Giorgi Saakadze (1942)

Original title

გიორგი სააკაძე

Directed by

Mikheil Chiaureli

Genre

drama film

Country

Soviet Union

Runtime

3h 04m

Rating

5.0 of 10 from 10 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

The film is about Giorgi Saakadze, a 17th century Georgian military leader. It shows him as a popular hero who fights against foreign invaders and wealthy nobles who betray their country for personal gain.

historicaldramaticpatrioticstirringseriouspropagandisticepic

What happens

Giorgi Saakadze (Russian: Георгий Саакадзе, Georgian: გიორგი სააკაძე) is a 1942 Soviet historical drama film directed by Mikheil Chiaureli. The screenplay was written by Anna Antonovskaya and Boris Chenry on the basis of Antonovskaya's 1942 Stalin Prize-winning six-volume novel, Veliky Mouravi (The Great Mouravi). The film is a dramatization of the story of Giorgi Saakadze (portrayed by Akaki Khorava), a 17th-century Georgian political and military leader who was celebrated as a national hero of Georgia in Soviet wartime propaganda. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was personally involved in modifying the movie's script. The film emphasized that Saakadze, initially an obscure squire, was a victim of machinations at the hands of the wealthy feudal lords who would sacrifice everything, including their motherland, for their own benefit. It intentionally avoided any mention of Saakadze's own attempts to gain political power and illustrated him as a popular leader against the external aggressors. In the atmosphere of suspicion and spy mania in the Soviet Union during these years, the movie also served contemporary propaganda by emphasizing that treason against the popular leader, and hence the country, was to be punished cruelly. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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