Balabanov's Le Frère was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section. The beginning of the 2000s brings first of all The Russian Ark by Alexandr Sokourov (2002) where two travelers, in space and time, walk through the corridors of the Winter Palace, without being visible, observing the historical characters and the life of the palace during the three centuries of its existence. The Hermitage is redesigned as a kind of Ark, the center of all the cultural and spiritual heritage of Russia. This poetic film is also a technical feat as it was shot in one day on a single 96-minute sequence shot. In 2003, Alexei Uchitel's Progulka was released. A story of friendship, love and betrayal that takes place over 24 hours in the city's elusive settings. Then Oxana Bichkova's Piter FM, in 2006, talks almost as much about the town of Piter as about the characters who are in love with it. The city, in its summer splendour, comes in turn to help them overcome the ups and downs of life. More recently, Alexei Uchitel released Matilda (2017) while Kirill Serebrennikov directed Leto (2018), a free adaptation of Natalia Naumenko's autobiography about her relationship with Viktor Tsoi, a Soviet rock singer. The film, shot in St. Petersburg, takes its place in the underground rock culture of Russia in the 1980s. Leto was in official selection at the Cannes Film Festival the same year and won the Best Music Award.
Russian literature in cinema
The 1990s brought mainly literary adaptations in productions shot in St. Petersburg. Thus, there are about ten adaptations of Leo Tolstoy's famous novel Anna Karenina. One of the best known versions is undoubtedly the 1997 version directed by Bernard Rose, with Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean. It was the first Western work entirely made in post-Soviet Russia. This adaptation takes us on a journey throughout St. Petersburg, notably to the Winter Palace, breathtakingly beautiful. Later, Joe Wright's version with Keira Knightley and Jude Law in 2012, however, is shot entirely in England. Let's also mention Sergei Soloviov's 2007 version, broadcast in 2009 in five episodes on the Russian television channel Pierviy Kanal. Dostoyevsky's novel The Idiot (partly set in Piter) also includes a number of film adaptations. The first version is more than a century old, dating from 1910. The works L'Amour Braque (1985, with Sophie Marceau and Francis Huster) and Soigne ta droite (1989, by Jean-Luc Godard, with Jane Birkin) are also freely adapted from Dostoyevsky's novel. In 1999, Alexander Pushkin's poem Eugene Onegin was adapted for the cinema under the simple nameOnegin. Directed by Martha Fiennes, this film with Liv Tyler and Ralph Fiennes, offers viewers magnificent views of St. Petersburg, perhaps sometimes to the detriment of the story and its staging.
Internationally
There are only a few original works shot in St. Petersburg. Many of them use the city mainly for its spectacular views. In 1990, Fred Schepisi directed the spy thriller La Maison Russie with Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer, in which St. Petersburg is featured in breathtaking romantic shots. In 1995, James Bond moves to an almost post-apocalyptic St. Petersburg in Golden Eye. A year later, Midnight in St. Petersburg (1996) also offers us magnificent shots of the city's main monuments. We find Saint Petersburg in Rasputin (1996) by director Uli Edel. The historical protagonist is portrayed by Alan Rickman, while Ian McKellen plays the last tsar of Russia, Nicholas II. In 1997, Nicholas II's presumed missing daughter inspired the story ofAnastasia, a cult cartoon for millenials. As for the Western works passed through St. Petersburg in the early 2000s, let us mention the film The Fall (2004) by Oliver Hirschbiegel, retracing the last days of Hitler, or The Russian Dolls (2005) by Frenchman Cédric Klapisch, a sequel to the very popular The Spanish Inn (2002) with Romain Duris in the lead role. In 2010, Leo Tolstoy is in the spotlight in Michael Hoffman's film Tolstoy, the Last Autumn(A Midsummer Night's Dream, Gambit: English Scam). Shot partly in St. Petersburg (and Moscow), the film focuses on the Russian writer's final years (camped by Christopher Plummer), marred by his complicated relationship with his wife (camped by Helen Mirren). Plummer and Mirren both receive an Oscar nomination for their performance in this sensitive work. More recently, the city is the setting for a romance between Helena Noguerra and Thierry Neuvic in the TV movie Love at first sight in St. Petersburg (2019).
